will i be potty training forever?

Potty training.  I have not been looking forward to this task of parenting.  In talking to friends who had kids before me, I would hear the sighs…the groans…the utter frustration.  Many parents got so desperate they just let Junior wander around pants-less, which to my germophobe mind sounds rather disgusting. Imagine the surprises Junior could leave, say, behind a chair.  If I wanted the opportunity to put my foot down into a pile of poo, I would get a cat, or a dog. 

But, who knows, maybe I will get that desperate too.

I have worked through a lot of my worries about potty training.  I still find it extremely difficult to figure out how to travel while potty training and I do get thrown off from my attempts if the routine changes.  But I’m getting a little more ok with the whole idea, a little more ready to be done with diapers.

But Burrito is showing so little interest in the potty that I begin to have self-doubt.  Have I talked about it too little?  Too much?  Have I failed to motivate her?  I’m trying, now, I really am.  We tried the sticker chart.  Yeah.  In a week and a half, she earned a combined total of zero stickers.  And she loves stickers.

Every time I bring up the potty, she almost without fail says, “NO!  No use potty!”  And when I do insist and have her sit there, she simply can’t (or won’t?) go.  I did manage to get her to go ONCE last week for the reward of a chocolate chip, but it hasn’t worked since.

I feel like I did when I was pregnant with Burrito, when I thought, “I’m gonna be pregnant forever!”  In this case, “She’s gonna be in diapers forever!”  She just isn’t interested and I feel like by trying to force it, I’m making her less interested.  But if I don’t try to force her, won’t she be going to prom in diapers?  Which will be like seriously embarrassing! 

It’s amazing how whatever stage of life we are in, it is so easy to be tempted to see it as lasting forever.  But if I had a penny for every time an older parent told me, “It goes so fast,” I would be a wealthy woman indeed.  I heard the perfect quote about parenting young children recently, “The days are long, but the years are short.”  That’s why I have made a concerted effort from the beginning to remind myself that I will long for these little kid days later.  I have made an effort to remind myself of this on the most frustrating days.  When baby wouldn’t go to sleep.  When toddler wouldn’t use the potty.  When she wanted to whine about everything under the sun. 

I may be frustrated about potty training (along with every other parent of a toddler on earth), but maybe this frustrating time is a time to slow down and savor these last moments of babyhood with her.  Parenthood is a process of your little one becoming bigger and growing farther and farther away from you.  That letting go is sad and tough at every stage.  I get eighteen years to raise her.  Eighteen years to hold her close and train her in the way she should go.  Eighteen years.  Funny, before I had kids, it sounded like FOREVER.  Now it sounds like the blink of an eye.

I can potty train a little longer.  Yes, I can do that.

guest post by christopher: from 331 to 231 pounds

In honor of my husband reaching his long worked-for goal of losing 100 pounds comes this post in which he writes about the tremendous journey he has been on.  I couldn't be more proud of him. If you're facing obstacles and an uphill battle, Christopher is proof that you can do it.

In May of 2005, I married the love of my life. However, the previous years of loneliness and self-loathing had taken their toll. On my wedding day, I weighed 331 pounds, my heaviest to that point. My wife is a beautiful, slender woman, and I never thought I could find someone like that to love me at that size. But she did. And I wanted to change. I wanted to change for myself, but I had never done it for myself in the past. I realized that I needed someone else to change for, and I had one of those people now.

I say “one of them” because I still needed one good kick. I was on my internship in Glenville, MN when I got married, and the congregation was trying to raise funds for their youth going to the National Youth Gathering in San Antonio. I was trying to figure out a way that I could be a part of that. One day, the idea struck me: take pledges per pound lost over the summer. I wrestled with the idea for a couple of weeks, and with Rebecca’s encouragement, I decided to take a chance. At the end of that summer, I had raised $600 for the youth, and dropped my first 22 lbs.

We then moved to Rockford, IL, for her internship. Rockford sort of became a “lost year”, because of my eating habits those days. However, I did find something there that has helped me ever since: the 5K. I was walking one day along the Rock River, on a multi-use path, and I noticed that they had distances marked in the pavement. I was trying to get back on track with my weight loss, and I thought that doing a 5K, which are usually run for charity, would help me with my “do it for others” motivation. I ran my first 5K in Janesville, WI on August 5, 2006. I was sucking wind at the end, but I finished in 38:40, proving that I did run at least some of it. When we moved back to seminary, I was still around 300 lbs.

At seminary, I tried to get to the gym to run three times per week, and we had a huge hill to walk up to get to class. We bought a new scale just before the new year, and all of a sudden, it said I was 286. I wasn’t even trying! So, of course, I had to start trying. I did a number of 5Ks that year, and tried to get to the gym as much as possible. On graduation day, May 2007, I weighed 266 lbs, 65 lbs below my wedding day.

Moving to North Dakota was tough. I put about 15 lbs back on in the first few months there. Then I got my treadmill. I was able to work out without leaving the house, and it saved me a whole lot of time. I could “shoehorn” workouts into my day, and I started dropping again, reaching 247 lbs when everything changed again: Grace was born.

Caring for an infant takes a lot of time away from caring for yourself, unfortunately. I crept back upward again, reaching 264 in January 2010. It took me a while to get back into a routine where I could run consistently, because when I ran, my eating habits were better too. I tried early morning. I tried later at night. However, it just kept shifting on me. I kept going down, though. I eventually reached 236 in mid-April 2010. I wanted to hit 100 lost then, but then various stressors conspired against me. Grace needed more attention, my wife lost her father, my wife’s job was threatened, and there was no peace in our work. By the time we left North Dakota to move to Montana, I was back up to 253.

When we got here, I resolved that I was going to find a way to stick to my routine. I talked it over with Rebecca, and I decided that I would work it into my day. I would be in the office from 8-11, come home to run and have lunch (and stop sweating), and then head back to the office at 1. It has worked tremendously well. I have still had some bad days (and weeks) with the eating, but I try to keep myself at 1700 calories per day, which gives me plenty of energy while still putting me at a calorie deficit on the days I don’t run. Just before my birthday, I realized that I was again within striking distance of losing 100. This time, I committed myself to it. I’ve already run 2 5Ks this year to keep me motivated, and I publicized my goal with some of my congregation members, who have been asking me how things were going. When I got on that scale this morning, and saw the 231 I’ve been waiting for, I was immensely proud. I know how hard I’ve worked, and to see the results under my feet is very satisfying.

I’ve still got some work to do. According to the BMI tables, in 10 more pounds, I will no longer be “obese”, just “overweight”. To get into the “normal” range, I’ve got another 47 or so to go. Whether I get there or not, I don’t know. But I’m going to keep running, keep eating sensibly, and just keep living. I know I’ll still stumble at times, but if there’s anything this part of my life has taught me, it’s that you’ve got to get back on the horse. I’ve had to get up off the ground a lot of times, but it’s been worth it every step of the way.

anniversary

This week is Christopher’s and my 6^th wedding anniversary.  I can’t tell you how happy I still am to be married to him. 

Honestly, our relationship might not have worked.  But I’m so glad that it did.

Christopher and I met at seminary.  We were friends—good friends, trusted friends.  He had a little crush on me.  We both dated other people.  I had a devastating break-up and Christopher comforted me (as a friend).  But I didn’t want to take advantage of him, because I knew he still had a little crush.  This crush was confirmed during a trip to Florida for a pair of friends’ wedding.  He said, “Can I talk to you?”  And because of all the sighing that went on before this question, I already knew what he wanted to talk about.  He was about to go on internship to Southern Minnesota, while I remained in the Twin Cities for my next year of classes.  He knew he would always regret it if he didn’t tell me how he felt about me.  But he, above all, was concerned that I was still healing from my break-up and didn’t want to add more stress.  Hence all the sighing before our conversation.  I like to say that I let him down REAL easy…so easy that I married him!

The truth is, I told him at the time that I wasn’t interested.  I hadn’t really felt that way about him.  I had a habit of being interested in moody, artsy guys… guys that gave me the thrill of the chase.  And there was no chase with Christopher.  There was just respect, openness, clarity.  No challenge at all!

So I let him down easy.  He went to internship.  I went to class.

And then I started missing him.  I started thinking about what a true and good person he was.  I started thinking that we could really make each other happy.  We could really be committed to each other.

I called him up.  “I think I want to ask you something.”  “You think you want to ask me something??”  “I do want to ask you something.”  I asked him out.

I asked him out, but he planned the date.  And instead of the sports pub types of places he would frequent, where you can get wings, watch the game, and play a little trivia, he found a super classy Italian place down-town.  Then he took me out to a jazz club for a poetry slam.  He knew I wrote poetry.  It wasn’t really his scene, but he was so thoughtful to do something I would enjoy.  It really touched me.  I began to see him in another light.  We had a wonderful time.

On the ride home, though, I was careful to caution him that despite things going well, I still wasn’t sure where I was at with our relationship.  I asked him to guard his heart.  I didn’t want to break it.

We talked a lot on the phone in the weeks ahead.  We had some serious conversations about worries I had, questions I had.  Finally, I felt a release in my spirit to take the plunge.  We started dating.

We’ve never looked back.

We got engaged pretty quickly.  In seminary you kind of have to make a decision about a relationship because the process forces you into it.  But we probably would have anyway.  We are people who commit.  That was the beauty of our relationship.  We had never been the type who tried to date lots of people.  We wanted to date one person and then marry them.  It was great to find that same trait in each other.

Even so, as I look back now, sometimes I think our early love was a bit immature.  It was all flash and fire and pizzazz.  And even though we had told ourselves there would be challenges, that didn’t make tough times any easier.  It just made them expected.  But through it all, we’ve had our communication, our love, our concern and respect for each other.  And that has made our lives together so good.  And if our early love was infatuation, our later love has deepened and I like to think it has also matured quite a bit. 

When we were first married, I used to worry all the time that if I ever said I was sorry for anything or if I ever stopped putting my needs at the top of the list, I would disappear (this from witnessing several bad marriages close-up).  But after being married to Christopher for 6 years, he has convinced me that he is not the kind of man who will trample me under foot.  He will never make me a doormat.  He has no interest in me disappearing.  And so, I have mellowed a lot.  His unconditional, consistent love has taught me that it’s ok to admit I’m wrong, ok to put his needs ahead of mine sometimes.  It’s ok to love like that. 

It’s kind of like how the Apostle Paul said in Ephesians 5 that husbands should love their wives the way Christ loves the Church.  I think my husband does that.  Not perfectly, of course.  He’s only human.  But his love draws self-giving love out of me.  Slowly, little by little I too am learning to love like that too.

computer-less

I am computer-less at the moment.  I am able to steal away a few times a week to use my husband's computer in the church office briefly when he isn't using it but until our new hard-drive arrives from Acer, to replace the hard-drive that went kaput a mere 4 or 5 months after purchase...until then I am computer-less.

Woe is me.  I have been cut off from the world, from blogging, from Facebook right when the MOST IMPORTANT WORLD EVENTS IN A LONG TIME have taken place.  From the joy of the Royal Wedding to the game-changer death of Osama Bin Laden.  If there was ever a time I needed to tell you my thoughts, and to read others' thoughts about the ups and downs of our world it is now.  Alas.

Well.  I think there are worse problems to have.  Like about a month ago when I was down in the deep pit of anxiety and depression.  And come to think of it, I have been getting a heck of a lot of reading done.  (I just sprinted through Unplanned by Abby Johnson and From Black Hills to Tractor Wheels by The Pioneer Woman.)  And I've been less distracted with Burrito.  She's gotten to the point where I have said enough times to her, "Mommy needs to check something on the computer" that she now says, "I check on the computer."  Hm.  Maybe a little breather isn't so bad. 

Still, I would like to get up to speed on the bloggers' reactions to Princess Kate's dress.  Ah, well.  The blogosphere waits for no one.

creative suppers on the cheap (I)

Since going down to one income, our family has had to do some budgetary adjustments.  We are much more conscious of what we are spending on groceries and much less willing to throw out leftovers or produce.  I won't say we perfectly use every last morsel, but we do try a lot harder to waste very little.  Whereas I used to plan my menus around what I wanted to eat, now I plan them around what is on sale.  However, I find that I can always find something delicious to make, even with more budgetary constraints.

Food is important to me.  While I never starved as a kid, there were years when food wasn't the most plentiful.  I tend to stock up enough food so that I never have to worry about being hungry.

But food doesn't just inspire sad memories in me.  Some of my happiest memories are about food too.  I just got a book from the library called What I Eat: Around the World in 80 Diets.  One essay in this book asks the question, "Why do we cook, when it's not necessary for life?"  The answer the authors come up with is that cooking is something that is simply very human.  It adds a powerful dimension of creature comfort to our lives.  It separates us from the animal kingdom.  I would add that it is a powerful burst of creativity.  It even brings some meaning to our lives.  My favorite quote from an interview during my freelance writing days was when a cook told me that she felt cooking was one of the most intimate things you could do for another human being because when you cook something, it becomes a part of them.  Cooking means sharing in community, sharing in creativity, bringing something of beauty to the lives of those around you.  It brings people together.  It brings joy into my heart.

All this to say, I don't know if I could live on a diet of rice and beans.  Cooking and food are too important to me.  If there is a way to seize up life and experience it with gusto for each person, cooking and eating are my way.  So, one of my biggest worries as our budget got tighter was that it would mean very, very boring eating. 

Boy, have I been shocked.  We eat good.  We eat so good. 

And like I said above, one of the biggest helps is wasting less.  This means not only eating leftovers, but also not always having to follow a recipe.  Which is new for me.  I have almost always been a recipe cook, afraid to venture outside the boundaries of the known, the defined.  But when we have a bunch of veggies about to go bad in your fridge, when you have a hankering for something wonderful to eat, you bring these two elements together and you make something that makes sense to you.  That's how I came up with my Roasted Vegetables with Maple-Balsamic Glaze (which I made for friends this Easter and they loved it).  I am finding that if I have a well-stocked refrigerator and pantry (thank you, Costco!), if I understand some basics about technique when I cook (the why, not just the what), I can put together some lovely food.  Of course, I have to be willing to fail a little bit.  Not everything I create or adapt will turn out perfectly.  Sometimes there will be a great big flop.  Am I willing to fail?

One recent meal which decidedly did not fail came about because we had been given some beautiful lake trout caught by a local fisherman.  It was from a smaller fish, so the meat was a gorgeous pink, almost the color of salmon.  I decided not to mess too much with what God had made so beautifully, so I simply salted and peppered the filets, coated them in Dijon mustard, caked them in panko breadcrumbs and fried them in extra virgin olive oil in a cast iron skillet.  They came out crunchy and browned and almost buttery, melting in my mouth.  It was easily some of the best fish I had ever had.  I paired it with an adaptation of a recipe I had found in Cooking Light magazine, Mediterranean Barley with chickpeas and arugula  (I adapted this to Mediterranean Bulgar with chickpeas and spinach; spinach always makes an excellent substitute for arugula and is often easier to get.) Altogether, it was truly a beautiful meal.

I am learning to take what I have been given and make something beautiful out of it.

Hm, maybe that's a lesson to learn from life in general...

first communion at age 2

Burrito may only be 2 ½ but she took her first communion last night at our Maundy Thursday service.

We are Lutheran and most Lutheran churches that I know have first communion at around third grade, though it is starting to differ more and more.  I used to be fine with this age.  To be honest, I just didn’t think about it much.  It was just the tradition. 

I grew up evangelical, but I don’t remember ever not having communion, but then I had a profession of faith so early that I don’t remember it either.  After talking to my Mom, it appears I had communion from the earliest of ages.  She doesn’t remember me not taking it, although it’s probably a fair guess that my parents waited till after my profession of faith.

At any rate, my parents didn’t believe in excluding me from the church and the blessings of it, even though I was a child.  I participated in worship, Bible study, personal and family devotions, service to others, evangelism (sometimes at my own initiative), and communion.  I am grateful to my parents for making all of these things a priority and for taking the time to teach me.  I think this “daily life” faith that they taught and modeled is why I have a strong faith today.

I joined the Lutheran church as a young adult, drawn to the strong articulation of grace that it teaches.  I was a pastor in North Dakota and gave kids their first communion in third grade.  And even though I had taken it since I was a young child, I didn’t really think about the third grade approach.  It was just a tradition.

And then Burrito came along and like much of my view of the world, my view of childhood communion changed too.  My changing view began a couple months ago when I would take Burrito up to communion with me to receive a blessing and she would turn to me and say, “I want it too!”  And I had no earthly reason that I could give her why she couldn’t participate.  I agonized over this.  I couldn’t imagine telling her, “Well, honey this is just for the adults and the people that can think abstractly.”

Didn’t Jesus say, “Let the little children come to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven”?  Didn’t Jesus repeatedly tell us that it’s not that little children need to have faith like adults, but that adults need to have faith like little children? 

I think our fear of giving communion to children comes from Paul’s exhortation in I Corinthians 11 that warns us of taking communion unworthily.  But he simply says that we need to “recognize” the body and blood of our Lord.  Years ago, I heard a wonderful sermon by Pastor Jack Hayford in which he pointed out that the only way to come to communion unworthily is if we fail to recognize the forgiveness that God is extending to us.  In other words, we need to avail ourselves of the healing power of communion.  I suppose this could come either through not acknowledging our sinfulness or not acknowledging Jesus’ forgiveness.  I think there’s also a fair argument to be made that what Paul is saying in I Corinthians is actually, “Don’t glut yourselves on communion and exclude some of the believers because so many of you are taking too much!”  So, it’s a passage not about how only some believers can take communion but on how every believer can.

The fear of partaking of communion unworthily has robbed all too many people of the blessings of communion.  In my congregation in North Dakota, I would talk to some of the older ladies and they told me how only the people who had community status of being “really holy” would come forward to partake.  Others felt they would be viewed too prideful to come forward and take the sacrament.  They now look back on those days as pretty sad.  And I agree.  What a twisting of what communion is meant to be when we say that only perfect people can have it!  Because, of course, there are no perfect people.  We all need God’s grace, and He asks us to come in faith to receive it.  To come like little children.

But it never had hit me how important communion can be to a little child until my daughter said to me, “I want it too!”

I began to think about how adults with their ways of making faith too complicated and with their justifications for their sin nature might be much more in danger of partaking unworthily than a little child.  I do believe children are sinners too, as a toddler tantrum will reveal!  But they are more guileless, simpler and find it easier to believe than adults too.  They don’t make things too complicated.

I also thought about how the hands-on aspect of communion was practically made for a child.  It’s like a regular children’s sermon on Jesus being with us, forgiveness, community.  Kids love things they can taste and touch.  In the Old Testament, there are countless celebrations and ceremonies that God calls the people to do and to use to teach their children about faith.  I believe one of the biggest reasons why there are so many hands-on symbols in the Jewish faith is for the teaching of the children.  We have a fantastic opportunity to teach our kids about their faith in communion but for many of us, the message we are sending is, “You aren’t old enough, you aren’t good enough for this.”  We should be inviting them into the richness of communion!  How arrogant to think that we adults “get it” but the kids don’t!

My husband and I both began to have a change in our thinking about communion in the past few months.  We talked and prayed about it.  And in the end, he presented his thoughts to our church council and asked for their approval to change the policy to being when the parent feels their child is ready, with no requirements on the age.  They approved this change, and he announced in church that younger children would be able to receive communion on Maundy Thursday if their parents felt they were ready.  One more child joined us and clearly was ready. 

Last night was a powerful time with children receiving this special gift of Jesus with their families.  Burrito and Christopher and I went over and over the basic teachings about communion.  She learned to say, “This is My Body, This is My Blood…shed for you…forgive our sins!”  She learned to say “Amen” after she received communion and that it means, “I believe you!”  I told her that just as surely as when Mommy says, “It’s time for breakfast” and she gets breakfast, when Jesus says, “This is My Body, This is My Blood,” Jesus is really there.  We talked about the story over and over again.  She helped to bake the bread for communion. 

Yesterday, I realized I had been so busy teaching and preparing her that I had neglected to her a cross necklace to remember the day.  I ran and looked through my jewelry box and found a perfect gold cross.  Christopher teared up when I gave it to her.  She had fun showing off her pretty cross to people at church.

She was really excited for the communion service.  She whispered loudly through most of the service but said most of the Lord’s Prayer and “hear our prayer.”  She pays much more attention to the service than her behavior sometimes indicates.  Christopher announced her name along with the other kids taking first communion and she said, “That’s me!”  She went up and knelt down with me. I think the most precious moment for me was seeing her hold her little hands up to receive the bread that her Daddy placed in her hands.  She ate it and drank all her grape juice.  She forgot to say “Amen” but I reminded her and she said it then.  It was such a special moment for our family, and I am so glad that she is able to experience God’s grace in communion now.  And I am glad not just for her, but for the other children who will come to experience God’s grace because He gave us a change of heart and a change in understanding.

This morning, when I went to get her in her crib, she said, “I drink all my juice!”  Apparently, the special moments of communion were still on her mind.  Thanks be to God!

(Note: For another perspective on this, my friend Liz has a post about how she let her 23 month old take communion.  She is a children's minister.)

easter dress

We went all out this year for Burrito’s Easter dress. dresses.  A lovely blue sundress with eyelet lace and yellow flowers.  A flouncy hat with a big white bow.  White gloves and a matching handbag.  And, of course, cute little white sandals.

She was so excited to get home and try everything on.  In fact, she wanted to try on her dress in her car seat, but the logistics proved impossible.

It had been a long day.  Lots of racing around and shopping, a dinner out, and a late night (for her) coming back.  We skipped her bath so we could get her to bed sooner.  She needs her rest and has even more than the usual toddler grouchiness if she doesn’t get enough sleep.  In fact, she had been a bit grouchy on the ride home.  I tried to take her dress away (worried that her attempts to get it on were in fact stretching it out) and she burst into tears.

Yes, she was a little grouchy.

But the minute we put her in her dress and accessories, she transformed into a young lady.  She stood in front of our long mirror and analyzed herself.  And was it my imagination, or did she stand up a little straighter?  She was clearly delighted, declaring, “I like my pretty dress!”  And Christopher and I were forced to collapse on the floor in response to the sheer cuteness.  “Oh my goodness!  How is she our’s?”

Nothing delights me more as a mother than getting my daughter something that will delight her.  The sheer joy on her face, the joy of feeling beautiful and cared for, the joy of having something that she really loves is worth any price tag.

I remember Jesus saying something like that.  He said that a good parent won’t give their child a stone or a snake when they ask for a fish.  He said that even as we delight in giving good things to our children, so our Heavenly Father delights in giving us the Holy Spirit.

It’s amazing to me to think that the way I feel about my daughter is how God feels about me.  He delights in me.  He delights in seeing me delighted.  I tend to think about God all too often as some sort of cosmic rule monger, always watching me to see if I trip up.  The idea of God as a delighted, loving Heavenly Father is a tough one to get my mind around.  But it’s the picture of God that Jesus gives to us.

This is Easter week, so naturally my mind is on Jesus’ sacrifice and death for me, and His victory over death in the resurrection.  My mind is on the ultimate gift that I’ve ever received.  The gift for which no price tag was too great, that I might know the delight of life forever.  The gift of salvation.

Hebrews says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (12:2, NIV).

Jesus delights in the joy of giving His children good gifts.

The other day, Burrito turned to me and said, “I like my pretty dress.  I dance in the palace.”  “In the palace?  Like Cinderella?”  “Yeah.”

What joy to give my daughter a good gift.