Rugrats and Dirty Rugs

When we first moved into our new house, our carpet was pristine. I would just look at it in wonder and think, "Wow! This is what clean and new carpet looks like!" In just over a year, it has been through many battles. A couple months after we moved in, we had a thunderstorm with strong winds coming in from the west trying to tear down our brand new house with us inside it. I was cowering in my bed in the middle of the night praying that we weren't the foolish man who built his house in the sand. The next morning, we were greeted with flooded carpets on the west side of the house. We spent the day soaking up every towel in the house with the fans blasting. That was the first battle. After that, there were the occasional drink spills, crushed food, red clay from art class, green paint, dog crap, and so on and so on. One day, our toilet decided not to flush properly and started to flood the bathroom. We didn't notice till the carpet outside the bathroom was sopping wet. ...

Teenage girls are not the most intelligent creatures in the world. When I was a teenager, my nickname in the family was Dingbat. There was cause for that. When I was 17, I got my first car. I was pretty proud of the fact that I could pay the entire $400 that the lady asked for. She obviously wanted to get rid of it pretty badly. Things didn't go smoothly for that car after I drove off with it. Two times I locked my keys in the car with it still running. One day, I was driving it home when the tire blew. Since I was only a couple blocks away from home, I decided to keeping driving till I got there. During this ditzy time in my life, my brother was 13 and had his own paper route. Most days, he would ride his bike, but since it had been cold and rainy, I drove him so he could get his papers delivered in relative warmth and dryness. The rain had left the roads very muddy that day. I pulled up to a house and my brother got out. He went to the door to collect the payment and came back to...

When my son, Nathanael, was born, it changed my life forever. I now had a little person who filled my whole world and gave me a purpose. He was a very good baby. He only complained when he was hungry. Even at night, he would lay quietly to let mommy sleep even though he was wide awake. As he grew, his sweet personality and shyness were very endearing and turned my heart to mush. Even now at almost 10 years old, he is still my sweet and quiet boy. This sweetness of nature has given him friends who call him all the time. When I pick up the phone, I love to hear a little chipmunk voice ask, "Is Nathanael there?" to which I reply, "Of course," with true delight. One day, I took Nathanael to school and came home to go about the day's business. I homeschooled Caleb, tried to clean the house, and went about my day as usual. Three o'clock came and went and I didn't even notice. For some reason, my head was in the clouds that day. By 3:30, the phone ...

I am not your typical organized housewife. I always sit in awe of those women that tell me of their organizing strategies and go home more determined than ever to fix my cluttered life. I'm still working on that. Right now, my kitchen looks like a bomb hit it. Most days, I am yelling at the boys telling them to pick up their toys, put their dirty clothes in the laundry room, clean their rooms, sweep the floor, etc. etc. I finally came to a drastic decision. I decided to put up a gate to the living room, scour the room clean, and never let the boys in there again. So far, so good. Anyone coming to our front door will see a beautifully kept up living room and say, "Wow, she really has it together!" Now I just have to figure out what to do about the rest of the house. Our microwave cart is always the place that collects the things that I find on the floor or the counter top.....and that's where we usually put our keys. After dropping Nathanael off at school, I usually ge...

When my family got together for Thanksgiving last year, my brother brought his new puppy with him. I was immediately taken with the sweet, little cocker spaniel. I thought he was adorable and such a good, little thing. I immediately decided to get my own puppy right then and there. I got home and my husband was absolutely thrilled with the idea. Yeah, right. After a month, I was still insistent about it even though he hoped I had forgotten all about my crazy infatuation. We looked up cocker spaniels on the internet and I would go all gooshy inside looking at the pictures of the puppies. We then looked at a rating system for dogs and how they related to children. Cocker spaniels were only "okay with kids" and not in the "excellent with kids" category. I wasn't happy about that, but we saw that beagles were in the category we wanted. I wanted a small dog that would be "excellent with kids". So, we looked up beagles in the area and when I saw the pictures...

What is the fascination that boys have about urinating outside? I just don't get it. I never understood my brothers' inclination for doing what I thought as disgusting things. They were always outside and it just seemed easiest to them to do their business right there. Our house stood right next to the church that my father pastored, but did that stop them from doing it in broad daylight? One day, my sister was walking from our house to the church when she looked between the buildings to see one of my brothers peeing in the dirt near the house. She gasped in complete disgust and yelled, "I'm going to tell Mom!" Of course, my brother was in complete shock and wailed, "Noooooo!" Either I had forgotten about this episode between my siblings or I chose to forget because I was clueless about this particular fascination with boys. When Nathanael was 6 and Caleb was 4, I was enlightened. They were both outside playing in the backyard. I had the windo...

How many times have I held a grudge against those who have wronged me? Too many times to count. I like to wallow in my self-pity and replay the hurtful things said and done to me over and over again like a record in my head. I want to feel the bitterness creeping through my heart and soul and nourish it so that forgiveness is a thought I'm not even close to thinking about. That is only one of my sins, but one that has been fed throughout the years. I was confronted by this particular sin of mine when I was a teenager. I was giving the silent treatment to a friend of mine for some offense that I couldn't even remember. My mother pointed out to me that I have not forgiven this person and made amends with her. I was furious with my mother for making me look into a mirror. I did not like being shown my sins. It did make me think about what kind of person I am. If I truly wanted to become more like Christ, I had to swallow my pride and forgive my friend. Not only that, but become he...

When our Justin was going on three years old, I felt it was high time he was potty-trained. Well, I had tried a number of ways to teach my older boys, but I felt the best way to teach Justin was to use a radical new idea- keep him naked from the waist down. Of course, this idea totally grossed out my poor husband, but I was determined to try it. My boys were too intelligent to use the new training pants from Huggies. They KNOW they are just like diapers. Duh! Well, Justin would even go in his new big boy underwear, so I felt an intervention was needed. Well, the very first day I tried this idea, it was going pretty smoothly. I was really just training myself by taking him to the bathroom every so often. Nighttime came along and the boys were in the kitchen eating popsicles. They were all standing in the middle of the kitchen licking away when suddenly I hear Nathanael and Caleb freaking out. I heard things like, "Oh, gross! Yuck! That's disgusting!" Then they yell, "...