Sunday, January 4, 2015

A Two Week Repose

Happy New Year to everyone!  May 2015 be a blessed and great year for all.
 
William and baby "K" playing.
I can honestly say for the first time in 11 months I feel rested.  I thought I was tired before we started back into foster care!  Every since the toddlers came and then baby "K", I have been running on E and often at borderline exhaustion.  Tim always asks me if I slept well and I don't even remember.  I am just "out" as soon as my head hits the pillow and then morning or a bottle feeding seems to come so quickly.
Antonio wanted me to take a picture of a new shirt he got.
Whenever I usually give the children a day off from home schooling, we do some sort of work that day.  Like raking leaves, stacking wood, cleaning in the barn or deep cleaning in the house.  There is always so much to do around here.  I rarely have ever just given them a day off to do as they wish, except for Sabbath each weekend. 
"B" improving his hand strength with the good old light bright.
We had a very hard respiratory virus go thru starting the beginning of December.  It lasted for a few weeks with each person and slowly went thru us all.  I was beat from not feeling well, trying to keep the house disinfected and the children were struggling to recover.  Also, my schedule cleared for the last two weeks of the month of December.  Ballet was closed.  For the first time ever, our therapy place closed for the holidays.  I had only three appointments in two weeks and two of those were for Antonio's therapeutic massage therapist, who comes to our home once a week.  So we called a... stay at home, watch movies, work as little as possible, vacation, recovery, get some rest, time.  Two weeks of... do what you want even if that meant sleep all day.  Which some of the children did snooze on the couch some. 
William and "T" taking an afternoon snooze.
I truly got some rest as well.  I still had to tend to the sick ones and the well ones.  I still had to do meals and keep the house running.  I still had to make sure the barn chores were done.  But I left the house to go to town very little and spent a good deal of time planted on the couch with small children either climbing all over me or nestled up beside me resting.

Don't think it was easy peazy though.  To keep it all real...Of course there is always Elizabeth...sadly she spent most of her two week rest and vacation doing school work, as it is the only punishment that means anything to her.   Zeke also spent one day of his two weeks doing school work as a punishment.
I always feel so badly for Elizabeth.  She always has to ruin a good time by her own bad behavior, mean spiritedness or tantrums.  She even lost the privileged of staying up and celebrating New Years Eve with the other children.  I often just give her grace and let her participate...and always give her a chance to earn things taken away back.  She absolutely refused this time.  :(   I keep praying one day she will mature enough to be able to control herself and do what is expected of her with out lashing out at others.  On the good side, God has been working on her every day and every year that passes she improves a small amount.  I believe with all my heart, some day she will be saved and have natural love and self control.  She can go long spells now behaving and then has a week or so of just regressing terribly.  The past  month was one of those times. 

I am so grateful these three get along so well together.  They are good friends.
I feel good.  I feel rested and am resolved to keep my schedule lighter in 2015 and try to keep life as simple as I can for a season.  God is so good.

Lamentations 3:22-23  It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.  They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.



Blessings,
susan

6 comments:

  1. Your kids look so beautiful and close to one another. Baby K looks like such a pretty baby! Everyone looks pretty happy except for maybe Elizabeth.... she reminds me of our Hannah from what you shared. Her little slouch in the chair in punishment doing school work even reminds me of Hannah. : )

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    1. Thank you. All of our children are very close. They all love each other and are each others best friends except for Elizabeth. She never and I mean never gets along with anyone for long. Bless her heart. All of the other children love her and understand she has RAD. But some days are very trying for them and they suffer at her hand both emotionally (she says the meanest things) and in having peace in our home. She is a work in progress by the hand of God and I know only God can temper her and help her have self control and a kind heart. She is making progress, it is just very very slow. I love her so much and just want salvation and a good happy life for her.

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  2. Oh, and I forgot to mention how I love the Light Brite. I was thinking of seeing if they still sell them in the store. I just loved that thing when I was a kid, though I never had one everyone else seemed to have one we could play with. : )

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    1. The older lite brights are the best. We accumulated tons of pegs over the years of me having children, so they can really make some spectacular pictures. It is very good for any of my children with low tone and weak hand strength. I loved playing with it when I was a child. We never had much money so we had the inserts that came with it. It was like color by number. R for a red peg and Y for a yellow. After we completed the picture we would save the papers and do them over and over again. Some times my mom would have a large piece of scrap paper for us to make our own picture with! It was great.

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  3. We caught our very severe respiratory infection on Christmas Eve!! It has been very hard on the kids, and I like you, have to keep things going even while sick! It just started letting up this weekend. Last Sunday the kids couldn't even sing at church!
    Elisabeth reminds me so much of my Faith. I too am in deeply in prayer for Faith. The time goes so fast. Faith will be 14 in 10 days. I don't want her flying out of the house on an angry impulse at 18.........sigh. Baby K is doing amazing things! Praise God!
    ((((HUGS)))) Here's hoping no more virus' like this until next year- if at all!

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    1. Bless your heart! If it was the same respiratory virus we had go thru, we all still have residual coughs from it and some of us started with it a month ago! I have had to do tons of breathing treatments on Antonio and get out inhalers for my ones with asthma. And it made everyone VERY tired for days. I really had to push myself to get the basics done every day. But we all feel well now, just coughing still. Faith 14! Wow! She is growing up...well all of our children are. Yes, I have many concerns for my Elizabeth. I love her so much and try to stack her life for her to have success in her behavior but she sabotages herself often. Then digs in and will refuse to try to earn things back. It sadly only makes things worse for her. I pray hard for her future and will add praying for Faith as well. I am so concerned about Elizabeth's adult life, if she can not learn to follow rules and obey now, how she will end up once out in the world? She would have to learn things the hard way and I don't want that for anyone. Much love and health to you all. Blessings!

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