Soli Deo Gloria!

The boy has been home for less than a week, and I am amazed at how dif­fer­ent life is when he’s not here.  He is truly the LIFE in our home.  Every­things seems so much bet­ter and brighter with him bounc­ing around, smil­ing and act­ing silly.  I find that I’m more patient with him now.  I heartily rec­om­mend that every mom take a break from her child, if you can.  Those 5 days were ago­niz­ing, but obvi­ously I needed them. 

I was so happy to have him home, I just kept star­ing at him.  I swear he grew another inch.  I noticed that he was a lit­tle more inde­pen­dent and self-sufficient, which is a WONDERFUL thing.  He’s not the kind of kid that will answer twenty ques­tions, so I have to let him slowly tell me about his expe­ri­ence.  He made sure to tell me that he did what I said:  Since he’s a picky eater, I told him that he couldn’t be picky at camp, and to eat what they gave him.  He proudly told me that he ate steak AND ham­burg­ers. (He doesn’t eat much red meat.)  I told him I was proud of him and asked him if I could now make those things for him at home. I got a prompt “NO!”  He said, “I only ate those things because you told me to!”  At least he’s obe­di­ent. While wash­ing his hair on Sun­day night, I learned that he took ONE shower the whole week, and it did not include soap. I told him he was a dirt­ball, and he replied, “Mommy! Boys ARE dirt­balls!!”  How quickly they learn.  smh.

When I opened his suitcase…good LAWD…the SMELL!  Dirty socks, damp towel, wet wash­cloth, dirty clothes.….I had to wash that mess IMMEDIATELY.  He came home WITHOUT his san­dals. I couldn’t be mad at him. It was his first time away from home.    Other than that, every­thing went well. 

Today we’re going to his new school for ori­en­ta­tion.  His first day is August 3, less than a week from now.  But he’s excited and so am I.  We picked up his uni­forms on Sat­ur­day.  He has a blazer that he has to wear, begin­ning in Octo­ber.  He was really excited about that!  He told me, “Mommy, I’m gonna look like Mr. Moseby!”  (If you don’t know what that means, you are Dis­ney defi­cient and I sen­tence you to a night of watch­ing “The Suite Life of Zack and Cody”.  IMMEDIATELY! 

I am done with MY school ori­en­ta­tion. Classes start August 26.  I’m ready for it to start NOW. 

I’m still teach­ing youth Bible study on Wedne­day nights.  I have a small, but ded­i­cated group of kids. They lis­ten, think and ask intel­li­gent ques­tions. Every week, we talk about what the Gospel is, and lately we’ve been talk­ing about how to LIVE it. I can tell they’re GETTING it. God is good! 

I keep read­ing a lot of  “sin­gle mom” blogs.  I love them. One thing I see is that a lot of them talk about dat­ing.  They make me feel weird, because I have ZERO inter­est in dat­ing.  Maybe men have got­ten on my nerves one too many times, or maybe I just have too many other things to think about, but I just have no desire to cul­ti­vate a rela­tion­ship now or in the forsee­able future.  I like my life the way it is. Well, I could stand to get out and do more, but oth­er­wise, I’m cool.  Don’t get me wrong: I occa­sion­ally have moments when I would like male com­pan­ion­ship, but it never gets to the point that I want it enough to do some­thing about it.  The feel­ing passes and I keep it mov­ing. 

I kinda like it this way though. I have wasted so much time in my life think­ing about men and rela­tion­ships. It’s a relief not to be dwelling on it now.  My focus now is on three things: Living a life pleas­ing to God, rais­ing my son to live the same way, and going to school.  I think that those things keep my plate pretty full.

Things I need to do:  Write out my thoughts on “The Pur­suit of Holi­ness” and “Know­ing God”.  Keep focused on the Lord and trust­ing him to pro­vide for me, no mat­ter what my cir­cum­stances look like..and finan­cially, they are look­ing PRETTY BAD right now..but I think I see a light at the end of the tun­nel. Get myself men­tally pre­pared to dive into the world of being a col­lege stu­dent.  Tak­ing notes, writ­ing papers, doing assign­ments.  Yeah…Pray for me!

Bye, Mom!, orig­i­nally uploaded by MsRikki.

He was eager to explore his sur­round­ings, so he gave me a half-hug and ran off. I yelled for him to turn around so that I could get his pic­ture, and this is what he did.

You would think that he’d feel a LITTLE sad that he was leav­ing his mother for the FIRST time..for a WHOLE week. But no. He shot me the peace signs and said, “Bye Mom! I’m going into my HOUSE!” (refer­ring to the cabin)

I sup­pose this means I’ve done a good job of encour­ag­ing him to be inde­pen­dent.

I need to encour­age myself to be inde­pen­dent from HIM.

I do enjoy the peace and quiet.…..but I am look­ing for­ward to Fri­day.

This is one LONG week!

Cur­rent Mood: Happy

Every time I make up my mind to write on a reg­u­lar basis, I allow things to get to me to the point that I have no desire to write. I for­get that writ­ing is my chance to let things go, instead of let­ting them weigh on me all the time. So, I’m try­ing to shake it off and get to writ­ing. On top of that, I can’t find a word­press theme that I like…and I don’t have the time or the incli­na­tion to try to make one up on my own!

So what’s been going on with me?

Read­ing: I’m still read­ing Know­ing God and The Pur­suit of Holi­ness. I just haven’t writ­ten out my thoughts. It’s com­ing.

Work: Same ole, same ole. My job is pretty low stress and pretty bor­ing. Not com­plain­ing though. I’ve worked a stress­ful job. It was more money, but not worth me being stressed out.

School: This month, ori­en­ta­tion started. I’ll be going to Geneva College’s Cen­ter for Urban Bib­li­cal Min­istry. I’ll earn an A.A. in Chris­t­ian Min­istry. I plan to get a Bachelor’s after that, but I’m not sure in what. Baby steps here. School doesn’t offi­cially start until the end of August. I’m ready for it to begin!

Home: When I moved in Feb­ru­ary, I knew it would be rough finan­cially. And it has been tougher than I imag­ined. I can see some light at the end of the tun­nel, though. God is my provider, and He is faith­ful. I LOVE my home and I don’t regret mov­ing at all.

The Boy: He’s a won­der­ful child. He’ll be going away to camp for a week, start­ing Sun­day. FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER. He’s antic­i­pat­ing it, though…even count­ing down. I’m glad he’s not afraid. That was my main con­cern. He did tell me that he needed me to give him a pic­ture of me to take with him, though. I’ll make sure he has it.

What am I going to do for a week by myself? I have to go to work. I have 2 more ses­sions of school ori­en­ta­tion, bible study to teach. My life will pretty much go on as nor­mal, except that I won’t be get­ting my daily hugs and kisses from my lit­tle dude, and I won’t hear “Mommy!” every 5 min­utes. LOL! It’ll be real quiet at home. I’m just gonna take the time to refresh myself. Watch some movies, do some read­ing, do some writ­ing, lis­ten to some music…all with no inter­rup­tions. Yeah..that’s it.

Peo­ple always tell me that I’m a good mom. I never really thought about whether I’m a good mom or not; I just know that I try to be. A friend sug­gested that I write about how to be a good, sin­gle mom rais­ing a good man in the cul­ture that we live in now. (Thanks, Stacey!) I def­i­nitely have ideas on how to do that, and since I’ve been doing it for over nine years now, with some good results, here we go. I’m going to list them here, and in future posts, deal with each item. This is by no means a com­plete list, nor do I con­sider myself an expert on the sub­ject. If you agree/disagree, reg­is­ter and com­ment. If you have some­thing to add, reg­is­ter and com­ment. If you just wanna co-sign, reg­is­ter and com­ment!

1. Get to know your child! When I was preg­nant, I dreamed that I’d have an adorable, fat-cheeked, laid-back and agree­able (like me!), son. How­ever, my son proved, from the womb, that it was def­i­nitely a dream. He was adorable and had the fat­test cheeks ever.…but laid-back? agree­able? NO SIR! How­ever, one of the best things about being Julian’s mom has been get­ting to know who Julian is…even if I get extremely frus­trated at times!
2. Have a goal in mind for your child. For the first half of my preg­nancy, I thought I was hav­ing a girl. While I am not the most girly girl on earth, I looked for­ward to play­ing with dolls, buy­ing cute clothes and other girly things with my child. How­ever, my boy showed proof of his man­hood in my 6^th month of preg­nancy when he couldn’t evade the ultra­sound any­more. At that moment, I made a vow: My son would NOT be like the males I’ve encoun­tered in my life. My goal is to raise him to be a God-fearing, God-HONORING, MAN. Par­ent­ing Julian is cen­tered around that goal, and I keep it in mind in every­thing I do con­cern­ing him.
3. Intro­duce your child to Jesus as EARLY as pos­si­ble. Julian is very used to going to church. That’s a good thing. But going to church, in and of itself, doesn’t make much of a dif­fer­ence unless one knows Jesus Christ. I began a con­cen­trated effort to talk to Julian about our faith when he was six years old. And it was at that time, dur­ing a dis­cus­sion about the Ten Com­mand­ments, that God showed my child his sin. As I explained what the com­mand­ments meant, it was like a light went on, and Julian said that he was sorry for break­ing God’s Law and he won­dered what his pun­ish­ment would be.….and he repented and believed Jesus Christ for his sal­va­tion when he was six years old. I’m con­vinced that I’d be deal­ing with a very dif­fer­ent lit­tle boy if that had not hap­pened.
4. Take advan­tage of ANY sup­port you get. I may be sin­gle, but I don’t do this alone. I have a great sup­port sys­tem of fam­ily and friends that help me with this par­ent­ing thing. Sup­port is not just finan­cial either. My brother pro­vides a great male role model for Julian and spends time with him often. My friends babysit for me on the rare occa­sion that I go some­where with­out him. My mom and dad do too much to even talk about. I couldn’t be the mom I am with­out my fam­ily and friends.
5. Last, but not least, PUT YOUR CHILD FIRST IN YOUR LIFE. I am all Julian has. He needs to feel secure that he is my pri­or­ity, and I make sure that he does. Too often, sin­gle moth­ers want to pur­sue their own inter­ests at the expense of their chil­dren. How­ever, if you’re going to raise healthy kids, that should never be done. Once I got preg­nant, my life was not my own any­more. It’s all about the boy. That’s not to say that I don’t have inter­ests, because I do. But my son comes FIRST. He knows he’s safe and secure with his mom. He knows mom will always take care of him, sup­port him, and defend him. So he’s a kid with NO wor­ries. Happy and care­free. As he should be.

The Boy: 1/18/09, orig­i­nally uploaded by MsRikki.

Karen asked the ques­tion.

My answer?

My son. Ener­getic and play­ful, imp­ish and a joke­ster, thought­ful and serious.….he’s the light of my life, and brings a smile to my face at LEAST once a day. I am blessed to be his mom.

Life is bor­ing. I feel like I’m just drift­ing along, and I really need to work that out. I need to find some mean­ing to the day to day activ­i­ties. Work? Blah. Church? Blah. Friends? Blah? That’s pretty much why I haven’t been writ­ing here lately. Every entry would be the same: Went to work today. Picked the boy up from day­care. Went home. Ate. Watched TV or played the Sims 2. Went to bed. Where’s the mean­ing?

Tak­ing care of the boy is the one area where I find it. I con­sider him a gift from God. I know that God has basi­cally given me a big job to do in rais­ing the boy to know God and be a man that God can use. Even the small moments that I share with my son are filled with mean­ing for me. Some­times he’ll catch me look­ing at him and smil­ing. He says,“Mommy, why are you smil­ing at me?” “Because,” I say, sur­prised that he caught me doing it, “you make me happy.” That answer is good enough for him, and brings a smile to his face. I can’t explain to him how proud I am of how he’s grow­ing up. How the things that come out of his mouth not only make me laugh, but show me that I’m doing pretty good at this mommy thing. Not that we are by any means perfect…but it could be a LOT worse.

My strongest desire is to be able to be with him all of the time. I’d love to be able to be full of energy, meet­ing him when he gets off the school bus every day, rather than pick­ing him up 2 hours later: tired, hun­gry, and think­ing of the many other things I have to get done before bed­time. I never feel like I am doing enough with him and for him. But that, I think, is a clas­sic Mommy feel­ing.

But then I remem­ber that God knows what I’m going through, and He will give me just what I need to raise the boy prop­erly. I may not be able to be a soc­cer mom, but I’m the per­fect mom for this lit­tle boy.

What I need to do is cap­ture those small moments, either in writ­ing or in pic­tures. That’s where the mean­ing is. Those are the inter­est­ing moments. Those are the things I need to remem­ber, when I feel, as I do now, that life is kind of pass­ing me by. Yes..there are other things I need to do also, but the time I spend with my boy? That’s what brings a smile to my face.

and the school is work­ing my nerves!

I don’t recall third grade being so much WORK. The boy has to read 3 – 4 books a month and do book reports on each one. That’s in addi­tion to his spelling and math home­work every day.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for kids get­ting a good edu­ca­tion. School is the only job they have…but dang.…do I have to be dragged along too? Let me add, the boy wants to join the Cub Scouts now, too. 

now..the part where some­body is about to get told off:

My son packs his lunch most days, but some days he chooses the school lunch. That’s cool, but the only thing he can get to drink is milk. HE DOES NOT DRINK MILK. OF ANY KIND. Ever since 1^st grade, he’s brought his own drink (usu­ally a Capri Sun). This year, I get a note from the teacher talkin bout she’s been informed that he needs a MEDICAL EXCUSE in order to be able to drink his Capri Sun! DA PUFF?

It was Meet the Teacher night at the school today. I approached the Prin­ci­pal on this issue. She said that the state audits the school on the lunches, and got in trou­ble last year for hav­ing milk left over. I can under­stand that. I told her to let him take the milk, but not to tell him he can’t drink his juice. That’s what I’m con­cerned about. She asked if I could get a med­ical excuse. I told her: THIS IS NOT A MEDICAL ISSUE. MY SON DOES NOT DRINK MILK. PERIOD. I also told her that the fact that I’m his mother and I’ve noti­fied the school as to MY wishes regard­ing what MY child eats should be ENOUGH. Any­hoo, she told me to send her a note tomor­row to remind her to speak to some­one higher up about it. 

I’m not mad at the teacher or the prin­ci­pal. I’m irri­tated with the state govt for think­ing that they can dic­tate what goes in my son’s mouth, and that my direc­tive is not enough…I gotta have a doc­tor excuse.

A doctor’s excuse? For JUICE?

GTPOH.

Some­body bet­ter fix it. QUICK.

Jules had a Black His­tory Month pro­gram today. I filmed his part. He’s just grow­ing up too fast!