Thursday, December 26, 2019

Christmas in Pictures


The tree on Christmas Eve


The stockings and other gifts.


Naomi and Daniel

Sarah loves her new blanket.



Lydia with 2 male cats who grudgingly shared her lap for the sheer joy of being with her.  The weather has been absurdly warm -- it hit 60 yesterday!


I bought these 3 little turtles for Kevin, and they joined the big turtle we already had.


Kids opening presents.


More kids.


More kids



Naomi gave Isaac an awesome shirt which reads, "I'm a Gamer, Like My Father Before Me".  Star Wars reference. She also got me an awesome Star Wars shirt but I don't have a picture. Yet.


I am now the proud owner of a Yoda and a Baby Yoda!

Monday, December 16, 2019

Life



I'm rather snooty where Star Wars is concerned. I love the Original Trilogy. I thought the Prequel Trilogy was Ok though I despised Jar Jar Binks.  Oh my, terrible.

I loathe the current trilogy, whose final film is coming out in four days.  I'm Ok with people liking the Force Awakens and the Last Jedi. I just don't.

Anyway, Disney is producing a show called the Mandalorian and Kevin and I are thoroughly enjoying it.  This is a surprise since Disney is responsible for the horror that is the Last Jedi.  (I wasn't thrilled with The Force Awakens but it was Ok.  The Last Jedi?  Yuck.  Urgh. Ack.  Hack.)

The Mandalorian is well done and interesting but the really important person is not the Mandalorian himself, but The Child, also known as the thoroughly adorable Baby Yoda!

Not really Baby Yoda.  It is a child from Yoda's species.  It is so cute.  Oh my.

The pic above is a little Baby Yoda plushie made by, you guessed it, Lydia. That girl has serious skills.



Lydia also does a good job making sugar cookies.


It snowed.  Now it is snowing again. Maybe we'll get some ice tonight as well.  Yeah, the weather is dicey.  Good night to stay home.


Don't even ask me why this girl is wearing sunglasses at the breakfast table.


She's not really asleep. She's pretending to sleep.  Because what kind of self respecting 5 year old sleeps during the day??


This picture represents a triumph.  Sarah and Daniel are good readers but they just want to read Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes and Smurf books.  Oh, they like PJ Masks books as well.  However, I wanted them to read something different.  So I returned most of the comic books and got a whole bunch of factoid books.  For a few days, they held firm but today both Daniel and Sarah are eagerly reading the books and reading them out loud to me.  

I'm tuning them out right now so that I can type and make sense at the same time.

I am glad they are reading something different.




Saturday, December 7, 2019

More Ranting about Vaccines

Ok, today I'm going to tackle the other side, the pro-vaccine people.

I read that the World Health Organization reported that 140,000 people died of measles in 2018.

And I thought, wow.  Just, wow.  That is an incredible number of people!  Obviously measles is a really dangerous disease!

I dug in a bit.  So that was totally and completely an estimate, based on some kind of models.  Not actually reported measles deaths.

There have been measles deaths.  The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is in the midst of a horrifying epidemic and over 5000 people have died of measles, most of them children under age 5.

So measles IS deadly, especially to children, no doubt especially especially to children in countries without an adequate medical infrastructure plus poor water supplies plus malnutrition...

I believe vaccination is a great thing, I do. I really do. Polio mostly wiped out here in the United States, and these widespread outbreaks are only happening where vaccination rates are low. 

However.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is, I believe, very much at fault publishing figures based on an 'estimate' from some 'model'.  It makes anti-vaccine people nervous, and I don't blame them.  Just stick to the facts, gentlemen and ladies.  Count up what you really know, the reported deaths in each country, and add them together.  That number will be enough to worry a lot of people authentically.

The DRC outbreak which has killed 5000 is the biggest outbreak in the world this year. So how do they come up with numbers of deaths over 100,000 for 2017 and 2018 and no doubt they will come up with  huge numbers in 2019?

Based on a MODEL?

I understand they are trying to scare people into vaccinating but they shouldn't.  I hate dishonest reporting in pursuit of some desired event, which in this case is vaccination.  There is a good argument for vaccination in at least poorer countries based on what has happened in the DRC.

Be honest, dudes. 

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

Livin' The Dream (Literally)

I had a dream two nights ago.  I was in graduate school, again, working on my 2nd Ph.D.  (Why?  Just WHY???)

A few of my fellow graduate students told me that a horrible oral exam was coming up in a couple of days and suddenly I had just had enough. I told them I was done, that I already had a Ph.D., this was stupid, and I didn't want to jump through the hoops of academia again.

I went home to Kevin (we were living somewhere else, no idea where) and told him that I just wanted to stay home with our children, though I wouldn't mind working a couple of afternoons in a lab at the school, but I didn't want to be in graduate school anymore.

I woke up and realized that I was living my dream.  I do have one Ph.D., I'm done with school forever, I work a couple of afternoons a week at a lab at the Air Force Base, and I get to spend lots of time with my children.

I adore my kids but life at home isn't necessarily easy.  I always have a to do list, I always have ungraded papers, and there is always cleaning to be done that isn't getting done.  I am on Lexapro for anxiety and that does help a lot, but I occasionally get overwhelmed now.  When we had a bunch of little kids, I got overwhelmed often.

But.

I have three friends who are widows, all of whom are younger than me, all with children.  Two of the ladies are working quite a bit to support their children and the third one may work as well -- I am not in contact with her as much.

I. Am. So. Blessed. 

Kevin makes good money, neither of us are enthusiastic spenders, and we are well able to afford for me to stay home.  I am so very thankful for that.

I'm truly living the dream.


Saturday, November 30, 2019

Week of Thanksgiving

I don't have pictures of the clan on Thanksgiving. Kevin has his own stellar camera and he took the pictures, but they haven't been downloaded onto the computer. And frankly, I don't want to touch his fancy camera!

Here is a picture, though.


First Daniel cut her hair, mostly the bangs.   I worked on it a little and tidied it up. Then, like a fool, I bought some sticky putty for the three little ones and the pink putty ended up in Rose's hair. So I cut off more.  Now she has a very cute, short pixie cut.

She's always adorable, whether her hair is long or short.

Isaac and Lydia are finishing their college classes this upcoming week.  I have to arrange for, or take, Isaac to class so that will be nice. Next semester he has 2 classes but they are scheduled back to back so it will work out well.

One of these years, he will learn how to drive. We haven't even started teaching him yet and it is rather an arduous process.  Besides the actual "teaching him to drive" part, we have to do 40 hours of driving WITH him, plus we will have to pay for an expensive 8 hour driving course.  If we wait until he is 18, he won't have to do all that.  We can just teach him to drive, he'll take the test, and pass (we hope) and he'll be done.

But with more college classes next fall, it would be good if he could drive.

We'll figure it out.

Tomorrow is a big day as our 4 oldest kids are getting baptized at church!

It is kind of strange that they haven't been baptized before this as all four have been saved by Jesus for many years, but we just never had quite the right time for it. So tomorrow is the big day.  We're excited for them.  Baptism doesn't save a person, but it is an important step and it is a Biblical directive for a true Christian so yes, we're happy.

We took off school this week (except for Isaac and Lydia, who kept toiling away with college classes).  I got quite a bit done in terms of cleaning and tidying room, washing floors, etc.

This morning, I was working on school prep for the upcoming week and Rose played happily on the floor by herself with Duplos for like an hour. It was incredible. It was very nice.





Thursday, November 21, 2019

This Week...

So other than the birthday this week, which was significant, this week was also notable in that we had lots of socialization!

We had neighbor kids over today for video game time, and right now our neighbor (bless her heart) is hosting a movie night for 6 of our children.  And 6 of hers.  It is so delightfully quiet in the house right now.  It is no doubt a madhouse next door.

We also had a dear friend's youngest son visiting for parts of 2 days this week. He is close to Sarah and Daniel's ages and they adored having him over!

Thanksgiving is next week and then comes the slow, inexorable march towards Christmas.  It always feels like a super busy time of year in spite of the fact that we really do NOT do a lot for Christmas compared to many families. But we do have those 3 birthdays at the end of the year. And Christmas :-).


I love Trader Joe's soy creamer and it has been out of stock for several weeks. This week I called and yes, they had it and yes I got (wait for it!) 19 containers.

19.

Saturday I am taking Isaac to an intro to engineering thing at local Wright State University.  I hope it'll be valuable and interesting.  WSU is a curious case; in some ways, it is not a great university for engineering because their lab facilities are not top notch.

But.

They are so close to the base that many faculty work with engineers on base, and many students have opportunities to intern at the base. So in that way, it is awesome.

Plus WSU is a relatively inexpensive state school which makes us happy.  So we'll see.  Isaac may end up there.

Mostly it has been a busy and good week but I admit right now, I am incredibly thankful that most of the kids are next door because I'm a little peopled out.  Those people are my people and I adore them to the moon and back, but sometimes they are noisy :-).

But I love them. A lot.

Birthday Girl

Sarah turned 9 this week!

So now we have 19, 18, 16, 15, 13, 12, 9, 7, and 5!




My parents bought her a rock kit. She is digging out rocks from, probably, plaster. She loves it!

Happy birthday, darling Sarah!

Monday, November 11, 2019

Dodgy Math about Vaccines

Ok, I might tread on some toes here but it is my blog :-).

So one of the things that many large, homeschooling families are "known for" is being anti-vaccination.  I think that isn't too surprising. We're already a group that is swimming against the tide of public normalcy. We're having way more than the usual 2.1 kids (or whatever it is -- birth rates keep falling.)

We've opted out of the public school system, which is a bizarre and weird decision.  I grew up mostly attending public schools and even though I was miserable off and on through many of my ps years, it was normal.  It wasn't until Kevin and I were married that I thought seriously about homeschooling and by the time Naomi was growing in my womb, we were set on this oddball academic path in life.  (I have never regretted it.)

Many of my homeschooling friends home birth, also weird.  Homeschoolers are often considered "crunchy" -- more into essential oils and great eating than pharmaceuticals.

Some of the vaccines were originally developed using aborted fetal cells.  That one is pretty rough for me as I am ardently pro life.  (If anyone cares, I can provide my reasoning for why we still vaccinate in spite of this issue.)

I respect my Christians brothers and sisters who are opposed to vaccination.  We are not. Our kids are fully vaxed except for  Gardisil, which is for the sexually transmitted disease HPV.

I am in agreement that vaccinations should not be forced by the government.  It's a tricky issue because I believe vaccination does save lives, BUT once the government forces its citizens to have things injected into them, it can keep doing things "for the greater good" which cross the line of personal freedom.

Ok, this is what I want to talk about today. As I said, I respect my friends who have chosen not to vaccinate.  The medical establishment has been and is wrong about some things.  I think diabetes is treated very poorly, and many meds are pushed on people when perhaps some other lifestyle change would be more efficacious.

Vaccination has been remarkably successful based on my reading and understanding. Smallpox eradicated, polio nearly so, same for measles and mumps and rubella when vaccination rates are high in a population.

The thing is, the anti-vax crowd sometimes does the most horrific things with data and that is what I want to talk about today.

I got something nutty in my FB feed yesterday.  It said:

/////////////////////////////

You Are 4.7 times More Likely to Get Whooping Cough If You are Vaccinated

CDC Statistics for Whooping Cough
2013-2018

Vaccinated - 12,772
Unvaccinated - 2717

/////////////////////////////

I would like to say this is a joke but it is not. The woman who posted it clearly believed that this data proves that getting the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccination increased your risk of getting pertussis by 4.7 times.

Ok, I think, I hope, it is obvious that this is GARBAGE but I am going to spell it out.

You cannot, cannot, cannot directly compare the number of whooping cough cases.  You must account for the populations of each group!!!!!!!

Here is an alternate example to prove my point.

Suppose that 10 people are not vaccinated for measles and 5 people get measles.

Suppose that 10,000 people ARE vaccinated for measles and 50 people get measles.

According to the dodgy, absurd, ridiculous math shown above, getting the vaccination increases your risk of getting measles by a factor of 10.

Because vaxed group: 50 cases.
Unvaxed group: 5 cases.

BUT BUT BUT there were a very small number who were not vaxed.  In my (made up) example, a full 50% of the unvaxed people got measles when only 0.5% of the vaxed people got measles.  The data supports the measles vaccine helping people not get measles.

You MUST know how many people are in each population to determine whether a vaccination is helpful!

I wish this was a singular example but it is not. I've done research on anti vax sites and this kind of math absurdity is incredibly common.  Frankly, they are either being openly deceptive (which I think is more likely to prove their own point) or they are terrible at math.  And if the latter, they have no business messing with numbers to throw at an unsuspecting public.

I am not artistic at all so I have no beef with those who struggle with numbers. We all have our strengths and weaknesses.  But don't, please don't, publish horrible data like this to prove your point. If vaccination is truly bad, the data ought to be out there in some reasonable form.

I've seen horrible graphs messing with x and y axes, I've seen other stuff that makes me foam at the mouth.  Let's be honest about the data, please!  Don't try to trick people into believing your anti-vax stance by dividing random numbers by random numbers and claiming absurdities by what is shown above.

Please.

Ok, rant over.



Saturday, November 2, 2019

Diabetes

I am a  Type 2 diabetic.  I was diagnosed 15+ years ago during Joseph's pregnancy and I never got normal afterwards, so yes, I've been diabetic for a long time.  It's a pain.

But.

But...

I have thought many times that Joseph's pregnancy may have saved my life and/or limbs and/or kidneys and/or sight.

He is our 4th child.  Kids #1 and #2 were girls.  Isaac, Kid #3, obviously a boy.  At least one person said to us after he was born, "Well, you have your boy."

And Kevin's response to that was, "Well, we have A boy."

We weren't done.  (Obviously.)

So yes, at age 34 I was pregnant with another little guy and they did that glucose tolerance test and I failed and I was diabetic.

I have always been tall and thin. Yes, I have a fierce genetic predisposition for diabetes (lots of people in my maternal line) but the fact that I didn't LOOK diabetic and I was still in my 30's means that I doubt anyone would have checked me for a problem in a very long time.

Diabetes is a progressive disease.  It can take many years, even decades, for the damage of consistent high blood sugar to mess up eyes and limbs and kidneys.

If I was now 50 and had had uncontrolled blood sugars for 15 years, only to find out NOW that I am diabetic, I could be quite the mess.

Of course, maybe it would have been discovered some other way. But then again, maybe not.  I'm reading a great book called Blood Sugar 101, and the author claims that fasting blood sugar is often the last one to get bad. So even if I had been checked for fasting bg, the medical establishment might not have caught it.

So I am thankful for Kid #4, Boy #2!

Of course.

I'm thankful for all of them. They are all gifts from Heaven.

Regarding diabetes, I will freely admit I've gotten a bit lazy in the last year.  I'm working on being more careful about what I eat.  I'm working on exercising more.  My last A1c was 6.1 and I really would like to see it in the high 5's.  Most docs are perfectly happy with 6.1.  My doc is.  But I know from my reading that even that is high enough to potentially cause damage and I was SO young when I was diagnosed.  I have a lot more living, I hope.

I've been exceptionally busy with sick kids (they are mostly better now, and we've beaten back pink eye) and yesterday I ate a bunch of really bad stuff because I was hungry and there were left over white potatoes.

You might not think white potatoes would be bad but yeah, they are.  Like little carbohydrate bombs.

2+ hours after eating them, my blood sugar was 192. Ouch.  Usually I'm below 120 by that point and I haven't been that high in a year or so.

At least.

No more glumps of white potato, Laraba!

In the midst of annoyance with this long term disease, I am so thankful for blood sugar meters and metformin and enough money to buy what I need so I can eat low carb.

So yes, in many ways, I feel gratitude.  I can manage my diabetes because I know about my diabetes.  Praise God for that.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Pink Eye and Plushies

Sarah got pink eye and then it showed up in 7 more people. Yes, 8 Kendigs have pink eye.  My days are filled with eye drops in infected eyes.

Thankful for meds!

Yesterday I decided to do a massive cleaning bedding just in case pink eye germs were lurking.  I'm thankful for a big washing machine and dryer!


This was the laundry pile in our laundry room.  The pic doesn't do it justice. There were truly a LOT of blankets and sheets.

Then I decided that I should run all the plushies and stuffed animals through the dryer to kill any germs.


We have enough plush toys to fill a small country. Wow.

I mean, it is CRAZY.

So after tons of drying, I took all the plush toys downstairs and told the kids they could "only" have 10 plushies in their rooms. Each.

So Lydia, Miriam, and Angela have 30 plush toys which is way down from what they had before.  It is crazy.

The older boys are not plushie addicts, though Daniel is.

I'm still in awe at how many plushies were stuck behind beds and under beds and in beds and mixed in blankets. Wow.

In addition to pink eye, we've had a continuing irritating cold with rasping, icky coughs for Sarah and Daniel. I took Sarah in last week (when we identified pink eye) and her lungs are clear, it is just throat irritation.

A few minutes ago, Daniel drove his pedal car to the end of the driveway with me to fetch the mail. By the time we were back at the house, he was hacking away uncontrollably.  So they still can't be active because it sparks a bad coughing fit.

The little ones are SO impressed with my insistence that they avoid running around!

Oh well, this too shall pass.

We have too many plushies.

Friday, October 18, 2019

Colder weather, cleaning, decluttering, and life


The kids really enjoy playing with magnets!


Lydia made this costume. She is a remarkable seamstress.  She did NOT get that from me.


Butterfly on Kevin's finger


It got cold enough to legitimately close the pool. Kevin gathered the troops and got to work. It is closed now for the season. We had such a great year of swimming but I am thankful to have a break from working on it.  It takes many chemicals and a fair amount of tender, loving care to keep it pristine. Or even close to pristine.




Our sun room often degenerates into a total disaster.  The kids do art in there and often leave it super messy. I cleaned it this week. It still looks pretty good, 3 days later.

I'm also in the midst of a moderately subdued decluttering frenzy.  I've been going through clothing and working on getting rid of stuff we don't need.  It is always exhausting work and I'm not someone who gets attached to things very easily.   And of course some people in this family are mightily attached to some things.  Not that that is bad -- everyone is different.  There is a place of balance where we enjoy what we have but we don't cling to everything.

I felt peaceful at the cabin last week when we just had a couple of small suitcases.  It was simple not having piles of stuff. So part of me wants to throw away half our belongings but hello, I'm only 1 of 11 people so I can't just toss things wholesale :-).

But I can comb through clothes that Daniel and Rose have outgrown, and give them away. I can go through the pantry and organize it so that we know what we have and don't buy more of what we don't need.  I can look at my books and get rid of some of them.

Really, I do get rid of books sometimes :-).

Saturday, October 12, 2019

Brief Getaway

Kevin and I snuck away for a short trip earlier this week. We left Sunday, October 6th and got back the 8th.

We drove all of an hour away to a nearby Ohio State Park, where we rented a cabin for 2 nights.  It was a simple cabin but very comfy.  It had a kitchen, including a coffee maker that only sort of worked.  We spent 20 minutes the second day struggling and finally succeeding in making coffee with it, though we had to boil the water on the stove and pour it into the makeshift filter.

We were really roughing it.




We didn't do anything particular during these 2 days. We went for walks. We slept a lot. We played with the VR headset. Kevin cooked.  I washed dishes by hand.

It was really good for us to get away.  My brain was so relaxed in an environment where there was little I had to do. At home, there are always 50 things I COULD be doing.  Ok, maybe that is an exaggeration. But then again, maybe it isn't.

The rest of the week was insanely busy.  I was running kids to and from orthodontist and eye doctor appointments and various things of that ilk.  Oh, I got my new compliant driver's license. That was a major accomplishment.

Next week life is settling back into more normalcy.  I hope.

Monday, September 30, 2019

Oculus Quest

The Oculus Quest is a virtual reality headset.

Kevin bought one a few days ago.  Now I was totally cool with that.  It is expensive but well within our financial reach.  Kevin and the kids love games.  I was like, that's fine.

The big surprise is how much I LOVE IT!!  Wow, the Quest is amazing!  Unlike previous versions of Oculus headsets, the Quest doesn't have any wires to it.  So Kevin has set up "safe spaces" in a few rooms (obviously after cleaning up the room so there is nothing  to trip over) and we can play ping pong and boxing (which I didn't like -- I don't like some mean tough guy punching me in the face even if he actually doesn't touch me.)

Here's my favorite thing so far though -- roller coasters.  It is like being on a real roller coaster in many ways.  It feels like it, but without the jolts and bumps that can hurt my aged back.

So yes, so much fun.

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

Confessions of a (Reforming) Workaholic

Unless one is a genius, one does not get a Ph.D. in engineering without working really hard.

I am not a genius, so yes, I worked hard.  In graduate school.  In undergraduate.  In high school.  In our home, having multiple children.

Working hard and getting stuff done makes me feel accomplished and worthwhile. I have spent years and years working on realizing that my value is based on WHO I AM, not WHAT I DO.

I've had seasons where I was laid up.  The last was a year ago post emergency hysterectomy.  I sat around for weeks recovering from major surgery. I really didn't struggle too much with self image at that point because yes, I had been cut open and an organ removed and there were minor complications so it made sense I would be weak and unable to do much.

Well, I'm sick with this stupid little illness, and last night I had dream after dream after dream of trying to get my kids to the airport for a nebulous flight whose departure time I did not know.  In the dream, things kept going wrong.  Alarm clocks didn't go off, I couldn't find shoes, I had one kid run away from me and get on a random bus.

There is a correlation. When I feel frustrated because of sickness, I feel out of control.  When I feel out of control, I have dreams like this one.

So, deep breaths, deep breaths.

I have minor asthma which flares ONLY during illnesses.  My minor asthma has flared up the last few days. I know that trying to power through asthma just makes it worse.  (I have very unpleasant memories of the Kendig swine flu epidemic of 2009, when asthma kept me confined to bed for almost 3 full weeks.)

So I need to rest.  But is super frustrating because I've got stuff to do.  But if I push too hard, I will not recover as well and might indeed get worse.

So yeah.

Working hard is a good thing.  Being chronically lazy is not healthy. BUT being a workaholic isn't good either.

Psalm 127:1-2

1Unless the Lord builds the house,
the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the guards stand watch in vain.
2In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to a those he loves.

If my kids were going to starve or suffer from me resting, I would have to push through. But reality is that they are just watching more screens while I recover. And that is Ok. That is better than Ok.  That is good, for me to rest when I need to.

Sunday, September 22, 2019

Still Hot, Still (Kind of) Hard

The illness keeps making its slow way through the family.  I have said it so many times -- if we'd all get sick at once it would be a nightmare, but a short nightmare!  It says something about our immune systems that people get these sicknesses slowly, over the course of a few weeks.

Something good, maybe?

Joseph had it this week and was sick ONE day, which is great.  I have it now.  I've been pushing through it for a few days, getting a bit more rest when I can but also extra busy because I'm helping little sickies.

Three youngest kiddos got it at the end of the week. Sarah lost her voice for a couple of days.  Rose has coughed a lot, and last night threw up copiously in her bed from coughing, poor sweet. (And poor me -- I cleaned it up!)

But I keep trying to have a good attitude about it.  It isn't anything really, really, really serious.  It isn't polio, or smallpox, or even the flu. It isn't strep throat (we checked for that.)  It is just a stupid virus.

This is a totally little thing, but I was wanting to watch some college football and we don't have ESPN and I had the vague idea that most games were on ESPN.  Nope, lots are on regular TV and we can record them. So that's fun. I don't even understand football all that well (not the subtleties) but I do enjoy watching football on TV.  It's so mellow watching big men crash into each other.

I will never encourage any of my children to play football.  Micro concussions.

So that's it. Sickness.  Couching.  Fatigue.  But we're fine.

Oh, it is still very hot for September and we have been able to swim in 82 degree water, which is awesome.

God is good all the time.

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Hot September, Hard Week

First, some pics


Kevin changed the oil in one of the cars with Daniel's enthusiastic assistance.


I bought slime. The kids love slime.


I bought generic Wiki Sticks. The kids love Wiki Sticks




Blue eyed girl


Naomi in her work shirt.

After a cool couple of weeks it got hot hot hot!  Like mid 80's to low 90's this week!  We spent a lot of time in the pool, which was delightful.

So it was a hard week.  I don't even really know why except that I'm just tired mentally and somewhat physically.  We have an illness going around, and that was part of it. Poor Angela lost her voice for 2 and a half days!  Like it was gone. She also had a horrible sore throat.  Several other kids also had bad throats, though not AS bad. I took Angela to the doctor and it wasn't strep throat so that is good.

So yeah, I'm just tired.  The last few days I gave myself time to write several chapters of a Star Wars fanfiction that leaped into my mind.  I really enjoy writing.  It's soothing and fun.  Sometimes I feel guilty about taking the time but I think the mental health aspect is important.

And...people are yelling.  Bye!

Monday, September 2, 2019

Raising Children is Hard Work

I was right, last week was tough.  Several medical appointments and lots of running around, which meant that when I was home I was trying to catch up with housework and school and all that jazz.

My thyroid ultrasound was encouraging. I do have a couple of nodules but apparently they aren't big enough to worry about.

I took Joseph in for his well teen appointment on Tuesday morning. The doctor hemmed and hawed over his spine and finally said he thought an x-ray was in order. The result is that he has mild scoliosis, a 13 degree curve.  They don't do anything, apparently, before 15 degrees.  If Joseph is nearly done growing probably he is Ok.  Is he?  We don't know. He is 5 ft. 10 inches and has leaped 3 or 4 inches in height in the last year, so maybe?  He will be retested in 6 months but if he grows like crazy in the next few months I will ask them to check him in 3 months or so.

Naomi has been working for 3 or 4 weeks at the local Goodwill.  It is a new store with insufficient employees so she has been working a lot of hours.

Lydia started her second year of community college.  So far it has been fairly mellow but it is merely the calm before the storm. She has a practicum where she works at a child care center but the powers that be are still getting it organized. Once that starts, she'll be gone a lot from home.

The younger kids are doing homeschooling as well.

This week I felt exhausted mentally.  It is really not easy for me to parent 9 kids easily.  Truly, parenting is challenging.  For some it is easier than others.  I know I'm an intellectual and tend toward anxiety (though Lexapro helps) and while I'm a good mom, I'm not sure it comes naturally.  I THINK a lot.

Of course, 9 children constitutes a large family. But I don't care if someone has one child or 3 or 9 or 15.  Children are hard work. 

I think there is a cultural expectation that adults should be able to parent well AND...

And have a high powered successful job.

And serve the church.

And serve the disadvantaged.

And enjoy many hobbies.

And write the next great novel.

And so on. 

I'm sure some people can do all these things. But some people, like me, need most of their energy and time to be a good spouse and parent.  I truly don't have much left at the end of the day.

Our kids will grow older and they will spread their wings and fly and there will be a less vigorous season in our future.

But right now, raising children is hard work.

(I should add, glorious, wonderful, God given work. I love it.  I just refuse to be ashamed that it takes most of me to do it well.)




Random Pictures of our family (and a small cow)


Cute Daniel


Mama Shark, doo doo doo do do do doo


Nice box with an Angela


Nice flowers with a Rose


Young's Dairy 


Small cow at Young's Dairy


Rose is cute.  I love her.