Shelly, the mommy

My family attended our first home fellowship meeting tonight. The adult teaching time is focusing on the Visionary Parenting series. Tonight we learned about how we can impress God and a relationship with him on our children.

I was completely slapped in the face with one of the points the pastor made. The person you are at home with your family is the real,  you. This made me think, what am I like at home? Who is the real me?

I am not 100% happy with the answer to my question. The real me can be fun, level headed, and hardworking, but is not very organized and quick to anger. I have come to the conclusion that I need to start acting like I do in public when I am at home. When I’m in public I don’t yell at my children and lose my temper, what would others think?

My prayer is that I will be more conscious of actions towards my children. That I will act like some one is watching and taking notes because God really is watching, and after all, isn’t He the one I should be trying to impress the most?

For the longest time,m my 4 year old has had an awful cough. It sounds as if she has been smoking for years, and she has never been exposed to smokers. She is an otherwise very healthy, active child. The cough seems to be triggered when she exerts herself and at night it gets pretty bad. So hubby and I started googling asthma because of my family history. It seams everyone in my family has some degree of the condition.

Hubby took her to see the pediatrician and he agreed that it is probably asthma, and prescribed flovent a corticosteroid, along with a rescue inhaler. We got back on our computers and started researching flovent. After talking to a few people and each other we decided to start Hannah on the treatment.

This has been a very hard decision to make I have had to make, and we have been through a lot with Hannah. I am terrified of what the flovent could do to her, yet my daughter cannot continue to be plagued by this cough. My hope is that the flovent will take away her cough with no side effects and then we will be able to figure out a better way to control it.

Being a parent is hard. You try to make the best decisions for your children but there are no guarantees that you will always make the right ones. I know that God loves my babies even more than me, so I am going to surrender their lives into his hands  and trust that he has a bigger plan for all of this than what I can see.

Hannah, my 4 year old daughter is an incredibly picky eater. She has been this way since birth. I spent many long hours trying to get her to nurse, but she was never able to latch on properly. She even had problems with the bottle. So by the time she was able to sit in a highchair we were feeding her baby cereal mixed with formula. I was even hard pressed to get her to eat baby foods. This was the cause of many frustrations for me and my husband.

Now my daughter is 4 years old and the list of foods that she will eat is quite small. I have tried many different things to get her to try new foods, but have failed miserably. I’ve read a lot of different articles on how to approach this situation, but these people have never encountered the iron will that belongs to my little girl. She would rather go to bed hungry than to try what mommy has made for dinner. I try to prepare healthy meals that are kid friendly which my 2 year old will gobble down, but my year just tells me that the roasted chicken, potatoes and veggies look gross.

If anyone out there has any advice or encouragement for this out of ideas mommy, please let me know.

When I was a little girl I dreamed of having and raising a family. Growing up in the 90’s, that was not the norm, but I was very blessed to meet someone who shared my beliefs at  a very young age. My husband and I both agreed that if we are going to have children we should be the ones that raise them. At 22 I had my first child Hannah. I had just graduated from college so I went straight from student to mama.

I’m very glad that I am the one to pass on my values to my children instead of a day care worker that is also watching several other children. Someone once told me that children need to have interaction with other children and it isn’t healthy to be at home all the time with just their mom. I would have to disagree with them because my children have plenty of opportunities to interact with their peers.

Another reason I am glad to be a Sahm is the special time I get to have with my children. My daughter who was born in 2004 will be off to school next year, and I am grateful to have spent these last 4 years getting to know her personality and watch her grow. Children grow up all to quickly and I have had the pleasure of being witness to all of my children’s firsts.

I truly believe that staying at home is not for everyone. I am very glad that I get this opportunity even after I have had a tough day dealing with the kids. Even though I made the decision to be a sahm I support a mom in whatever choice she makes.

I would like to wrap this first blog post up by thanking my husband for supporting me in staying at home and making it all possible.