Ten for a Tuesday

1.) I recently bought Pull-Ups for the first time.  I felt ridiculously embarrassed even walking down the aisle which obviously shelves bladder control products and diapers.  I sincerely worried that people would assume that I was headed to buy me some Depends, since pregnancy/ childbirth really wrecks your ability to sneeze and not lose control over your other functions.  Annnnd I've already shared too much. 2.) Speaking of Pull-Ups, Baby Girl had her first day at daycare rocking the Pull-Ups. I expected to pick her up and for her daycare provider to be shaking her head, holding up a drenched Pull-Up, saying, "Yeah.  Not. Ready. Yet."  Instead, Baby Girl was given a standing O by all of her teachers at her mad potty training skillz.  Holla!

3.) I could not shake my sense of disconcertedness all day long over the conclusion to "The Bachelor."

4.) Lovey Loverpants is right now picking up our friend Doc Albie at the airport.  I think Albie is the Korean brother I never had.  I absolutely love his Korean guts.

5.) I asked my academic dean if he will observe one of my classes this week.  I could really use some feedback, particularly on how to engage 30 college students on grammar before they all lapse into their hungry-for-lunch comas.

6.) I purchased a new monogrammed Easter bunny basket for Baby Girl.  Why the plastic woven green and yellow $.99 special from Big Lots was not good enough for her, I cannot explain.  Pottery Barn Kids has a way of sending its catalog at precise moments of consumer weakness, I swear.

7.) I cannot imagine a time in the future when I will be as blessed with friends who live so close as the ones I have right now.  And the ones who live far away, they are pretty stellar, too.

8.) I have seen exactly 2 of the movies nominated for the Oscars:  "An Education," and "Julie and Julia."  I HIGHLY recommend the former.  I hope Streep wins it for best actress for the latter. I would not mind seeing "The Blind Side" and "Food, Inc." and I positively want to see "Up."

9.) I am really homesick to see my parents.  All six of them.

10.) I recently took a CPR refresher course and I am feeling so much more confident about my ability to not morph into a paralyzed garden gnome in a moment of crisis.  I am giving my students 10 extra credit points if they get certified or recertified in CPR.

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Baby Girl reading in a cafe.  She's soooo Parisian.

And so flirtacious.

Yesterday v. Today

Yesterday, I was:- Face down on a massage table, propped up by a belly pillow, while Jose made like Patrick-Swayze-with-clay on my back. - Feeling zen-like in a relaxation room, wearing a terrycloth robe, eating dried apricots and sipping chamomile tea. - Pleased to be the only one in the pool at the Intercontinental Spa. - Feeling guilt-free taking a long, hot shower, and using all and sundry toiletry items. - Gleefully riding the train unaccompanied by a goldfish cracker chomping toddler.

Today I am: - Irrationally close to tears at my inability to find my car keys anywhere. - Irrationally close to having a heart attack when my kid falls and splits lip at music class. - Plagued by diarrhea just as I was closing in on the cashier at the supermarket, with a cart full of frozen items, natch. - Projectile vomiting up my lunch which included folic acid and iron pills I know FetusBaby needs but which he/she will not receive until tomorrow.

And that is as much as I know about tomorrow.

*** Yesterday

Today

Discipline

I confess. Once upon a time, meaning 1 minute before I had a baby,  I thought that discipline was a cut and dry practice, that there were rules and penalties for breaking those rules, and probably some shades of gray therein.

I thought we came into the world with caretakers that were, capital "G" Good Discipliners, or the opposite of that.  I thought that there were parents that were just ill-tempered and those with short fuses, and pushover Pollyanna-type Mr. Roger parents.

But then I had a baby.  And that baby grew and learned to pull hair and wombat-teeth everything and cry at inopportune times and announce in the middle of a grown-up dinner party, "I'm SO poopy!"

I realized that discipline is not cut and dry, nor is it simply about molding a young life.  Discipline, I have learned, is like the navigation of a pilot.  Always hovering above or below the latitude and longitude of where you want to be, but rarely aligning with the exact coordinates.

Lovey Loverpants is an excellent co-pilot in all of this, so I give thanks for him, for helping me find my way back to that line of latitude I lost in the clouds of anger or pride. Although our approach to things is different at times, I know our goals are ultimately the same and that is so so wonderful. Still, discipline is actually disciplining the snot out of this mama.

I don't write often about the behaviors of Baby Girl we are trying to curb, partly because I am often bewildered/surprised by them, but also because I am still so much finding my way.  I have realized that my own hypocrisy, my own sin invariably stares me back in the face when I am looking into that little dolly-done-wrong's eyes.  It turns out that instructing your child to exercise some patience when you say it through gritted teeth, one arm holding her shoulder, the other arm twirling the Swiffer broom in the air ready to clear and karate chop a whole bookcase?  Is not really effective.

I am a relatively patient person and yet when I am sleep-deprived and just got chewed out in an e-mail by a student and just burned myself on a cast iron pan because I was so tired I wasn't thinking USE OVEN MIT, and then my child starts whiiiiiiiining with a whine heard round the world, let us just say that in those moments, I would not be mistaken for Michelle Duggar.

But I have been reading a lot of Child Guidance by Ellen White, and this has truly changed my outlook on discipline.  She says that there will be times when every parent's resources, good humor, and energy runs dry.  In those times, it is necessary to call upon a Higher Power for strength.  I thought it was okay, that I was just being human, when I became grizzly or lazy or both in those moments.  But when I don't ask God for strength to endure and correct, I am doubting God's power to help me in my desperation.  I am also inclined to borrow power from another source.  White says that when we are cruel or violent toward our children, we are serving another master.  That really pricked my heart, and so my constant prayer these days is that in disciplining my child, that I would be disciplined enough in doing so to call on God for the help from above of which I am so in need.

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