The desire of my heart: Complete

It's one of those nights where I literally feel dragged to the computer by the tugging of my heart. It never fails. Right when I think I have nothing of substance to say, that God must be doing nothing important in my life and that I am wasting it away with decorating a room or a birthday or something frivolous, the Holy Spirit presses down on my heart and compels me to write. To show me that he is doing something. That he is authoring the story of my life, as I speak, as I write.


If you were to ask Ben and I when we were first married, "How many kids do you want?" we would have said, without hesitation, "at least four." That was what we believed and what was in our hearts, that God had called us, and many Christians, to have more children than the average American household. There are many beliefs we held about why this was true:  Children are a gift from God. It is an American myth that you have to be financially secure and in a position to provide everything for your children. Really spiritual Christians who have their priorities in order have more children.  Having lots of children is God's higher calling for one's life. So many people cannot have children at all, it's a travesty to not have as many as God can give you. And most glaring of all: Having a large family is the better, and more noble, route. Some of these beliefs are true. Many of them are not true. Others are sometimes true. Apart from them and, more importantly, we both felt that our heart's desire was to have a full household: The pitter patter of feet down the stairs on Christmas morning. The full breakfast table. The household commotion. The family youth group.

It's amazing how the desires of one's heart can change right under your nose. Recently I've had this itch to get rid of our baby stuff. Once Kimberly outgrows some baby gear item I have the impulse to give it or sell it. I first dismissed this as simply a product of my "less is more" mindset. But as I've mulled it over and talked with Ben, we started to realize that we are both experiencing a change of heart. A changing and a maturing of sorts, and it has been happening at the exact same time. Several months ago if one of us had asked the other if we thought we would have a third child, both of us would have said "Yes, but not anytime soon". However, recently we discovered that we both are sensing in our heart that our family is complete, and experiencing an inner peace that how things are now is how they are supposed to be. That this might be what God has for our family. Our family of four. That doesn't mean God won't change our hearts in the future, and certainly we are open to wherever he brings us, but as of now the deepest part of us is saying this is it. God has dealt bountifully with you.


It's only recently that I've come to believe this desire is from God. When I first began to suspect my heart was changing in this area my critical self drew a few initial conclusions: You feel this way because you are tired. You feel this way because you are selfish and you don't want to put in the hard work of having more kids. You feel this way because you are materialistic. Your priorities must be out of order. This is probably not what God would truly want from you. You are giving up because you've had some trials. You are taking the easy road. You are copping out.


The Enemy always wants to silence us with doubts and fears. He is ruthless and will stop at no means to facilitate our own self-destruction. But it is just that, self-destruction. We cannot self-destruct unless we allow ourselves to.  We hold the power. We hold the ground. We either belong to God or we don't. One thing that helped me move past these doubts was seeing how God was also pressing this on Ben's heart. When he has joined together a husband and wife their spirits are one. It was confirmation to discover that the desires of our hearts were both changing.


On my heart is that our family is complete. That he has gifted us with two wonderful girls and he desires us to invest deeply in them in ways we could not if we as parents were spread more thinly. I believe he wants to do some great things through Anna. She is a special child; she also has special needs that require more attention and energy. I believe if she is watered well she will blossom and bear incredible fruit, and that one of my greatest callings is to invest in her growth as much and as deeply as possible. Kimberly is so young still that I do not yet have a grasp on her, but I will with time. And perhaps at some point in the future, God will call us to new things in different seasons,  like foster parenting, something that's been on my heart a lot lately. I want to be on guard against holding our little family too tightly in my hands... not creating our own little world where our family is at the center. I want to expand and step outside of ourselves to bring in whoever God calls us to. It's too easy to miss these opportunities when you aren't actively expecting them or looking for them to come your way.


I still love large families. I still think God is honored by bringing children into this world in the face of adversity and scarcity. I still believe that he provides for all his children and rejoices over each one that enters this world, and I still think there are many ungodly reasons why couples choose to have few, no, or delayed children. But I no longer view smaller families as less of a calling. I no longer view being a mother of four as being more noble than a mother of two. I no longer put the large family on a pedestal. I have matured in my Christian walk enough to know that God deals with each person differently and only he can judge our decisions and the motivations of our heart.


The wonderful thing about God is that he does change the desires of our heart. We are always afraid that he will call us to something that we dread, something that makes our souls cringe. But the opposite is true; so much more often he molds our will and our hearts perfectly to yearn for the things he has for us in this life, if we allow him to. I am thankful that he has given us peace about where our family is right now. Sure, things could change in the future. They always can.

But for now, I'm not saving that baby gear.

Belated Birthday

We never had a birthday celebration for Anna this year. When she turned two, I thought that I wasn't into the whole birthday party thing. We had one for her first birthday, but the one-year is considered a milestone birthday. I didn't grow up having regular birthday parties. I'm not a particularly good hostess. Anna was also in this social phobia stage and Kimberly was a newborn. So it was a no-brainer. I didn't want to put the time or money into a party.

However, recently I started thinking that I did want to celebrate Anna's birthday. Maybe it would be a good opportunity to get my mind off some of the difficulties in our lives right now. The methodical, predictability of putting together crafts and making decorations could be a welcome distraction from the chaos I felt on a daily basis. And I could use some of those craft supplies I collected over the years that were gathering dust. Another draw was that it would be an opportunity to have a social gathering where every food was ANNA-FRIENDLY!! How awesome would that be! Imagine- not having to keep her from any foods present! I was convinced. We decided to throw a little get-together. We had a lot of good friends we wanted to celebrate with, but due to Anna's stage of life and our accommodations we decided to keep it small with friends who had kids Anna's age.

We spent very little money, used a ton of stuff we already had on hand, made almost everything else ourselves, and had a lot of fun!





We talked about the party for several days before and Anna was super excited.







I made these party hats and little treat bags with craft supplies. All they had at the grocery store were Dora and Elmo lol.

 

 

 

Bouncy cow gets a hat, and my homemade banner.

 

 

I wanted Anna-friendly food that was fairly easy and still appealing to the masses. Not an easy task. I succeeded for the most part, but I did end up making the potato salad with mayonnaise. I was too hesitant to go with a vegan mayonnaise and trying to create a ranch seasoning mix from scratch didn't seem like good idea. Everything else was allergy free, though.

The Menu:

• Grilled chicken with garlic-free barbeque sauce (only one brand I've ever found, sold only two months out of the year at Whole Foods which is not located in Augusta- sheesh!)
• Homemade milk and garlic-free guacamole and corn chips
• Green beans cooked in homemade garlic-free chicken stock
• Fruit salad
• Asian noodle salad
• Potato salad
• Milk-free dinner rolls
• Snacks for the kids: raisins, cheerios, and butter-free popcorn.

 

Dessert was Rice Krispy treats with milk-free margarine and milk-and-egg free cupcakes with milk-free icing!




Another homemade banner!




Backyard setup

I did this to my forehead thanks to our ridiculous low-hanging chandelier. Without having the table underneath it my clumsy self got knocked on the head.




Thankfully I came up with a last minute fix.



Kimberly got into the cow spirit.

Birthday girl.



My homemade cow cut-out

 

 

Sleepy girl.

Home makeover: Playroom

 

This is a bad picture but the wall color is actually a very light blue.

 

 

 

I took the closet doors off to create a reading nook and painted the inside a pale lilac.

Dress-up clothes



I covered these diapers boxes with wrapping paper.

 

 

 

Pass the Peanuts?

This week is Food Allergy Awareness Week!

In true awareness fashion, Anna was diagnosed with new allergies this week including tomato, onion, celery, green peas, cilantro, and coriander. Excuse me while I go stick my head in a bucket of water. That brings the list to 13.


Five "pieces of awareness" about food allergies:

-A recent study published in Pediatrics reported that over 30% of children with food allergies say they have been bullied about their allergies.  Previous studies have also found that having a food allergy puts a child at risk for bullying.

-Kids with food allergies have some of the highest anxiety rates compared to other disorders, including diabetes.

-Adults in children's lives often model exclusion and pressure children in ways they are unaware, because they do not fully understand the severity of many food allergies. Kids learn to refuse food or bring their own, but are often treated poorly because of it. Kids are put in a very difficult social position, particularly when the sharing of food is such a part of our culture.

-Children have died in schools because administrators did not take their allergy seriously, and were not willing to have emergency medication on hand at the proper times and follow the correct protocol.

-There are many people with minimal food allergies or 'intolerances' who are not aware of best practices for food allergy management, and their casual approach to the risks involved is seen as socially acceptable for food allergy management as a whole. Folks with severe food allergies who have to follow unusual precautions are viewed as being rude or distrustful.



The last year I have struggled so much with the allergies- not just the food but the social implications for me, as a parent, and for my child. I wondered why I always experienced so much resistance. Other people just didn't seem to understand and I felt this tension in the air when I had to explain about her allergies or politely decline food. Instead of listing a bunch more facts, I thought the best way to raise 'awareness' would be to share some of my day-to-day experiences.

"Through the eyes of a Food Allergy Mom" I will call it.

Some of my day-to-day experiences:

• When I politely ask the deli lady at Kroger to clean the machine before she cuts Anna's turkey, she gets mad and is rude to me. When I ask to see the ingredients of certain meats I am treated as if I'm paranoid or lying. Sometimes workers will refuse to show me the ingredients. Several times I've been treated so poorly I had to choke back tears. Every grocery store visit I get a pit in my stomach when I head to the deli counter.

• My child breaks out in hives at a birthday party and I'm in the corner giving her Benadryl while she is itching her whole body... all from sitting in a high chair that wasn't wiped down. Yet if I were to wipe down the seat before I put her in it, it would look weird and a little rude, as if I thought they weren't clean enough. The easiest thing is to just stay home.

• When someone offers us food I have to politely decline because I don't know what's in it. Or someone wants to make dinner and asks me what Anna can and can't have. I have no way to answer them, because unless I make the food myself or take part in its preparation, I can't feed it to her. There is too much involved in avoiding 12 allergies, some of which are not even clearly labeled. Sometimes I am treated like a stick in the mud (Update: now that some of her allergies have gotten easier to identify, good friends are able to serve food that I know Anna can have!).

• I decide to be brave and take Anna to a social gathering, a cookout, something I would usually avoid. I decide to be more laid back and not hover over her. My child sees a snack cup and thinks it is hers. She pops a snack in her mouth, just as I see that it is something she is allergic to. I grab her and ram my finger into my mouth to take the food out. She starts screaming because she doesn't understand what happened. Everyone in the room looks at us, and I feel like crawling into a hole.

• Every time I drop my child off at the nursery at church I explain her allergies and her medicine, particularly because the workers are usually never the same. I always feel like the paranoid mom. In the back of my mind I am always wondering "Does this worker take this seriously? Will they really keep an eye on my child? Will something happen?"

• I find multiple foods in the grocery store that do not list all the ingredients (I'd say about 70% of packaged foods list unspecific spices on their labels). When I call the company to get more information they are usually extremely rude to me and will not give the information I request, stating "ingredient confidentiality".

• Every time we get invited to someone house or to a party, I weigh the costs and benefits of going. If I go, I have to bring separate food for Anna and possibly fight battles about why she can't have what everyone else is eating. She doesn't understand.

• We no longer accept invitations out to dinner. The last time we went, we brought food for Anna, but she ate it all within ten minutes. While they other kids were snacking on dinner rolls, Anna gets really upset because she can't have one. It was awful.

• When we go to the airport I have to pack all of her food with me, and the TSA workers demand to open it or that I leave half of it because I can't take it on the plane. Then she doesn't have anything to eat because I can't give her restaurant food.

• When the kids eat together at her 'school', Anna is put in a separate high chair. This is because all of the other kids share their food. Anna is separated from everyone. I want her to be included, but there is nothing I can do.

• When parents bring a treat to 'school', Anna can't have it. When the teachers try to be  helpful and say "so-and-so's mom wants to know what Anna can have" what can I say? I can't simply tell someone I don't know how to make food my child can eat. It's more complex than they realize.

• We go to story time at the library and they have a craft afterwards. The craft almost always involves food. Every child gets to make their 'caterpillar' or whatever, and then eat it. My child cannot. I have to keep her from eating it and keep her from being a part of the social inclusion of enjoying food together. Might as well stay home.

• We found a church we like, but the nursery isn't safe for Anna. There are only a few workers for a lot of kids, and snack crumbs are spread all over the floor where the younger kids walk and crawl, and Anna puts everything in her mouth. Ben and I take turns watching her in the foyer but we can never enjoy the service together. We decide we have to find another church. Thankfully it ended up being our old church where all of our friends are, so it's all good. 

• People invite us over for the weekend or to travel and go on trips. We usually decline because we would have to pack days worth of food for Anna. We're going on a trip to see my family this summer, and I am leaving Anna here. I would love to take her with us, but the logistics of providing her with safe meals will be too difficult. I hate that she has to miss out on that time.

• Most of the church events have free childcare so parents can go to meetings and participate in service projects. They usually serve pizza or something. We don't go to them, because sticking Anna in a room full of pizza and kids with pizza hands would probably result in her breaking out in hives from contact, and even if she managed to avoid that, what would she do while everyone else was eating? Might as well stay home.

• On a regular basis I feel anxious for my child's future. What will she do if she's on a sports team and everyone goes out after the game? How will she go to an overnight or a trip with a friend? Will she never go out to eat- the number one most common social activity? How will she go to summer camp? How will she eat at a dining hall in college? I feel sick just thinking about it.

It's not all terrible. My friends have often  brought me to tears the way they have been so accommodating and understanding and gone above and beyond so that Anna can be included, or so we could have a safe meal brought when the baby was born, for example- things that I used to take for granted.


I write this not to whine but to raise awareness of what it is like for moms of kids with food allergies, particularly difficult ones. If you have an encounter with a kid with food allergies, show compassion. Try not to make assumptions or judge their mom. Try not to view us as overprotective, overanxious, or distrustful. Don't get upset when schools ban certain foods- remember how easy it is to forego a few foods in your kids' lunch compared to the daily complications of kids with allergies. Try to imagine how you would feel if your child was excluded from so many social opportunities. How isolating it can be. Try to plan social events that center on activities other than food. Try to understand our plight and if you can, try to find a way to include our kids. That's what we really want more than anything.

Home Makeover: Master Bedroom

BEFORE:

(old owner's stuff pictured here)

 

Love that pea green, huh?

 

 

 

 

AFTER:

 

 

View from the master bathroom.

I feel like a broken record, but similar to the other rooms, the master bedroom is small. This was fine for Ben and I because we knew we wouldn't spend a ton of time in here. We would rather have more living space like an extra bedroom to use as a play room. It was a challenge, however, because there is really no room for dressers without making the room crowded. We had to find other ways to store things.

 

We decided to go with a gray-black-white-yellow color scheme, similar to the gray-black-white-red of the kitchen and dining room (keeping some uniformity here). We like light colors because they open up the room. So we painted over that horrid green with another (surprise) gray. This gray was Bunny Gray by Benjamin Moore, and I am obsessed with the color! Unlike the true gray used in the kitchen and dining room, this is a blue-gray. It is beautiful and serene, and looks more blue or gray depending on the time of day.

 



Our furniture just happened to work really well- the bed and mattress are both from Ikea. We ended up getting this bed way back when because we loved that it was low enough to the ground that we could hang out with the kids on it and wouldn't have to worry about anyone falling off and getting injured- I love hanging out with the girls on our bed in the morning! You can't really see but in front of the bed is one of those leather ottomans that opens up. We also use that for storage space (blankets and things), and Anna climbs up and down off the bed from it. To make up for lack of dresser space, we fit most of our clothes in the closet (it's a good size) and used the drawers in the nightstands for some extra things.

 

The duvet cover is from Target. The little shelves are from the Christmas Tree Shop and the vases are the recycled wedding centerpieces I keep using (hey, I have 17 of them!). Eventually I will replace those with something a little more interesting.

 

The room has two windows- one massive and one small. I had two pairs of curtains from Ikea and I decided to split up the panels. I used three panels on the big window, and one panel cut in half on the smaller window. Worked well. The curtain rods are from Hobby Lobby- have I mentioned that is the best place to get inexpensive curtain rods?



 

 

Here is the view into the bathroom. The corner bookcase worked great because it made use of an otherwise unused space, and we had nowhere else to store our books. We pared down our book collection to books worth keeping and re-reading. I always love an excuse to get rid of unused things!

 

 

 

The wall collage was a gift from my sister for our wedding. I filled it with family pictures that were edited on PicMonkey (free online editing website) to look vintage.  I used the 'dusk' feature.

 

 

 

One of these is a picture of our wedding. The other is a charcoal drawing Ben made me before we got married. It's one of my favorite things! The frames were reused ones that used to hold my two degrees. I have no use for a framed diploma these days!

 

 
 





Paint (Bunny Gray by Benjamin Moore): Gift

Duvet cover (Target) = $40

Shelves (Christmas Tree Shop) = $15

Curtains (Ikea) = $20

Curtain rods (Hobby Lobby) = $25

Hanging collage = gift

Other stuff- frames, bed, etc. = had

 

Total = $100

 

 

Lastly, we completely finished the dining room. There were a few things we still had left to do. Our picture from the last post:

 

 

 

 

And completely finished:

 

We added some curtains and some shelves. Recognize them? They are the same ones from the bedroom. I really liked them (a great way to display some knick-knacks you love) so I spray painted a few from black to white using the leftover chandelier spray paint. I used them to hold a wooden elephant from our stay in India and a wooden bowl my mom brought home from Costa Rica.