First Foods

B#9 just started having solids. For our babies, we start them with brown rice cereal and then once they show that they are doing fine with that we move on to avacado. That is the lovely green mess on her chin. Most of them eat it fine as babies and it is so healthy for them. I must admit that our pediatrician was quite surprised at our choice of a first food but she agreed that it is a good choice. I love avacado so the more of my children that grow up liking it, the better.

Little Helpers

B#7 and B#8 decided to help with their laundry this morning. It was so cute watching them.

Kitchen Day

Today was kitchen day at our house. What in the world does that mean? Well what that meant for us was that it was a day to concentrate on the kitchen. We took everything off the counter tops and wiped them down, wiped down the tile backsplash, cleaned the windows , washed the curtains and did a mid-week mopping. We made wheat-free cupcakes for B#1, brownie bites for the rest of us and made a small batch of a new granola recipe. I don't like to make a big batch of things until we make sure we are going to like it to cut down on waste. I also did a quick refrigerator purge to get ready for "town day" tomorrow which is when we do our big grocery shopping trip. I am exhausted tonight but it feels good to have gotten to some things that hadn't been cleaned in awhile. Next week we will focus on something else on Kitchen day like clean out cupboards and wipe down cabinets and drawers.

Two new favorite books

Within the past few days days I have gotten two new books, well, one is borrowed from a friend but is certainly on my wishlist. The one on the top is a cookbook called "Healthy Choices". We try to eat healthy but we certainly love our sweets. Recently our oldest has been advised to avoid wheat for three weeks to see if he is allergic which has caused us to examine everything we eat. We haven't made cake mix cookies or brownies in almost two weeks. This cookbook has lots of healthy alternatives and lots of wheat free options. I loved that is also has some recipes in it for some homemade products like "aluminum free baking powder". We always buy the aluminum free kind but it is expensive for a little can and we do use it quite a bit so I am excited to give this recipe a try. I actually found this cookbook at the checkout stand at the grocery store. It was completely an impulse buy but I think it will definitely be worth it.

The second book, "Large Family Logistics" has lots of tips for being more organized at home. One of the suggestions is to order your week like the ladies of old did...Monday is laundry day, Tuesday is kitchen day, Wednesday is town day, Thursday is Office day, Friday is Cleaning Day, Saturday is Gardening Day and Sunday is the Lord's day. I really like that, I love orgaization and knowing what to expect. Of course, my week won't always work out so smoothly like that but it is something to shoot for anyway. Today was laundry day for us, which just means we keep the laundry going all day and make it our goal to actually get it put away instead of it going onto our "floordrobes". Laundry day doesn't mean we won't have more laundry to do throughout the week but the bulk of it will be done which will free up some time and some washer space for doing bedding and other things. This is such a practical book in lots of ways and I love practical things. I know the "Large Family Logistics" book can be found at www.visionforum.com but the cookbook might take some hunting online for. It is published by Keepers at Home magazine.

Intentional parenting part 2

I don't have any of this written down so it may sound more like rambling than anything else. I mentioned at the end of my last post that I would tell you how intentional parenting looks in practical terms for our family.

I can claim nothing for myself in these things that we do. As I mentioned two of my favorite books are "Don't Make Me Count to Three" and "Raising Godly Tomatoes" so most of the things that we do come from those. It seems that most of the altercations in our home involve our two little boys so when that happens I usually have to discipline both of them but we will focus on what I do when I can clearly see that one child needs to be disciplined. I try to calmly take the offending child to his/her room and ask them about what happened, such as " Were you being kind to your brother when you took that toy out of his hand?" Usually the answer comes out, "Yes" and I then proceed to tell him "No, that wasn't kind" and then why, as well as a toddler can understand. I do give a discipline on the bottom if that is needed and then I take the child back out to apologize and and to "redo" the incident in the correct way. Another thing that we do is to train the children to obey "Right Away, all the way, with a happy heart". I think that came from the "Don't make me count to three" book. We all know that consistency on our parts as parents is such an important key to child training. I definitely see a difference in behaviour when I am not consistent, especially with one child. Another thing we train for is that "Delayed obedience is disobedience". I think that is where we can keep ourselves as parents from falling into the bad habit of repeating our selves to our children and having the tone of our voice go up an octave each time that we repeat it. If we teach our children that delayed obedience is disobedience and we consistently follow through with a discipline when they disobey, then we should find ourselves having to discipline less. None of us as parents wants to spend all of our time disciplining our children so I guess the goal is to work on things until the children know what to expect and then only have to put out the fires every now and then.

We live in a very child oriented society which you see when you go out to go shopping. Meaning, alot of children these days are handed most things they cry for. They are not taught to wait, to obey or to be grateful. The Bible says: "He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly" Proverbs 13:24 and " For whom the Lord loves He corrects, Just as a father the son in whom he delights" Proverbs 3:12. Clearly we are to discipline our children, but not out of anger because they are bugging us but because we love them and we want them to know the right way to behave. I remember when our first child was little, so many years ago, our pastor saying something like..."an undisciplined child is an unlovely child". Basically what he was saying is what we all know to be true, a child who is disciplined and has self control is much more pleasant to be around than a child who is screaming their head off to get their own way.

To sum up my rambling thoughts on the subject...we should make the most of every opportunity to train our children, intentionally, in the way they should go. We aren't just given these children by God to make ourselves feel better or to just have them. We are given them as a gift, a treasure, a heritage. What right have we to neglect to train them as our Lord tells us to do?

Intentional Parenting

Intentional: intended, designed, done with design or purpose, not accidental

Parent: to produce or bring forth, he or she that produces young.
1. The duties of parents to their children are to maintain, protect and educate them.

Webster's 1828 dictionary

The Lord had been bringing one word to me often lately and that is the word intentional. I love being a mom, a parent. But I believe that there is more to being a parent than just bringing children into the world. I believe that Scripture commands us to be intentional parents. So I have been pondering what that means. I love to read books on parenting and training my children. Two of my favorites are "Raising Godly Tomatoes" by L. Elizabeth Krueger and "Don't Make Me Count to Three", by Ginger Plowman. But even after reading those books I still feel the Lord bringing that word, intentional, back to my mind. So I have started searching Scripture and taking notes of my own. For those of you whose children are grown or maybe you don't have children yet, this may be a boring post for you. Sorry, but I thought I would try out my thoughts on you, my friends and readers.

For me the easiest way to define intentional parenting to myself was to define what it is not....so here goes...the opposite of intentional parenting is dealing with each act of disobedience, temper tantrum, bad attitude, etc. as if it were a personal offense to me, or just to make myself feel better, to release my anger or frustration. Not seeing each act of disobedience as an opportunity to train my child/children in behavior that would please the Lord but also help them as they grow older. In other words, a selfish child will grow into a selfish adult, an angry child will grow into an angry adult, a lazy child will grow into a lazy adult. Scripture speaks clearly on these things. Phillipians 2:3 says "Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself", Proverbs 22:24 says, "Make no friendship with an angry man..." and again in 29:22 "An angry man stirs up dissension...". As for laziness, the book of Proverbs is full of verses concerning this. So obviously these are some of the things that just come naturally to us as humans but since the Scriptures show us that these things are not good then that means that we need to train our children in the opposite of these things.

But where does the Bible say we are to train our children? What could a book written so long ago possibly have to say on the subject of parenting?

Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:16
The Hebrew word for train in this verse is "chanak(khaw-nak) which means to narrow, to initiate or discipline, dedicate or train up. So I feel this verse is key to understanding our responsibilities as parents.

And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture(training) and admonition of the Lord. Ephesians 6:4
I think we can provoke our children to wrath when we are not intentional in our parenting, when they do not know what is expected of them and what the consequences will be if they disobey. I believe that children want stability and boundaries.

What kinds of things should we train for? 1 Peter 1:5-8 says...But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverence, to perseverence godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ".

So for me, I am working on training my children in kindness, selflessness, obedience, self-control, diligence, thoroughness, attentiveness and to be hard workers.

How does this all play out in our daily life? Stay tuned, if you are interested. And please know that we are definitely not perfect in our parenting and we learn something new each day, especially with two toddler boys:) But with the help of the Lord we are trying....to be intentional parents.

So Sad

So sad, but so fun...B#9 is getting so big. I love to see the babies getting big and doing new things but yet it makes me sad. I just love little babies. The smell so sweet and they love to snuggle and rest their heads on your shoulder. Sometimes at night when I should be laying her in her bed, I just sit in the rocking chair in her room and rock her, knowing that before too long she won't want to do that anymore. She absolutely loves her thumb, just like one of her older sisters did at that age.

She is army crawling to get what ever toy catches her eye.

And if she can't army crawl fast enough she will roll her way around. She is definitely loved by her siblings, especially her brothers.

Read through the Bible in 90 days

B#4 and I are trying to read through the Bible in 90 days....it certainly keeps you in the Word. We are on day three so I thought I would post about it in case anyone out there wants to do it too. We got the reading plan from www.momstoolbox.com/blog/bible-reading-in-90-days-schedule/ . I know it is alot of reading but I have read good things about doing it so we thought we would give it a try. Our family did something similar a few years ago but I think it ended up taking 6 months. Even if it takes me 6 months again I will be glad we spent the time to try. Leave me a comment if you decide to give it a try. It would be fun to do together:)