our kids want our constant attention. and what young child doesn't? but how much more so kids coming from their kind of situation. sometimes they are literally clambering on top of one another to get our attention. being that i am just one person and they all want so much (not to mention what they actually need) i have been forced to do a lot of things that i never thought i would as a mother.
for example, saying "because". our oldest little man is in the question stage. example:
"what is this?"
"its a shovel."
"why?"
or
"what are you going?"
"do you mean where am i going?"
"where are you going?"
"to the store"
"why?"
"to get food for your dinner"
"why?"
"because otherwise you wont have something to eat"
"why?"
how do you answer that?? it doesn't even make sense. to top it off, i hear every question in double, because second oldest little man copies everything the oldest says... most of the time its kind of funny, and i enjoy teaching them about the world. but it can be very mentally draining and especially hard if i am trying to get something done. so i compromise and say a flat "because" hoping that the question period will end.
another compromise is in the area of nutrition. feeding my children high nutrition foods is a priority for me. the other morning i really needed some time off, so alex stayed with the kids. i gave him boxed cereal to feed them because i wasn't around to make anything better (i usually make smoothies, eggs or soaked oatmeal for breakfast). it killed me. but i needed some time off, so i had to. and then i did it again a few days later. it was a kick in the stomach to read this in a book this week:
"[breakfast cereals] are supposed to be healthy, aren't they? that is what numerous TV advertisements tell us. unfortunately the truth is just the opposite... being a source of processed carbohydrates, breakfast cereals feed abnormal bacteria and fungi in the gut, allowing them to produce a new portion of their toxins...but what about fibre? the manufacturers claim that with a bowl of their product you will get all the fibre you need. unfortunately it is the wrong kind of fibre, [it] is full of phytates- substances that bind essential minerals and take them out of the system. there has been an interesting experiment performed in one of the food laboratories. they analyzed the nutritional value of some brands of breakfast cereals and the paper boxes in which these cereals were packaged. the analysis showed that the box, made of wood pulp, had more useful nutrients in it than the cereal inside" [gut and psychology syndrome, p 85-87]things like this make me wish that i didn't do research into areas like this.
another compromise has been using disposable diapers. yuck! but we have no other option when sending them off to 6 hour unsupervised visits. if parents "accidentally" lost some of our cloth diapers, it could be $100 down the drain in no time. so we send them in sposies, and i feel like a bummer mother.
and i wont even mention that sometimes lovely girl sits in her pack and play and cries for 15+ minutes when the boys need my attention for other things... because the social workers would probably freak out if they read this.
anyways, i am not even sure what the point of this post is. maybe God is teaching me something through this, but i cant say what. maybe to give up control to him, even to do things that i feel are wrong? i don't know. but that is why i titled this post "some rambling thoughts". it is my ticket to feel free to ramble :)
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