Mother of a Teenager

I am now officially the mother of a teenager.
My firstborn, my baby, has somehow turned thirteen.
Somewhere in the midst of finger paints and Polly Pockets and baby dolls, I lost sight of my little girl and turned around and found this halfway woman.


I am not exactly sure what to do with this new responsibility.  As thousands of parents who have gone before me, I find myself faced with the care and raising of a teenager.  


At times, she is still a little girl.  She wants to be a little girl.  She wants to dress up and play with her little sisters.  She dresses her baby doll. Other times, she is already an adult.  She makes adult choices and even acts maturely.  She reads more adult books (my whole Karen Kingsbury collection).  She wants to be grown up.


And all the while, I too am in this limbo.  Do I discipline her as a child or as an almost adult?  Do I teach her as a child or as an almost adult?  


I pray.  And pray.  And then pray some more.  


I thank God that I am and have been the mother of this wonderful person.
I thank God that have been privileged to be her mother and her teacher.  I can truly say that I haven't missed very many minutes with her.  And I have still many minutes to look forward to.


And then I pray that I will be the woman I want her to be.  And I pray that I will have enough love and enough patience.  I pray that at the end of the day, she will also thank God for me and that she will also pray for me.


Happy Birthday, Kathryne!

Of Fears and Phobias and Palmetto Bugs

I have only a few true phobias.  The fear of roaches is one of them.  Palmetto bugs are an unusually large version of your common household roach.  I have quite an interesting story about a run in with a palmetto bug in my early years of marriage.  But, I digress.

My husband is gone for the week.  It is a noble trip. He and Charles are in Cleveland (as in Ohio) on a mission trip.  They are helping with a football camp for inner city kids. He's roughing it all week playing football, meting NFL players, swimming in the hotel pool.  Meanwhile, I'm holding down the fort without him at home.

I don't do well without Jason for long periods of time.  I learned this last year when they went on this trip for the first time.  I get along much better when he is here.  But, I've prayed and put on my happy face to face a week without my men.

So, last night, I heard from the weary travelers.  They spent most of yesterday riding in a van.  I like that they call and check in with me every night.  So, last night I assured them that the girls and I were fine and bravely told them goodnight.

Not thirty seconds later, Kathryne announces in a panicked tone, "Mom, I just saw a bug.  There, crawling around the top of the laundry room."  She points toward our laundry niche in the kitchen.  "Bug, like what kind of bug?"  I'm hoping for a spider, a fly, a praying mantiss.  I'd be okay with a wasp.

But, no, I see the offending bug.  It is a roach.  A VERY large roach.  It definitely falls into the Palmetto Bug category.  It's not the biggest one I've seen.  (But, I don't want to go there.)  But it is quite large.  And flying.  As I learn when I shoot Clorox spray into it.  "Run for the lysol!" I scream to Kathryne.  I am mindless of the little girls who should be asleep by now.  I am planning to kill this thing and kill it dead.  As she runs to the bathroom for the lysol, I remember the canister of Ortho Home Defense under the kitchen sink.  I grab it and prime it.  I spray.

I strike the roach in the back.  It falls.  Maybe it is dead.  But, no.  It stumbles to safety underneath the washer.  At this point I have a few options. (1) Move the washer.  This one seems a little impractical and perhaps not the best idea given the late hour of the evening and the fact that I will succumb to a heart attack if the roach runs out on me while I'm moving it.  (2) Pretend that the roach is dead.  Surely it will perish under the washer with the amount of pesticide that I hit it with.  (3) Drench the washer, floor, and walls with bug spray to prevent any chance of it living or reemerging.  I vote for number three.


By the time Kathryne surfaces with a can of lysol (I swear she was hiding out), I've sprayed so much Ortho that there is a puddle around the washer.  I'm seriously concerned that the floor might rot away by being flooded with this much liquid.  I begin to explain to her how I am sure that this has killed the beast and that we should be safe.  "Um, Mom, there it is."  


Sure enough the indestructible thing is staggering out from under the washer.  This reminds me of a horror movie where the bad guy keeps coming back no matter how many times you think he's dead.  At this point I decide to employ the broom.  I catch the little bugger as he heads back under the edge of the washer.  Deftly using the broom, I sweep him out into the open. Now he is lying in a puddle on the floor.  Pieces of broom straw are floating by him.  I strike with the flat of the broom.  I hit him again.  And again.  And again.  And... Yes, it may have been a little overkill. (Pun intended)


At this point, when I'm pretty convinced of his death, I try to bargain with Kathryne for who has to carry his corpse to the toilet to flush.  Even dead, I don't want the thing near me.  I lose, and I sweep him up with trembling hands.  Kathryne has the decency to run before me and make sure the lid is up.  I make it into the bathroom and, relieved, drop him in and flush.


I am happy to say that I have survived.  Score one for Leah zero for the roaches.  Now I just have to convince myself that he was working alone.

Treasures of Healthy Living and a New Diet

When we were at the homeschool convention in March, we heard a workshop by Annette Reeder of Designed Healthy Living. She speaks about nutrition and healthy eating. This is an area in which we've made great strides over the course of our lives with children; but it's something I always struggle with. After listening to her workshop, we went to her booth and bought her Bible study book-Treasures of Healthy Living. I should learn not to make impulse buys at homeschool conventions.

The basic premises of Treasures of Healthy Living are good. I can't argue with the fact that we need to eat food as close to natural as possible. And I can't argue with the fact that healthy eating can affect many areas of life. I even agree that God's plan for us is to take care of our bodies; and that healthy eating is a part of that.

Unfortunately, Treasures of Healthy Living turned out to be a poor impulse buy. Many verses are strung together, totally out of context, to imply that God has specific instructions for our food choices. The whole book is filled with quotes from other sources, making it feel a little like a research paper instead of a Bible study. There are some practical tips and some checklists and such that allow for application. But I felt like much of the information was thrown out there without practical application tips. This is probably a resource I will look to quickly resell.

Despite my disappointment with the book, I do have some big diet changes planned when we come back from our beach trip- where we are now vacationing in the sun, I might add. I've been studying up on diet for Fibromyalgia and have decided to attempt a gluten free diet. My sister has Celiac Disease. I do not (I've been tested), but we know there are links between gluten and Fibro and migraines, and many other symptoms. I'm not fooling myself that it will be easy, but having watched my sister eat this diet for so many years, I hope it is easier.

I'll blog about about my attempts and my results when I begin my diet experiment.