House envy

I have a confession to make: If you and I are friends and you have at some point invited me over to your house, I can admit with some certainty that I have walked into your house, done a quick estimate of your square footage and number of bedrooms/bathrooms, admired your updates and decor, and left feeling jealous and dissatisfied. I've driven away thinking the same toxic thoughts that have gone through my brain a thousand times in the last few years: I don't know ANYONE else who has to share one tiny bathroom with her husband and two kids. I don't know ANYONE else who has such a small, old house in such an ugly neighborhood. Why am I the only one who has to put up with this injustice? 

A couple years ago, Trey and I thought we were on the brink of building a home. We put our house on the market... and it sat. And sat. The few people who came to look at it voiced the same concerns we had: it's too small. I was praying the house would sell, but at the same time, I was praying that if this wasn't the right timing, our house wouldn't sell. Our house never sold. We finally took it off the market because I was exhausted from months and months of keeping it in pristine cleanliness while homeschooling two very messy children. (I distinctly remember one particularly frustrating day when we were in the middle of our schoolwork and I got a call that a realtor would be showing the house to someone in twenty minutes. I threw all of our books, papers, pencils, crayons, rulers, math blocks, and science supplies in a closet, speed-cleaned the kitchen, and rushed the kids out to the car where they finished getting their shoes on while I peeled out of the driveway. Minutes later, it started raining and the couple decided not to come look at the house after all.)  

On the other hand, a tiny house comes with a tiny mortgage payment. I've only worked part-time since Perrin was born, and Trey took a new job with a pay cut about a year ago, and yet we've never truly struggled financially, nor have we ever gone into debt.

Our tiny house has allowed us to enjoy life in ways that we wouldn't be able to if we were stuck under the burden of a house we could barely afford. We've been able to take vacations, remodel our kitchen and bathroom, and give to our church and others in need. Our house is a haven filled with good memories, complete with a huge backyard for the kids to play in and situated in a safe neighborhood where we take walks as a family nearly every day. What more do we need? Would a bigger house really make me happy, or would it simply cause me to find something else to be discontent about?

I'm not going to lie--I still have plenty of moments of discontent. Sunday mornings are the worst when we're all trying to get ready in the bathroom at the same time. We have NO privacy in this house. I'm used to one (or two! or three!) people barging in on me while I'm trying to take a shower. But I'm slowly (sloooooowly) learning to be grateful. I'm grateful that our house is easy to clean. I'm grateful that our house keeps us from buying things we don't need (because if we don't have a place to put it, we don't buy it). I'm grateful that I can talk to my kids and hear them no matter where I'm standing in the house. I'm thankful for the memories we're building here--huddling around backyard bonfires, reading books on the deck, walking to the nearby field to launch rockets, working together on Saturday mornings to clean the house or rake the leaves or plant new flowers. Our house is just a house, but it's allowed us to have a lifestyle that fits our values and has protected us from a lot of unnecessary stress.

Maybe one of these days I'll be able to walk into your beautiful house, compliment your fireplace or granite counter tops or tray ceilings or covered patio, then climb into my car with a genuine smile, thinking that you and I are both so very blessed to have a wonderful place to call home. I think I'm almost there.

Trey's date

Tonight Trey is on a date... without me. He's having the time of his life this evening with a beautiful girl who thinks he is the best man in the world. He planned a special evening for her, dressed in his nicest suit, and escorted her to a ballroom for a night of hors d'oeuvres and dancing. 

And despite her best efforts to be as poised and grown-up as possible, she couldn't help squealing and singing along when the song "Let it Go" from Frozen came on. She also got Trey to play along with an impromptu version of Hide and Seek among the other dance guests. But those are things that are bound to happen when you go on a date with a four-year-old.

Here she is, the only other girl in the world who is allowed to date my husband. I curled her hair and let her pick out which dress she wanted to wear for her date with daddy. She was so excited. 

Trey got ready and then left the house so that he could come ring the doorbell and pick her up properly. She ran to the door and invited him in for pictures. Aren't they sweet together? I love her adoring gaze. My sister mentioned that this is a picture we'll have to save to use in a slideshow on her wedding day.

So, with the two of them going on a date tonight, I figured Perrin and I should do something fun, too. I asked him what we should do for our date. He screamed, "McDonald's!" I guess we're not quite as classy as the other two members of the family. But here we are, ready for our McDonald's date.

Trey texted me pictures throughout the night of our sweet girl having the time of her life. She danced with daddy; she danced alone; she danced with a brownie; she danced with a balloon. She danced until they were pretty much the last couple in the ballroom. As she munched on the catered food, she told Trey, "I love daddy and chicken." Which I think is her way of telling him she'll never forget this special night with the most important man in her life, who is teaching her exactly the kind of love and respect she should expect from the future most important man in her life.

Christmas rat

I saw a video on youtube not too long ago of a pet rat doing all kinds of amazing tricks. The video actually made it look like fun to own a rat. I even brought it up to Trey as a possible Christmas present for Perrin. Even though I showed the video to Trey ("See? It's cute! And fuzzy! And smart!"), he wasn't convinced. So I filed the "pet rat" idea away with the rest of my list of things that are unlikely to ever happen (along with "Perrin learning to close the dang door when he goes to the bathroom" and "Brielle going to sleep without needing to have a story, a kiss, a prayer, a cup of water, and 5,000 stuffed animals." Some battles just can't be won.)

Fast forward to today. The kids decided to set out a live trap sometime recently. Since we live in a neighborhood in the middle of town, I wasn't too concerned about actually catching anything. They checked the trap today, and guess what? We were the new owners of a pet rat... for a few hours, anyway. They named him Little Paws and stuck pieces of bread through the cage to feed him. He sat happily munching in his cage for most of the afternoon until Trey made it home from work. 

I didn't want to set him free at our house where he might decide to crawl under the crawlspace and make himself cozy in our walls and nibble on our wires. And the kids were horrified at the possibility of Trey killing their "pet." So we found a wooded area far away from any other houses and set him free. The kids caught one last glimpse of him as he climbed up a tree (which I thought was weird that he went straight up a tree. Apparently I don't know much about rats. We'll consider it our science lesson for today.)

Kuddos to Trey for going along with our crazy scheme to relocate the rat, which was a lot nicer for Little Paws than what Trey actually wanted to do with him. Maybe next year he'll even reconsider the pet rat idea... we do have experience now, after all!  

It's kind of cute, don't you think?

The day a tree smooshed our house

It's been about two and a half weeks since Trey's birthday. We went out to dinner as a family and got stuck at a restaurant in Little Rock as we waited for a crazy storm to pass through. Weather reports were saying that winds were blowing up to 80 mph. When it finally calmed down enough for us to drive back, we came home to (surprise!) a tree on our house. Happy birthday, Trey.

Since it was raining in our living room and bedroom, we quickly packed some overnight bags and crashed at my parents' house for the next two nights before moving into an extended-stay hotel. Although I'm starting to feel a little homesick, it hasn't been too bad... free breakfast, an indoor pool and hot tub, and someone else makes the beds and vacuums the floors. The kids think we're on vacation. I was feeling them out a few days after it happened, trying to decide if they were traumatized by the situation at all. Their response? "Can we go swimming again?!? Yippie!" (Although they're not quite so enthusiastic about having to share a bed.)

I don't know how much longer we'll be without a home. Part of me is very tempted to worry and complain and whine about how hard life is. But I think about friends and family members who have gone through true tragedies, and I realize a tree falling on our house does not qualify as a bad day. We are all safe, healthy, and happy, and our home can be fixed. 

I've even wondered if we might laugh about this someday or use it as one of our stories to tell at dinner parties. "Remember the year when you got a tree for your birthday? Ha ha!" I admit I can't laugh about it yet, but I can imagine a day where perhaps I can allow others to laugh about it without me wanting to kick them in the head. 

Even though I can't laugh about it yet, I can feel thankful. Thank you, God, for getting us out of the house that night so that my children wouldn't have to experience something so scary. Thank you for our wonderful family and friends who have been so supportive and encouraging. Thank you for trustworthy neighbors who are keeping an eye on our house. Thank you for a safe, clean, and fun place to stay. Thank you for my husband who has taken on the burden of dealing with the insurance companies and contractors so that I don't have to.  

Oh, and we're all set with firewood for the next millennium. 

The finish line

We did it. As of 10:00 this morning, we wrapped up our first year of homeschooling. (Do you hear the Hallelujah chorus?) The majority of the year was great, but I've really been limping along these last couple of weeks. Here's an actual conversation I had with Perrin last week:

Perrin: "Mom, will you check my handwriting?"
Me: "Hmm... you got your d's backwards. But I don't even care. Let's just move on to math now."
Perrin: "Oh, I can fix those." (Begins erasing the offending letters)
Me: (Whining) "Do you have to? Can't we just be done already?"

Not my best moment as a teacher. In my defense, I've spent all year long caring. And after a bit of a break and a beach vacation, I'll start caring again. 

Despite a rocky last two weeks, I'm really pleased with how well this year went. I taught my son to read and write! What a neat experience to share together! We've laughed and cried together over books we read while snuggled on the couch. We launched rockets, built a working wench, tested the acidity in our foods, created messy chemical reactions, studied the night sky through our telescope (and caught a glimpse of four of Jupiter's moons), played strategy games, dissected owl pellets, and explored our beautiful world as a family on several field trips and outings. We've had a blast, and I'm proud to say that Perrin has realized he loves learning. Goal achieved. (Also, kindergarten science is FUN, y'all!)

We had tough days too when the thought crossed my mind  of how much easier it would be to send him to public school. Juggling my job with homeschooling was a year-long balancing act I still haven't gotten the hang of. I constantly felt like I was either being a bad employee or a bad teacher (or both). And between time working and time teaching Perrin, I often felt like I was neglecting Brielle. Sometimes I wondered if homeschooling was worth it. 

But as I look back on the memories we've made this year and consider how close I am to my kids and how I've watched their enthusiasm for learning grow, I know I made the right choice. I'm already ordering our curriculum for next year and getting excited about all the fun we'll have together (after some mental rest for this depleted teacher/mom, of course). No more school for at least 6-8 weeks! Except while we're on vacation we're going to study tides and how the moon affects them... and we're going on a nature cruise to study ocean life from the sea floor... and we're going to watch the Blue Angels practice and discuss flight dynamics... and I'll probably stick some other learning in here and there. Because when you're a homeschool family, all of life is an opportunity to learn. So we never really take a break.

Reflections on ten years

Yesterday was our 10-year wedding anniversary. We spent an incredible weekend away in a cabin celebrating this milestone. But before we left town, we spent Thursday night watching our wedding video with our kiddos. They thought it was pretty cool to see a “movie” about us. :) Watching it again and thinking about everything we’ve been through in ten years has made me realize how far we’ve come—through good and bad.

I was only 21 that day we said “I do” on the beach. I didn’t feel like a kid at all, but I realize now I had a lot of growing up to do in the years to come. I was so excited to get married. I felt the way I imagine a lot of dating couples feel: like no one else in the world could possibly know each other better or love each other more than we did. We were truly best friends.

If I had to use one word to describe our first few years of marriage, I would say passionate. We loved passionately and fought passionately. We were still getting used to living together, and it turns out we didn’t know each other as well as we thought we did! Some of the things that attracted me to Trey in the first place—his spontaneity, his easy-going view on life, his sense of humor—were the very things that could also irritate me when I interpreted those things as him being directionless, unmotivated, and sarcastic. And I know I had some surprises for him too—I was demanding, selfish, and sometimes took things too seriously. We both had some growing pains to get through in those early years. But we also had a lot of fun enjoying a relatively free lifestyle to do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. That is, until…

Baby #1. My pregnancy with Perrin was definitely a high point in our marriage. We’d been married nearly four years by then, and we had managed to work out quite a few of the kinks. We were so excited to be having a baby together (once I got over the initial shock that it had only taken two weeks of “not really trying, but not preventing” to get pregnant.) We were so in love and ready for our future. I could be wrong, but I don’t think we fought or argued at all throughout my pregnancy. We were just so happy. Maybe it was a gift from God because that high point had to sustain us through what came next—probably the most difficult season of our marriage thus far.

After Perrin was born, I quit working full-time to be home with him (in spite of the fact that I was actually making more money than Trey was at that point.) I was so thankful to be a mom to the best baby boy in the whole world, and even more grateful that I was able to stay home with him. But my life had changed drastically—I had gone from being at a job I enjoyed all day to being home all day. I was lonely, often bored, and surviving on very little sleep. I felt like Trey didn’t understand and didn’t try to understand how hard it was for me. We were also struggling to adjust to living on half of the income we had gotten used to. We were barely paying all our bills, and any “fun money” was completely out of the question. My postpartum healing took a long time, too, which meant physical intimacy was painful for a long time. We basically didn’t have sex at all for about six months following Perrin’s birth, which left Trey feeling unloved and unwanted. The stress of all those things combined left us both very short-tempered with each other. I wondered if our marriage would ever get back to where it was before. I knew we wouldn’t get a divorce no matter what, but I couldn’t imagine suffering like this through life together year after year.

But things did get better. We adjusted to parenthood, we got more sleep, we both prayed about our issues and found a new normal that included a spunky little boy. I joined a weekly Bible study that allowed me to find friendship and fellowship with other young moms. I started going in for office meetings more often so I would feel a part of my team (I was and am still working part-time). And Trey got a new job with a pay raise so that finances weren’t such a burden. Our marriage was back on track. Then along came…

Baby #2. I couldn’t believe how lucky we were when I found out we were having a little girl. I was super excited imagining our family of four. At the same time, I remembered how hard things were on our marriage after we had Perrin. I didn’t want to go through that low point again. Fortunately, our marriage was stronger this time around, and to some degree we had learned from our mistakes the first time. But I was not at all prepared for the challenges of dealing with a hard-headed two-year-old and a newborn who WOULD NOT SLEEP. Most nights, I was up with Brielle until about 2 or 3 in the morning. Then Perrin would wake up around 5:30 or 6 at the latest. I tried everything to get these kids on a more normal sleep schedule, but they were both ridiculously stubborn when it came to sleep. As the weeks went by, I felt angry and depressed. I wondered if I was having a spiritual crisis. Turns out, I just needed sleep. Trey was more understanding this time around, and he did what he could. I started going to bed at about 7 or 8 each night while Trey sat up rocking Brielle and watching Star Wars until about midnight. Then I’d take the next shift with her and feed her and stay awake with her until she FINALLY (glory hallelujah) conked out in the wee hours of the morning. We made it work, although we weren’t spending much time together during that season.

I knew I wanted to do something different to protect our marriage now that we had two kids and very little time or energy to spend on each other. So it was right around that time, when Brielle was still tiny, that I introduced the idea of Friday night date nights at home. We decided every Friday night, we would put the kids to bed early and take turns planning something fun to do together. We really missed our early years of weekend getaways and dinners out, so this was our way of recreating some of that romance and fun. It was one of the best things we’ve ever done for our marriage! We still have Friday night date nights, and I can’t even list all the incredible memories we have now because of them. We’ve had to get really creative to keep coming up with new ideas. I could probably write an entire book about our date nights. And thankfully, it worked. Although I was a sleep-deprived zombie after Brielle was born, we didn’t go through nearly the same level of marital struggle that we did after Perrin.

Now here we are, ten years down the road. We’ve gone through job loss, car accidents, funerals, arguments, miscarriage, financial struggles, misunderstandings, sleep deprivation, disappointments, health issues, and more. But we’ve also built special memories, found forgiveness, experienced patience and grace from both sides, produced two amazing children, and built confidence and security that we’re in this together, no matter what. Marriage is really a beautiful thing. And it’s these struggles and triumphs that make it beautiful. That bride on the beach ten years ago thought marriage would be beautiful because of the love and romance and fun it would bring. Those things are beautiful too, but it’s an untested beauty. We’ve endured scars to our hearts that have made our love grow back tougher, more resilient, and more prepared for whatever the next ten years bring us.

I have no delusions that the next ten years will be a walk in the park. We’re still figuring things out as we go along, and there are always new lessons to learn and new depths of intimacy to gain. Ten years of marriage has not made us experts. But we are both better people today because we fell in love and made a lifetime commitment to one another, and the years ahead will continue to scrape away our rough edges and make something more beautiful than my 21-year-old self could have ever imagined. 

 

 

QR codes, Olympics, and gassy cows

We're about three weeks into homeschooling, and so far so good! We picked a curriculum that involves lots of sitting together and reading, which seems to be the perfect fit for our family. One of Perrin's favorite books is our children's encyclopedia, which we've been using lately to discuss ancient cultures. The coolest thing is that each page has a QR code I can scan on my phone, and it'll take us to a neat website with extra pictures or videos. We've looked at pictures of cave paintings, watched a video on how a mummy is made, and browsed artists' depictions of the early Olympic games (which I scrolled through quickly once I realized they were historically accurate--meaning sans clothing.)

Now the kids think every QR code they come across is going to reveal something fascinating. Perrin brought me a water bottle the other day and tried to get me to scan it. I tried to explain to him that I didn't particularly want to visit the Aquafina website, but he was pretty convinced I was holding out on him. Even Brielle has gotten into the spirit. We got some funny looks from an older woman at the grocery store when Bri exclaimed, "Look, a QR code!" in her squeaky two-year-old voice. (I can hear the silent judgment: "When MY kids were little, they played with dirt and sticks, not these new-fangled QR codes!" To which I would reply, "Good job keeping your kids away from technology that didn't exist yet.") 

Some days are better than others. Today we were reading through a book about weather. One page near the end talked briefly about the things that may contribute to warming the atmosphere--namely the burning of fossil fuels and animals passing gas. The book so kindly included a picture of a cow farting. Perrin laughed for about 20 minutes, and I gave up on quizzing him on how hail is formed. I had completely lost him. We transitioned to math next, where he was supposed to be practicing writing the numbers 1-6. His sixes all had little gas clouds coming out behind them. He thought it was hilarious.  

Tomorrow we're making a weather vane and graphing answers to a poll Perrin helped me conduct on Facebook. I think I might also look up some youtube clips on amazing Olympic moments. Honestly, I'm having a blast learning alongside him (farting cows aside).