Family day

Today is a family day.  Normally I would go to campus, but Bart convinced me to stay home today.  He persuaded me.  It really didn't take much.  Anytime my husband asks me to stay home and spend time with my family, it's pretty much impossible for me to say no.  I mean, how often does that happen!?!?

But thus far, it's been productive.  Bart is doing school with the kids while I fix our door.  It's back on.  Temporarily.  We'll need to buy some good fat screws for the one hinge, but it's there for now.  It will be nice to not have as many mosquitos.  And not feel like everyone can just walk by and look into our apartment.  It will for sure be quieter too.  Oh the blessing of a door.

I have a messy kitchen to clean up, 2 dirty bathrooms, a leaking shower (which I discovered this morning that I for sure cannot fix) and toys and books everywhere.  Somehow in the madness of life here, Bart and I have both gotten pretty lax with making the kids clean up, at least clean up well.  The result is a mess pretty much everywhere.  So lately it has just been maintaining the mess.

Noah has officially started reading.  He gets stuck every once in a while.  We have some fun books with a bunch of 3 letter words that make it really easy for him, so that helps a lot.  He seems to be enjoying it.

The kids keep talking about wanting a baby brother or sister (you can take an easy guess as to which one wants what).  Ha!  Good luck with that.  I had a really healthy conversation with someone last week whom I love and respect about how having more children at this point in our lives would be so stressful.  We have enough transition coming up in our lives with figuring out our future and then adjusting to the States for however long, we don't really need to add a baby to that.

And I honestly would have to lose my marbles if I was ok with that.  It took me 3 years to feel like I even loved or liked Noah.  3 years.  It was terrible.  Post-partum depression with the kids just kind of killed me.  I don't want to go back there.  Amongst other reasons for not wanting to physically have another baby, I feel like maybe that's enough for now.  Bart is grieving this, but ok with the idea that we might not physically have anymore of our own.

Yes, random, I know.  I'm all over the place.  There have been so many conversations lately about these things.  Life, our future, kids, school, etc.  We're still trying to wait until December to make a decision about what happens after this school year, but I'm pretty sure my heart knows.  We talk about it, but we don't want to make a decision.  We want to wait on God and not just do what seems best.  Maybe it's actually not the best, so we wait.  It's not very fun playing the waiting game, but we're managing.

When I sat down to write this, thinking oh, I'll post on the blog and be productive and not waste my life, you all just end up getting my word vomit.  Sorry about that!  This is my life.  I'm a mess and I'm working through it.  We need prayer!  For our family, for our sanity, for our physical and emotional health.  Bart has been sick with some sort of strange cold for a while now, so he could use some prayer.    The past 4 days I've felt good.  No stomach stuff, so I'm hoping whatever has been plaguing me for the past month is all done.  Either way, one thing we know....we remain here whether it's hard or easy, happy or sad, vomiting or diarrhea, milk or not, crazy or sane.  We are committed to staying.