Hearts at Home Wksp 1: The Leman-ator March 31, 2009

For anyone who has ever seen Dr. Kevin Leman speak, you can back me up here… he is absolutely hysterical! Although I didn’t feel like I learned a whole lot (more on that later), there was no point in his session that I felt bored.

Dr. Leman’s workshop focused on birth order. In the past, I was in a small group that did a Dr. Leman (or “Lemie” as his wife calls him) study, and he spent some time discussing birth order. So, other than recognizing (again) what my husband and I are, I didn’t really learn much new from this session. As for my refresher, here’s what I was reminded of:

1. Although I am technically the second born child in my family, as the first girl, I function as a first born. That means I’m the “Type A” personality, all about getting things done and saving the world – right now, one dirty diaper at a time!

2. Justin functions totally as a “middle” complete with high school rebellion, seeking acceptance outside of the family, and focusing on friends.

It will be interesting to see how my boys function… depending on when we have the next kid, Keaton will likely function as a middle (I can’t imagine this kid as a rebel – we are so in trouble!) However, if we wait long enough, he could actually function as a “baby” of the first family… Anyway, one of the things I learned is that birth order is a way of looking at and learning about someone, but it isn’t necessarily an absolute science.

A few other nuggets of wisdom I took from Lemie:

• I have a tendency to be a “Critical Eye” parent – which means my perfectionism sometimes sends the message to my kids that what they are doing is not good enough. According to Dr. Lemie, fixing this is “not easy, but it’s simple.” It’s definitely something I’m willing to work on.
• Sometimes, joy comes from “getting behind your husband’s eyes and seeing things the way he sees things.” I really liked that idea.
• An unhappy child can be a healthy child. Our goal is not to make our children’s existences “fun,” but to build their character into good people who love Jesus and trust in His leading in their lives.

I think Dr. Lemie and I have similar parenting styles… I tend to be no-nonsense, up-front kind of parent. Sometimes, I think the sympathy/empathy that was allotted to me was all given to someone else instead, but I do work really hard to put myself in someone else’s shoes. And thanks to Dr. Leman, I’ll also be working hard to overcome my “critical eye” parenting and accept my wonderful, rambunctious boys the way they are, no matter what their birth order!

Hearts at Home Conference March 15, 2009

This weekend, I had the first opportunity to be away from my boys for a whole night. Although they’ve stayed the night at Grandma’s before, this was the first time I was actually away from home. Lest you think I’m a sentimental type… IT WAS AWESOME!!! I mean, I was happy to get home to my boys, but I loved my night away, refreshing and renewing my perspective with about 5,000 other ladies at the Hearts at Home conference. This year’s conference theme was “Real Moms: Real Lives, Real Stories.”

Hearts at Home is an organization dedicated to helping moms in the “profession” of mothering. Their goal is to provide encouragement, support, and information for moms across the country, and they’ve recently expanded to include an international Hearts at Home group as well. Twice a year, they offer identical conferences (one in the Spring and then the same one in the Fall) that speak to every mother’s heart. We chose to head to Normal/Bloomington, IL for the Friday night Mom’s Night Out and Saturday conference.

At the conference, we had the opportunity to listen to the Go Fish Guys (they are awesome!), Dr. Kevin Leman (who is hysterically funny & informative), Sally Bauke (who is absolutely hilarious!), and Hearts at Home founder Jill Savage. Since this was a conference full of  mothers, there were of course a number of tears, very little sleep, and lots of talk about what we can do to become better moms. We were all able to choose our top 10 workshop options, and we had 4 time slots (aside from the key note speakers) when we were able to attend a variety of fantastic choices. Right now, my children are now longing for, well, a drink, but I promise to talk more about what I learned later…

Mom or referee?? March 12, 2009

As Keaton gets older (and louder, I swear) there really are days when I feel like nothing more than a referee. Hayden is so ridiculously legalistic that he will tell me when Keaton does something wrong to the letter of the law. For instance, if Keaton takes a movie out of the case (and immediately puts it back in) I hear about it. I go back and forth between gratitude for a watchful brother, joy at watching a son who is so eerily like me (that’s Hayden for those of you who don’t know me!), and frustration at being reminded 18 times per hour of each misstep Keaton has (or I have for that matter – Hayden tells me on an every time basis that we drive a van, mommy, not a car!)

And that’s to say nothing of Keaton. I was recently telling a friend (who has 3 girls) about a day in the life with Keaton, and he was cracking up at the myriad number of things Keaton can get into in a daily basis. Let’s just give a few examples from today: took a game out of the case, rubbed it around on the rug, put it in the Wii, tried to put it into the VCR (not good), before I took it away from him; left the nursery at church and was all the way up the stairs before I even realized he was gone; followed Hayden to the bathroom and stood flushing the urinal and playing in the water while Hayden took care of business; took Hayden’s cup of water, filled it up at the water fountain, and “drank” (i.e. spilled) the entire thing all over his shirt; wrote on his hands and face with blue marker (luckily washable); kicked Hayden’s basket of play food off of the couch; fell face-first into the wall while trying to ride the sit & spin… I really could go on and on.

So, in these moments when I’m feeling like I really break up more fights than watch tender moments, I’m trying to remind myself about what I read in _She’s Gonna Blow_ this week… In the Bible, children are never referred to as a burden. They might stretch us, test us, try our patience, and there is definitely nothing easy about them. But over and over again, God reminds us that children are a blessing… despite the fact that I feel like I should invest in a whistle!