mrsmartinsonsneighborhood: December 2015

Thursday, December 31, 2015

New Word for a New Year

Because I love words and gifts, I'm giving you a word-gift: mompromise.

I doubt I'm the first one to come up with this word, but let me describe the specific etymology of my particular usage.

The kids fight. All the time. I don't know what to do about it. I try to be the fair one and intervene but it's not like organized sports where I can assign one a penalty and set them back in motion. They fight over: who is touching whose toy; whose toy it is; who is touching whom in a way they don't like; who ate the last ____ ; who gets to hold the book during story time; who sits in the front on short trips... and I feel like the Grinch because to myself I'm thinking, "Oh the noise, noise, noise, NOISE!" They fight over who gets to pick what we watch on TV, and who gets to sing along. That's right; they fight over who gets to make the rules of the game, so often, the easiest thing for me to do is make a threat to end the game. I hate to do that, though, because I don't want them apart, I want them to get along.

That's why this morning as I was tidying up, and I heard two kids singing "No more spiders jumping on the bed," I was glad. They were both enjoying doing something together. They were also jumping on my bed, which is what put me in a mompromised position. Should I tell them to stop singing right now, get off my bed, because you two know better, etc., or... just let them get away with the lesser evil?

I chose the latter, because I've become so worn out from their constant friction with each other that some rule-bending was worth it to grease the wheels. Of course I didn't say this out loud. I just pretended to not notice they were breaking the rules, though inwardly, I felt torn.

So there you have it, the roots of the word "Mompromise," provenance: Martinson home. Short definition: Allowing kids to get away with almost anything as long as they aren't fighting with each other.

Will I pay heavily for this? Perhaps. Is this the parenting compromise leaving me the most guilt-prone? Not in the least.

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Brain reloading

Hello -

I've been very nervously not blogging for months. It was an issue of time and energy, but also, I think, of fear. I've been allowing myself to remain in bondage for months, I believe. On Sunday, our pastor focused his message on the three Wise Men, whose approach and departure were dictated by the malicious whim of Herod. When you're doing something God wants you to do, pastor was essentially saying, there are going to be Herods. Then, a missionary from our church talked about spiritual warfare he'd experienced on the field. Could simple things really be counted as spiritual warfare? my husband and I wondered.

We got together for a late Christmas get-together with my husband's brother's family, and I was recounting to a family member about all of the anxieties I'd had last semester. As the list began to get longer, she suggested that some of that might be the devil.

Boom! A blessed truth bomb. I've been thinking of it since. Yes, yes. How else to explain the sense of being captive to panic for several months? I'd wake up to an onslaught of must-do's for the morning, stress about getting organized, worry that my job wasn't secure, fear what was going on at school with either or both kids, fret that my students were not following through with what I'd asked them to do, and, well there were other things, but to top it all off there was the fear of what my kids' teachers were thinking of me.

Today, before I've stepped on one of those evil land-mines of "what-if," I've diffused it with a little truth-bomb of my own. In my mind, it sounds like, "No, I really don't have to worry about that." Quite powerful.

Anyway, I figure a revelation is a more interesting thing to share than a history of the past several months, but here are some highlights:

* we figured out that our son does not cope well with Adderol

* our daughter amazed us with her piano performance

* our daughter's teacher met to explain some behavioral concerns about her (and I'm mentally detonating those mines now)

* our son got hooked up with another support team, which I will explain later.

For Christmas, I got a new toy, and since it takes pictures, I think it's going to be easier to load pics to the blog, which will make everything more fun. I'll try for a selfie here.

Looks like it worked! Awesome.

Happy New Year if I forget - let's be free together.