Posts from — September 2007

I’m not sure why, but this birthday for Gage has been emotional for me.  He turned 8 years old at 1:00 this morning.  I can so vividly remember the days leading up to Gage’s birth.  The waiting and wondering when he was going to come and having no clue how much life would change once he arrived.  It’s amazing how the time has flown by since he first entered this world.  He has been such a blessing.  His zeal for life keeps us all going.  As I reflect over these past 8 years with Gage, I am in awe because I know that our lives could have turned out so differently.  When given many choices of things to do on “his day”, he chose to go to the “Y” with his Dad and swim at the waterpark.  That is all he wanted.  I even offered cupcakes for later and said that we could invite some friends over to eat them with him and he said, “No, Mom, we already did that at Granny and Papa’s.  I just want to go to the “Y” with my Dad.”  Our story is a long one to tell, but it all boils down to the fact that Gage could have spent his 8th birthday without a Dad to take him to the “Y”.  But, God, in his mercy, provided a father for Gage and a husband for me.  I am filled with thankfulness today and I think that is where these tears are coming from.

Today has just been one of those days. Honestly, it’s one of those days that I just want to give up on homeschooling and enroll Gage in school. We have some really good reasons to be schooling Gage at home, but that’s for a later post, perhaps. Gage requires balance in his life, and if anything gets off kilter, he begins spiraling down. Too much TV, not enough alone time, hunger, sickness, too much play time, too much sugar, blah, blah, blah…….(the list goes on and on), all lead to a spiraling effect if I don’t catch it quickly. He spirals down into an emotional wreck. So, today, as we were trying to do school, things were just not going well. Our friend, Mandy, is here visiting and what I love about Mandy’s visits is that we can go on with life as normal. She is like family and so when she’s here, she sees life as it is in the Lee home. I’d like to think we’re like that with everyone, but I have to admit, we’re probably not. Anyway, Mandy gets to see all of our struggles, and I love hearing her insight. She is so wise. Today, after sending Gage to take a nap because I absolutely couldn’t tolerate one more minute of his drama, I vented to Mandy. After listening to me say all of the things I felt like saying to Gage, but held back (only by God’s grace), this is what she had to say. She affirmed for me that if she had been dealing with all of the struggles I had been dealing with all morning, she would be in tears. She sees that every little thing that I tell Gage to do becomes a struggle and that I have to tell him more than once (usually 4 times) to do it, before it is done. These are all things that I need to hear. I get so caught up in it all, that I don’t realize what’s happening. So, thanks to Mandy’s input, once again, I realize that I let Gage get by with bargaining way too much. He has learned that he doesn’t have to immediately obey. He can have an attitude, give me a rotten look, and beg for a different way to do something way too often. Looks like I’m going to have to try, once again, at changing some things. I can already detect what some of the issues are. One of them is that he is being allowed to have too much free time with our new schedule of doing school from 1-4 in the afternoons. So, I’m going to have to come up with some things that he can do on his own during the times that I am not able to go on an adventure for half of the day. I swear, raising kids is the hardest job in the world. No wonder I’m so exhausted by the time we put them to bed at night!

Gage preparing to conquer all those evil guys on seminary campus!

Shea getting ready to conquer the bad guys in his dreams. He took a nap in this today! He’s obsessed with the hat and gloves!

My friend, Emily, celebrated her birthday on Wednesday, and I was thrilled to be a part of it.  I LOVE Emily!  She has been like my sister here in St. Louis.  And, I just discovered something about her that makes me so happy!  She, just like me, grew up eating Great American Cookie Co. chocolate chip cookie cake for her birthday every year!

Matt and Emily (aren’t they cute!?)

As I said in a previous post, I’m using my mornings now to do fun things with the boys, and then doing school with Gage while Shea naps.  Well, I’m really excited about our latest adventure.  I pulled my bike out of storage, along with the toddler carrier for Shea, dusting it all off and pumping up the tires.  This bike was purchased when Gage was about a year old (he’s almost 8 now!) and it still looks almost new.  Kind of let’s you know how little it has been used.  In fact, I think the carrier that was purchased for Gage was only used a couple of times.  So, in my intense, run for the mark as fast as you can fashion, I took the boys out for a ride on Friday.  This was our second ride on the bikes, and in my mind, I had planned on working our way up to longer rides.  That didn’t happen.  We left campus at 10:30 and did a complete square, riding on sidewalks through neighborhoods, as well as pushing our bikes in the busy areas where we had to wait at intersections and push the fun little pedestrian button.  Gage LOVED it.  I swear, he is going to be my own personal trainer.  The kid blows me away!  We arrived back to campus 2 hours later!  I clocked the mileage yesterday, and found out that our route was exactly 5 miles.  But, we also rode around a park path twice before starting our route, so the grand total for mileage biked would be around 6 miles.  To all of you cyclists out there, this probably sounds like nothing, but just let me be proud of myself.  Gage is already asking me when we can go again.  I think it’ll be soon.  Maybe Monday………

Jared came home from work today and informed me that he had consulted a hairstylist at work (she’s a customer at BOA) and she told him that he just needed to leave his hair alone because it looks really good.  Apparently, the conversation went something like this:

Jared: “Do you think you could do something with my hair.  I’m just wondering if I should have it touched up or something.  I want the length, but maybe it should be thinned out some or something.”

Hairstylist-chick: “No.  You don’t need to do anything to it.  It looks good just the way it is.  That’s really in now.”

So, it’s official.  My husband has cool hair.  When Emily (my little sis) came to visit, she said the same thing.  She said he looks sexy.  So, now that I have the opinion of my little sis and the hairstylist chick, I think I’m okay with it.  I told him that he has to dress in a way that matches his hairstyle. So, we’re working on that.  Wow, seminary is turning us into such deep, thoughtful people, isn’t it?!  Here’s a pic.  And, just for the record, I think he’s sexy, too!