I have three New Year’s resolutions for 2018.
For the last several years, I have had the same resolution: to read more than I did the previous year. Reading is such a joyful thing for me, is and has been a lifelong passion, but when life gets too busy and things start falling to the wayside, the first to be culled is often recreational fun. It shouldn’t be. What is life if it is not meant to be enjoyed? If there are no moments of spiritual fulfillment, things that satiate your soul, you are not living the best life that God intended for you.
Reading though. Man. It takes a lot of brainpower to sit and commit your focus and attention to a book.
I cannot speak for the father’s perspective because I myself have never been a father. As a mother though, I can give you some insight. The rocky hormonal teetertotter that your body goes through being pregnant and then not being pregnant and nursing and then not nursing, coupled with the sleeplessness from having a baby that seems to sleep exactly ten seconds every other week...every time you feel like you adjust, things go sideways again. It is a lot like having a headcold--that cottony feeling inside your head where your brains are supposed to be. I imagine it kind of like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz where you have a noggin stuffed full of shredded newspaper because thinking is like rifling through random words and phrases to figure out what you want to say.
After Benjamin, it took me about four years or so to feel like I had gotten a handle on it. Then I got pregnant with Tula and reset the clock.
Trying to focus on the words of a story while you can hear the kids in the other room (or more suspiciously, can’t) and your short-circuted mind is garbling out random snippets like a bad radio signal (would you like me to list every show Tom Sellack has ever been in, or can I offer you a single line selection of Selena’s “Bidi Bidi Bamba” on repeat for hours?) becomes onerous.
It is important to me, though, so I continue to try and power through. Even as little as a Verse of the Day app on my phone or a single news article, anything that connects me back to that little piece of Andie that says “hey, that’s right! I like reading!”
Young Adult books are easier to wade your way through because you don’t have to pay the strictest attention to follow every single word. Comic books are also a great medium because they have the image paired with fewer words and a managable length; $10 a month gets you unlimited access to digital copies of sixty years of Marvel comic books on your phone or tablet.
Over the years, I have found it easiest to combine my reading with interacting with the kids. My favorite author is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Columbian Nobel prize winning author from the 40’s-70’s or so. He writes in this beautiful magical realism style that I find so enchanting; the first time I read “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, it made such a profound impact on me. That is a hefty book though in terms of language, not exactly a summer beach read. I found if I read it out loud to my little kids while they are playing, it is easier for me to focus and follow along, and I get to share my story with them.
For a long time, I thought that it was mostly for my benefit; I couldn’t imagine they were getting a ton out of it because it would be too mature and over their head. While sitting one day, tiny toddling baby Gabriel brought the book I had been reading aloud and dropped it in my lap. His motions got more sedate, his vocalizations quieted, and he hovered expectantly in the vacinity. Maybe it was my wishful thinking, but it felt so deliberate that he was trying to engage me. I made it a point to read more often, for him and for Emerald and for me.
So my first resolution is to read more. Vague and obtainable because it is quantifiable without having a clear goal.
My second was to make progress toward eventually moving out of this house.
We moved here in the June 2014. We had made the decision less than six months before that we were going to relocate; I had come down at Spring Break with all three of the kids to look for a place for us to live. We stayed at Jarrod’s house for the week. Amber came to get us and drive us around to see what was available.
In the back seat, baby Benjamin was drooping off to sleep rather comically. It was like he could not keep his eyes open. We took that as a sign that we had been out too much and needed to head back to Jarrod’s for naptime. I took him to the guest room we were staying in to lay him down and found the recently emptied bottle of Gabriel’s nighttime medicine.
For those of you keeping count at home, this was the second time Benjamin had done this.
This is a medicine that was dissolved in a sugar syrup, so it tasted like yum. I don’t know who thought that was a good idea--when I was growing up, medicine tasted like black licorice and hate. But it was supposed to encourage Gabriel to more willingly take it because without it, he was not going to sleep at all.
The first time Ben drank it, he had climbed up on my kitchen counter and nabbed the bottle, knocking it back before I could stop him. The lid of the bottle after a few days didn’t fit on as securely as it did in the beginning because the syrup would crystalize around the rim, rendering the child safety cap less effective. I didn’t even consider that it was a possibility because there was no reason for him to seek it out, and I thought it was safe on top of the fridge and thus “out of his reach”.
After that first time, we took to locking the medicines in a lockbox with a key.
Once again, my arrogance that said that Benjamin would surely not be able to get into it AGAIN was foiled by a tiny sir’s determination for self-destruction.
So this was March 2014. I took Benny to the Emergency Room where they said he would have to be admitted into pediatric ICU. Michael won that day with one of those amazing husband moments--I called him and he asked if I wanted him to take off of work and drive up to help. Back then, he still worked for the car dealership so any time off was less selling time and less money we would have in the next paycheck. I told him yes, I very much needed him there...and right that moment, the door swung open and Michael was there, still on the phone with me. He had left three hours before because he had anticipated that I would need him.
That night, I stayed at Jarrod’s with Emerald and Gabriel because Gabe wouldn’t sleep without me there, and Michael stayed at the hospital with Benjamin. The next day, I had an appointment with the landlord of ACU’s rental properties to go look at some houses.
I was exhausted, emotionally and physically, depressed, worried. It was just a bad day. I had just come from visiting Ben in the hospital where they told us that Child Protective Services had been called to investigate us, find out if we were negligent or hurting him. We were going from house to house and I was trying to watch Emerald and Gabriel. It was a really hot day, so Gabe kept finding toilets in these rent houses to stick his head in, a fact that was disgusting and embarrassing. I knew that I had to pick a house that day because Michael’s job at the university was starting soon and we had to have a place to live.
In the end, we picked one literally for no other reason that the house number stood out to us--666. It was like a conversation piece. Few months later, we moved into this beautiful house on a quiet street that costs much more than we are comfortable paying for a rent house.
Granted, part of it is the city and the location. It is a college neighborhood in a college town; we knew this coming into it. And the proximity to campus was a big sell, not only because Michael would be able to walk back and forth to work if needs be, but because of the highly praised elementary our kids would go to.
It is my goal to get out of this too-small house and in to something more sustainable. I talked about that at length in a recent post. My resolution is to make some sort of progress. To that end, I have started carefully going through each room and donating things that we have outgrown or that has fallen into disuse. When we moved from Lubbock, we condensed our belongings by a third so we wouldn’t have quite so much to relocate, but stuff tends to accumulate over time. I am also trying to repair or replace what I can, and steadily clean and condense from room to room. I have so very little hope of finding something more affordable, but I can to be ready to move in God’s time.
Those are my first two resolutions. My final one?
To write more.
--Andie
After Benjamin, it took me about four years or so to feel like I had gotten a handle on it. Then I got pregnant with Tula and reset the clock.
Trying to focus on the words of a story while you can hear the kids in the other room (or more suspiciously, can’t) and your short-circuted mind is garbling out random snippets like a bad radio signal (would you like me to list every show Tom Sellack has ever been in, or can I offer you a single line selection of Selena’s “Bidi Bidi Bamba” on repeat for hours?) becomes onerous.
It is important to me, though, so I continue to try and power through. Even as little as a Verse of the Day app on my phone or a single news article, anything that connects me back to that little piece of Andie that says “hey, that’s right! I like reading!”
Young Adult books are easier to wade your way through because you don’t have to pay the strictest attention to follow every single word. Comic books are also a great medium because they have the image paired with fewer words and a managable length; $10 a month gets you unlimited access to digital copies of sixty years of Marvel comic books on your phone or tablet.
Over the years, I have found it easiest to combine my reading with interacting with the kids. My favorite author is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Columbian Nobel prize winning author from the 40’s-70’s or so. He writes in this beautiful magical realism style that I find so enchanting; the first time I read “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, it made such a profound impact on me. That is a hefty book though in terms of language, not exactly a summer beach read. I found if I read it out loud to my little kids while they are playing, it is easier for me to focus and follow along, and I get to share my story with them.
For a long time, I thought that it was mostly for my benefit; I couldn’t imagine they were getting a ton out of it because it would be too mature and over their head. While sitting one day, tiny toddling baby Gabriel brought the book I had been reading aloud and dropped it in my lap. His motions got more sedate, his vocalizations quieted, and he hovered expectantly in the vacinity. Maybe it was my wishful thinking, but it felt so deliberate that he was trying to engage me. I made it a point to read more often, for him and for Emerald and for me.
So my first resolution is to read more. Vague and obtainable because it is quantifiable without having a clear goal.
My second was to make progress toward eventually moving out of this house.
We moved here in the June 2014. We had made the decision less than six months before that we were going to relocate; I had come down at Spring Break with all three of the kids to look for a place for us to live. We stayed at Jarrod’s house for the week. Amber came to get us and drive us around to see what was available.
In the back seat, baby Benjamin was drooping off to sleep rather comically. It was like he could not keep his eyes open. We took that as a sign that we had been out too much and needed to head back to Jarrod’s for naptime. I took him to the guest room we were staying in to lay him down and found the recently emptied bottle of Gabriel’s nighttime medicine.
For those of you keeping count at home, this was the second time Benjamin had done this.
This is a medicine that was dissolved in a sugar syrup, so it tasted like yum. I don’t know who thought that was a good idea--when I was growing up, medicine tasted like black licorice and hate. But it was supposed to encourage Gabriel to more willingly take it because without it, he was not going to sleep at all.
The first time Ben drank it, he had climbed up on my kitchen counter and nabbed the bottle, knocking it back before I could stop him. The lid of the bottle after a few days didn’t fit on as securely as it did in the beginning because the syrup would crystalize around the rim, rendering the child safety cap less effective. I didn’t even consider that it was a possibility because there was no reason for him to seek it out, and I thought it was safe on top of the fridge and thus “out of his reach”.
After that first time, we took to locking the medicines in a lockbox with a key.
Once again, my arrogance that said that Benjamin would surely not be able to get into it AGAIN was foiled by a tiny sir’s determination for self-destruction.
So this was March 2014. I took Benny to the Emergency Room where they said he would have to be admitted into pediatric ICU. Michael won that day with one of those amazing husband moments--I called him and he asked if I wanted him to take off of work and drive up to help. Back then, he still worked for the car dealership so any time off was less selling time and less money we would have in the next paycheck. I told him yes, I very much needed him there...and right that moment, the door swung open and Michael was there, still on the phone with me. He had left three hours before because he had anticipated that I would need him.
That night, I stayed at Jarrod’s with Emerald and Gabriel because Gabe wouldn’t sleep without me there, and Michael stayed at the hospital with Benjamin. The next day, I had an appointment with the landlord of ACU’s rental properties to go look at some houses.
I was exhausted, emotionally and physically, depressed, worried. It was just a bad day. I had just come from visiting Ben in the hospital where they told us that Child Protective Services had been called to investigate us, find out if we were negligent or hurting him. We were going from house to house and I was trying to watch Emerald and Gabriel. It was a really hot day, so Gabe kept finding toilets in these rent houses to stick his head in, a fact that was disgusting and embarrassing. I knew that I had to pick a house that day because Michael’s job at the university was starting soon and we had to have a place to live.
In the end, we picked one literally for no other reason that the house number stood out to us--666. It was like a conversation piece. Few months later, we moved into this beautiful house on a quiet street that costs much more than we are comfortable paying for a rent house.
Granted, part of it is the city and the location. It is a college neighborhood in a college town; we knew this coming into it. And the proximity to campus was a big sell, not only because Michael would be able to walk back and forth to work if needs be, but because of the highly praised elementary our kids would go to.
It is my goal to get out of this too-small house and in to something more sustainable. I talked about that at length in a recent post. My resolution is to make some sort of progress. To that end, I have started carefully going through each room and donating things that we have outgrown or that has fallen into disuse. When we moved from Lubbock, we condensed our belongings by a third so we wouldn’t have quite so much to relocate, but stuff tends to accumulate over time. I am also trying to repair or replace what I can, and steadily clean and condense from room to room. I have so very little hope of finding something more affordable, but I can to be ready to move in God’s time.
Those are my first two resolutions. My final one?
To write more.
--Andie
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