Worries From A Mother Of Two

I love being a Mamma! Some women want to grow up and lead fast paced powerful careers, some want to see the world, and some want to become President one day! I wanted to be a mom. Now understand that I am in no way trying to make it seem like you can't have both or all, but I'm merely stating that I always wanted to be a mom as the goal of my life.

Yes this is a parenting post!
From the moment the nurse placed that little baby in my arms to the 8 minutes of terrified silence she made her father and I endure before she let her first cry out. I knew I loved her. I thanked God for blessing me with the most wonderful, beautiful, kind, and tender-hearted little girl the world has ever known(EXTREMELY BIASED).

For two and a half years it was the easiest thing in the world to take care of her and love and nurture her. I was able to stay at home and devote all my time and attention to being the best mother I could be. Believe me I was! We did everything together I was there for every milestone. I alone taught her to walk and talk and there are so many endless memories I have of just the two of us sharing little moments that I will always cherish.

As time went on I really started to think about her future and the future of our family. I grew up with a sister and although our childhood wasn't that great it was still nice to have another person to share life with that understands things no one else can. My husband is an only child and while we didn't plan on Shelby I did plan for her sibling.

Shelby is a rainbow baby-- for those who don't know what that is it's what they call a baby born after a loss miscarriage or stillborn. I am blessed with two rainbow babies. I also had a miscarriage before I gave birth to her brother.

My Son Henry is every bit as sweet and gentle and wonderful as Shelby, but the real point to this post that I am finally getting to is that while I love both my children the same I have been struggling with juggling both. To the point where I have so much guilt and frustration for the loss of time with my daughter and sadness over how it feels like she is left out and not getting the same mother that she used to have. I know for a fact that I am more short tempered, I yell, I don't play as often. My son is 1 so I understand that he has different needs than my daughter, but I just don't like the parent I have morphed into with her and the daughter that she has started to become as a result of that. It has taken a while to realize that I can't be that same mother anymore because she just had one child. That helps with the guilt. Reminding myself that I am trying my best and to try harder helps with the sadness. She is happy well cared for and growing and thriving. I know try to measure my mothering successes by little pieces rather than big chunks. It is my hope and belief that the little pieces will add up. I have made sure that I hold on to the traditions that we started together such as reading bedtime stories to help keep the ties that bond strong between us. I am now thinking of doing little dates with her one and one to help because I know she is just desperate for mommy and Shelby time! So am I

It was deceptively easy the first time around. This time, this new family that we have takes a lot more work and a lot more patience and a lot more intention.

Have you had trouble adjusting to your growing family? If so how did you deal with it?

It's been an interesting few months

So I know I have been away for at least 2 1/2 months! Things have been really busy and really crazy.

We ended up going down to Chattanooga for February and a week of March. During that time we found the house we have been looking for and put an offer on it without even seeing it first hand. My MIL and her dad went and looked at for us and gave us their honest opinion. So right now we are going through the mortgage process and it's been dragging. There have been issues with getting the current tenants out and issues with easement. The house is on a private rd that goes off a main road and into the woods where multiple "drives" or easements come off and go to different peoples property. Apparently the drive that the tenets and owner had been using for years turned out to not be the legal easement and the lady who owns it decided she didn't want to let anyone use it anymore. The seller had to have an excavator come out and survey and give an estimate on how much it would cost to clear trees and put in the actual legal easement. Turned out to be 5,500. Our lender now has to approve putting those funds into an escrow or something along those lines. That is all I know as of yesterday. Our realtor was supposed to be calling our bank and getting all that figured out so today we are waiting to hear from her. If she doesn't approve than basically we are going to have to look for a new house. We haven't actually spent a single dime on the house yet or had inspections yet so if that were to happen we would get our EMD back and be back on the market looking for a home. The only we would lose is the time wasted. We found the house in early Feb and it's mid March and we aren't anywhere near closing.Our rate long ends 4/22 and we have can close no later than May 11th. We are trying to stay positive and pray that all goes smoothly and according to Gods plan.

As if that wasn't enough just as I suspected this trip to TN has turned out to be a bad idea. Johnathan got all bent out of shape about the feedback he was getting from supervisors there and he has no filter and no idea how to handle conflict so he went off on his HR person which i than had to type an apology for him to send to her hoping that smoothed it all over. We ended up spending more money than we should have while down there so that was a setback. When we got back the next Monday he flew out with the rest of his coworkers (whom is already having drama with which is no big surprise because he always clashes with co workers) so the they flew to SC for a few days and during that time those guys were drinking and carrying on in a way that doesn't reflect positively on the company. One guy Chris who has always had an issue with John and who I think has an inferiority complex was drinking in the backseat while there supervisor was driving one of their rental cars. Another co worker Larry grabbed the wheel horsing off and put them in a ditch (again rental vehicle all paid by the company corporate account) Then on the last day on the way to the airport the Chris guy who i assume was probably tired and hungover was driving John and him to the airport behind jason the supervisor and larry. Chris rear eneded the guys in front of him and basically both rental vehicles were involved in an accident. They tried really hard to not report it and they also tried really hard to make sure that John wasn't going to say anything because they know they messed up big time and they know that Johnathan is a good employee who plays by the book and geniunly doesn't act like a jackass on business trips or ever.

They also all found out how much Johnathan makes and Chris had the nerve to chew John out about how he doesn't deserve to make more than him and how he was going to walk into HR's office and demand a 2$ raise(guess he can't do that now)!

So Johnathan is stressed because right now he is in a meeting with paulette the HR manager and they are discussing everything that has happened and has been said over the past month. He thinks that he might get fired, but I really don't because in light of recent events with dumbass #1 and #2 it makes his stuff look like small potatoes. The only thing really working against him is his inability to stick up for himself in a way that helps him and doesn;t hurt him. He gets really emotional and doesn't know how talk to people. Also the fact that they just don't seem to like him. He is not a very sociable kind of guy in the traditional sense. He likes to clock in do his job mind his own business and then clock out and go home. He never makes co worker friends and couple that with the fact that when he is in social situations he comes off as a stuck up know it all. People just read him wrong and he doesn't help himself.

I encouraged him to listen to what his HR lady has to say and then say what he has to say and if she starts to give him shit over stupid stuff than he can play his card where Chris was int he backseat drinking and what not, but I hope it doesn't come down to that because there is a chance that could do more harm than good if she doesn't believe him..

Either way you slice it it's a shitty situation going on right now that just needs to die down so that he can get back to work and we can get on with life. We need this job if we want to buy this house not to mention YES he does deserve what he makes he put alot of long hours in trade school to become a journeyman and also work full time and take care of me and the kids all on his own. He has worked hard to earn a good job like this and I know if he can just weather this storm once the company finally opens and more employees get hired things will get easier.

So if you read this and you can please say a prayer for our family.

oooh I almost forgot! I also went to the dentist and they told me I have something strange on my xray below one of my molars. They don't know what it is so I had to make an appointment with a oral surgeon in April to see what they say. So we shall see.

Here's a cute picture of our kids with the Easter Bunny the other day

Why am I Awake?!

Why am I awake you ask? Let me tell you...

For going on three days now every time we sit down to eat something my 3 year old decides she isn't hungry or wants to watch a cartoon or do LITERALLY anything besides sit and eat. Typical pre schooler am I right? John and I did the usual "No you will sit and eat with the rest of us." That would work fine except we also have a 9 1/2 month old and neither one of us wants to wait it out at the table arguing with a tiny human. As the days went on we started "compromising" if you will "Ok eat X  pieces of chicken etc etc and then you can get down." After three days of this I was kinda fed up. She needs to learn that we eat as a family and we don't waste our food. Please note I give her a picky eater 3 year old size portion so it's not like we're expecting her to eat a whole chicken breast.

Last night we all sat down for dinner and she did her usual ask for cartoons and we told her no. We all said the blessing and then slowly as everyone was done S was the only one left at the table. This time we took a different approach we let her say she was done and then we warned her that if she didn't eat a good dinner she couldn't have anything later;because she likes to then use the I'm hungry excuse to try and prevent bed time.

Bed time went well and she fell asleep fairly easily as did the baby. Four thirty this morning came and I was awakened by "Mom I'm getting hunny." We went downstairs and I made her the quietest and quickest thing I could think of PB&J. She scarfed it down and now the whole crew is awake and I'm over hear wishing I could sneak back upstairs and get a few more winks.

Today is our busy day. We go to our home church in the morning where I lead the singing and then we visit my grandma's church at night. I'm not so sure if we're going to be doing all of that this Sunday, we'll just have to see how the day plays out.

Anyway how many of you have mealtime battles with your kids? Let me know in the comments and no joke I would welcome any tried and true methods aside of starvation that help get a child to eat her food.

-Jessica

Home Buying

After much discussion we decided to put off buying a home for a few months until we get back from Chattanooga. We'll probably start up again in April. That will give us a few more months to save up some more money our goal is to add 4,000 to our 8,000 and have a total of 10,000. We may even change and do FHA instead of Conventional, but we'll have to see. I'm thinking about switching realtors because I am not really feeling ours. I don't like to give people a lot of leeway when it comes to following through on promises or things that they say. It may not be the best attitude, but there are so many realtors out there and so why should I have to make allowances. 

It looks like we'll be getting ready for our month long vacation  here in the next couple weeks.. Even though my hubby will still be working it will be a vacation for me and the kids! I'll have lots of pictures to share. Chattanooga is a really nice town with tons of stuff to do.


-Jessica

Whenever things start going good, a curveball is always around the corner....

Last night we got pre-approved for a home loan for 150,000$. There is not a ton of homes on the market at the moment. Johnathan now tells me that his company offered him the chance to be in Chattanooga for a month. They say they are willing to pay for us and the two kids to go, but how is that going to affect us looking for a house? Do I really want to put our life on hold for a whole month?  On the other hand it would be really hard for both of us to be away from each other and him the kids for a whole month, so it feels like we kinda have to go. The only other option would be to not have him take their offer and have him just go down every other week with the rest of the guys like they do already. I know he pushed for it because he thinks it would be fun to get away and it would, but is the fun worth the stress? I'm not so sure about that at the moment. 

Way off topic, but I was at Meijer this morning and was using their "boat" of a cart as I call it. The one with the bench that faces out and then a full size cart. I had S on the bench and H in the cart and we went about our shopping. They really need to make double cart like what they have at Sams Club. We also went to Sams this morning and it was nice having both of them right there side by side and I didn't have to maneuver this huge cart that couldn't turn all through a crowded store.

House Hunting

So Johnathan and I have all of our paperwork ready to go the our lender. The only thing standing in the way is time availability. John works 40 minutes away from the bank so we have to have the latest possible appointment. I called today and she was booked so Monday was MLKjr Day and today she's booked that pushes us back to Wednesday! That's half a week down the drain. The housing market in our area is so competitive in our price range and with what kind of property we need and want. I don't want to rush, but I also want to get the jump on a good property before spring comes and everyone else floods onto the market. 

It's so different in this area compared to where we were in Georgia. In Georgia it's flipped there are more sellers than buyers so there was a lot to chose from and you could always come in below asking price and guarantee you wouldn't have to get into a bid war with other buyers. That is what I really want to avoid here in Michigan.  We are looking for a unicorn of sorts. We need  3 bedrooms 2 bathrooms a large garage and acreage. We also want to find a property with a bonus barn or pole barn some other out building that you would store a vehicle in. We don't want suburbs, lake shore, our anywhere with sidewalks out front! 
Right now 90% of the houses for sale are in a lake community or within city limits. I have only found one that had everything we wanted, but by the time I saw it they already had a pending sale. 

I'm just going to continue praying for Gods wisdom and guidance during our home buying. John and I always argue so much when it comes to big purchases. I love my husband and I respect him as the Godly leader of our family, but we have differing ideas on what is needed and we're two strong willed people. It works great when we are on the same side! 

I will be keeping tabs on the different houses that we look at and of course be posting once we find our unicorn! 


-Jessica

But I Really Want Cake

I still haven't started my goal of losing 40lbs. I am not  sure if I can afford to eat healthy like I think I should. I don't know what kind of exercise I can do. Pretty much I'm not starting because I am afraid I won't make it! Horrible I know, but it is what it is. This morning I did find a yoga for beginners video and tried that out to see if I liked it...I didn't make it through 2 minutes and I had my three year old underneath my belly trying to help me.
On a positive note I have begun to be more mindful of the fact that I  need to reduce my portion size... I haven't really done a great job of actually eating less, but it's a little itty bitty baby step.

-Jessica

Not Being Afraid to evolve

The idea of change is not really something that most church's embrace and oftentimes for good reason. The Bible is the Word of God and nothing about it needs changing; that is a fact I completely agree with. My thoughts on change lay mostly in how to grow a church and how to get young people excited about God while also not straying for Gods Word.

Take for example an older small church with mostly elderly members. They have been doing things a certain way for many years and it might just be a trait of old age, but change is something they don't embrace even when it comes to socks or where to have lunch! At these same type of churches though you seem to hear talk about wanting to grow the church and wanting to get new younger families. They obviously realize that without new members eventually their doors would close. Somewhere between knowing they need new younger members and actually agreeing upon how best to do that comes SO MUCH DRAMA!! The older members begin to feel ownership over the church(not realizing it's just a building and the church is in the people gathered together). They shoot down ideas that are new and push for "what we've always done."  Thus time goes on and on and no new members are added or at least none that stay for any length of time.

I think we should never be afraid to utilize a method that would help bring new people to Christ or add new members to a church. Provided that it aligns with Gods Word.

The use of technology is not something to be scared of. A projector can be a very beneficial and useful tool. I'm not saying to turn away from the traditional way of things. I love cracking open a hymnal and singing loud and proud like the next gal. I also think implementing different ways of doing things can shake stuff up in a good way. Having a young person who usually just sits in the pew and having them be responsible for using Power Point and running a projector, that is a perfect way to get them involved and make them feel like they are a part of the ministry.

I don't agree with churches that rely solely on their music program to put people in the pews and replace getting into the Book, but I do think music is an important part of ministry. I love the classics just as much as the next person, but again with younger people they aren't listening to " Amazing Grace, or Just As I am Without One Plea" on the radio and let's be real....neither are we! Contemporary Christian radio is every bit as Godly as the classic Hymns. There are some that blend Christian with Rap; you don't like it?  okay so don't have Rap! There are hundreds of other artists and songs out there that I see no reason why you wouldn't put one of those songs up there from say Family Life Radio and have a young person make a slide show of it and provide the instrumentation? Try it out and don't like no harm done; nothing ventured nothing gained.

What I don't think honors God is stubbornly sticking to how things have been in the past and shooting down and admonishing others who bring ideas forth just because it makes YOU feel uncomfortable and it's not something YOU personally are interested in. You can pray all day for God to bring new people in to your fold, but at the same time God wants YOU to do the work.

I'm not sure of the passage, but there is a scripture that goes something like"God works all things for the good(his glory).

What are your thoughts on the topic of getting new younger members and dealing with older members?

-Jessica

New Year New Beginnings

It's just over two weeks into 2018. I don't know about ya'll, but my resolutions are going pretty well. I made three resolutions/goals that I want to accomplish this year. 1) Lose 40lbs 2) Buy a new house 3) Grow spiritually in a positive church environment. 

I love God and I love serving my Lord. The past 1 1/2-2 years have been an uphill climb, a humbling journey, and most of all a stressful teachable situation. 

My weight loss goal is going to be the most difficult resolution to keep and achieve this year. I am working to get toward my pre-children weight of 128. I love my children with all my heart and am very thankful that God blessed me with them, however let's be honest...kids do a number on your body! More than just the number on the scale I am also trying to work on my eating habits. I am a late night snacker and pop drinker. I am one of those moms who somehow got in the habit of eating my kids leftover food.. so weird and gross because I hate sharing food, but I guess a part of my mommy brain just doesn't want to see food go to waste. At this point going to the gym is not really doable. I have found that YouTube has hundreds of video workouts so that is the road I am taking. My husband bought me an Instant Pot for Christmas(like a million other hubbys). I have been trying to cook more nutritious meals and having just one pot makes clean up super easy.

The next goal is to buy a new house. This goal kinda frames around the third goal because they are tied together in a lot of ways. 
(I have to take a break and go back a few years to talk about our time in Georgia and the church's we visited as well as why we moved back to Michigan before I get into us now wanting to buy a house)

We moved down to Georgia in 2014 after we got married and had our daughter because we wanted to start someplace fresh, find better work, and just set out on our own and see if we could do it. Many months of searching and we found a pretty large fifth wheel camper to live in. It was like a house on wheels. We moved from Savannah to Newnan and then Jackson GA. During our full time experience we met so many nice people at the different campgrounds and RV parks we stayed at. There are so many amazing Baptist churches in Georgia and the three two that we joined while down there were wonderful. Crestwood Baptist Church in Tyrone GA was the first. It actually happened to be a church; and school, that Johnathan attended when he lived down there with his parents several years before. Pastor Edge and his family are great Godly people and it was nice to attend a church in a new area and not feel like strangers. We learned so much at this church. I really enjoyed how services were learning services. We quickly realized that we would always need a pencil and paper.Pastor Edge used power point slides like lessons. As he went through his sermon you could follow along and also take notes. It was different and really helpful for at home study.
The next church was Berean Baptist Church in Griffin GA. Never have I ever been to a more friendly and welcoming church. A co-worker of Johns and his wife went to church there and they invited us to come out and join them one Sunday morning. I took up really well with the women of the church. They had a ladies bible study on Thursdays. Those ladies were everything to me for the short while we were there. It felt nice to be around other Christian women and to learn about how Christian women talked about in the Bible and about being a Christian wife. I learned what my Spiritual gifts might be and it was just good fellowship. 
During this time we were looking to try and buy a house there and that was a stressful and ultimately futile endeavor. We prayed and prayed and asked God to guide us every step of the way. We didn't think God would pick us up and carry us all the way back to the snowy north! That is just what he did! God always answers prayer maybe not in our time or the way we want or think he should, but always works all things according to HIS plan.

Now we are back in Michigan in the end spring of 2016. We realized we couldn't live in our camper because snow and below freezing temperatures so we had to decide if we wanted to pay for an apartment, live with his parents, or be homeless lol... we found a third option. The church that we married in a few years before and that we were currently attending offered to let us stay in their vacant parsonage. They couldn't rent the house out to anyone per township rules so they came to us and said that if we fixed up the house (it was completely unlivable) and worked with the young people at the church that we could live there. Johnathan and I talked about and ultimately decided that it would be our best idea. We sunk our measly 5,000 and more into fixing up the house. We put in new doors and new tub/shower, fridge, all new paneling on the walk ways and carpet in the house. The people who lived there previously had dogs and they destroyed so much in that house. It had also flooded previously so there was some damage leftover from that. A few months later and we were ready to move in.

This brings us to the last goals of buying a new home and growing in Christ. 
Living in the home next to our church started out very positive and seemed like a huge answer to our prayers. Not having to pay rent was a big plus to us. We really enjoyed being back at our new church. It didn't take long for us to realize that things were not how we remembered and that probably had alot to do with out new role in the church. Instead of being attendees we were like staff members and with that came A TON of drama. As time went on it became clear that in their minds we were doing what they expected of us. We were constantly being chastised and when we tried to explain and ask for help or at least try and stick up for ourselves we were shut down. My hubby and I are not trained in Youth ministry. We've had no previous experience with soul winning or networking. We were just thrown in with two twenty year old people and told "Do It." It became clear that we needed to move on from this church, but because of the agreement that we made we were stuck. We weren't in a place where we could afford to buy a house and so all we could do was pray. Pray for healing with out church, pray for a better job, and pray that all the negativity wouldn't affect our heart and our relationship with God. Now that we have a better paying job we are beyond ready to get started on finding a new home and put all this garbage behind us.

I started this blog as a way to track my weight loss and home buying journeys
this photo is me at 176lbs. 

-Jessica