Notes from an evening

Michael started his new job in Baton Rouge today. By all accounts (mainly a rushed phone call while he drove after lunch to get a required drug test), it went well. He is excited about his new job and about the company he is working for. What a blessing to have such a great opportunity–especially to work near our families back in Louisiana.

I am still here in Houston with the kids. It is one of our last nights in our home. We accepted a good offer on our home after only six days–praise be to God! I am truly thankful that we will be able to be together as a family in Baton Rouge sooner rather than later. Also, I am thankful that we will begin to be able to look at homes in Baton Rouge.

We had a cheerful meal of McDonald’s tonight. I put a hamburger, some french fries, and some yogurt parfait on their little sectional plates, and I set the table with napkins and spoons for them. I had a chicken wrap and an iced coffee. I was planning to make spaghetti and meatballs tonight, but I saw this afternoon that I am out of pasta, and I honestly just didn’t have the energy to take all three babies into the grocery store by myself this afternoon. Faith wore her hot pink cowboy boots and a big green flower clip in her always-messy hair. Both she and Gabriel had yogurt from their little parfaits all over their faces. It is one of our kids’ favorite foods to pair yogurt with fruit or raisins. I was thankful that sweet Gianna took a little nap in my room while the rest of us ate dinner.

After dinner, the kids played in the living room while I quickly did the dishes from dinner. Even though you can see into the living room from my kitchen sink, I didn’t notice that Gianna was in on the Franklets’ daily wrestling match. I didn’t hear a peep from her!

I took the kids to the library this morning and got a nice new stack of books to snuggle with on the couch in the evenings. We’ve already packed up all of our children’s books. Gabriel and Faith finally enjoy reading with me! I love reading to them, and was worried for a long time that I had missed some kind of boat with getting Gabriel interested in books. He will be four years old in December, and he is finally getting excited about them in just the past few months. I really like books where I can do voices for the kids. I can do some pretty hilariously bad Russian, French, Spanish, British, Cajun, Valley Girl, and Deep South accents. Gabriel loves books about trucks and trains. Faith’s favorite books are ones in which she can point out different animals or shapes that she knows.

The kids want to have a bath every night now. They ask every night for “blue water”–ever since I surprised them with putting a few drops of food coloring in their bath water a few months ago. I put Gianna in her little Bumbo seat on the bathroom rug or lay her down with a toy beside me while I sit with the kids. Faith still screams and screams at some point during every single bath (probably why I’ve never bathed her every day). She has done this since she was a baby. She has simply always hated getting any water on her ears or her face at all. I really need to brainstorm how I can start trying to bathe her alone for a while to see if working with her will help make bath time less stressful for all of us. The timing of feeding and bathing and putting everyone to sleep in the evenings is still a little erratic with five-month-old Gianna in tow now. I know that we will figure things out eventually, and really we do have a good routine with the kids at night. It is such a blessing how well both Gabe and Faith go to sleep. They know that after Family Prayer, we sing “Immaculate Mary” and all march into the back and kiss each other good night and get in bed. I always say, “Peace be with you, I love you” when I am leaving their rooms, and they say it back to me. When I tucked Gabriel into bed tonight, I said, ‘I’m going to tuck you in like a Gabriel burrito!” He said back to me, “No–tuck me in like a Gabriel pizza!”

I wondered when the day would come when my kids would start to pick up a “bad” word. Well, somehow they have picked up the word “stupid” in the past few weeks. The Bad Influence could even have been their own mother–who knows? Gabriel and Faith have both been saying, “I’m stupid!” lately. They know it is not a “nice” word and that it is not acceptable speech in our family. They also know what happens when they say it. They have to repeat ten “nice” phrases after me, such as “I am a son of God” or “I love my family” or “I am thankful for my lunch today” and they have to end with, “I am a daughter/son of God, and what comes out of my mouth should be holy and pleasing to the Lord.”