Life is like Potty Training...

I've come to realize that life is a lot like trying to potty train one of your kids. You need to put up with probably having a whole lot of pee (poo) all over the place, but if you persevere- eventually they get it. Not to say that you don't have days (weeks, or longer) where there might be setbacks, but they finally get it.

Now most people always try to comfort you by saying that they've never heard of a kid going off to school in a diaper and I have to bite my tongue to keep from telling them about the guy I knew in college who still wore diapers (granted he had some mental challenges- but still, he was in diapers). It wasn't exactly comforting.

But I digress.

I've been thinking a lot lately about life and how I think I'm doing and where I think I should be- with schooling, the kids, the home, etc., and realizing that I've spent the better part of the past few years doing the same things over and over yet expecting different results (and secretly wondering why I feel like I'm going insane).

So how is that like potty training? Well, usually the first few days of anything really sucks. It's hard, requires tonnes more time and effort than you are used to expending and/or want to put out and honestly, it's easy to convince yourself that it's not the right time for whatever (or that you aren't ready to deal with this).

This time, however, call it pride or what-have-you (mostly pride), I wasn't backing down on this potty training thing again. I'd caved in too many times already and I'd had it (that and all the other people I knew with kids much younger than child #5 were potty training THEIR kids- so I'd better get with the program)!

Maybe if I'd get that backbone about all the other things in my life that need to go I'd actually make some progress and not feel so frustrated. But time after time I cave- "it's not fair to the kids to have monster mommy as she tries to deal with whatever it is this time around". That's where the 'regression' comes in.

Sometimes you think, ah, finally, I've got it (mastered it, finished it, etc.)- only for God to pop it up again and let you know that, well really, no you didn't really have it. It makes you want to throw up your hands and just scream (or am I the only one that feels that way?)- but you just have to find the trigger, buckle down and plow through it and get things back on track.

Nobody starts school in diapers (okay, ignore my earlier caveat). My last post was about perspective. I keep saying hindsight is always 20/20- yet quite often I don't always take that advice. And that can bring you down faster than a lead parachute.

Finally, there is the 'owning' part of potty training. Getting your kids to the bathroom often enough that they don't have any accidents really only means that the parents are trained. In my books, until the child takes ownership and get's themselves to the bathroom (parental assistance to help them with pants, etc. is okay), they really aren't potty trained. They need to listen to their body and take the appropriate steps to deal with things.

For me, it means that I need to be more intentional about owning where I'm at. I need to reflect on things that have happened and why, and then seek the Lord's wisdom about how to handle it better next time- instead of just spewing my frustrations out into my journal every few weeks. Because honestly, that hasn't fixed much of anything yet for me.

So here's to potty training our lives- putting the crap where it belongs!

It's been a while...

Well, it's been way too long since I last blogged. So much has happened and I almost feel a bit bad that I haven't kept up with it better- to have more of an in depth log of the home school journey that we're on.

However, blogging through the past months would really have probably turned into a massive pity party about how frustrated I was with so many things- to the point that I was threatening to send all the school- aged kids back to public school because I was done!

This led to copious amounts of wailing on their part, and a small amount of change in attitude on their part. Not surprisingly, the biggest difference came after MY attitude changed. That seems to be my theme lately- change me.

It hasn't been fun and I would rather just be perfect- forget the growing/changing part. Or maybe the problem is that I have a standard of perfection (to which neither I nor anyone else will probably ever attain)- and I'm mad that I can't be there (and that nobody else around me is there either). Could this be part of the reason I always feel so frustrated with things/life?

I had wanted to summarize the past 6 months and had this long post going- only to realize that I really haven't thought about what happened and where it's gotten me/us. Actually, I don't know if I've ever really sat down and thought through things to see where we were and where we've gotten to (or where we need to go next).

That and I'm having one of my monster ear aches- so I can't really think.

But I've finally written something and hopefully I can spend some time over the next few weeks answering some of those questions. It will probably be good for me.

Night all!