Believe Manifesto

I have realized something this week that I never fully realized before. ALL THREE OF MY CHILDREN ARE STRONG WILLED. What. Is. Happening. They each have different degrees of strong willed sprits, but this past week I learned that they were so much stronger than I ever thought.

It all started with the hunt for THE pair of shoes for my oldest son Sean. When we set out, he said he wanted “a green pair of shoes” because that is his favorite color, and they “can’t be Nike because I don’t like Nike anymore.” Ok then. Apparently when you are thirteen the pair you think you are looking for changes every five minutes. The first three pairs of shoes he tried on were all Nike and none of them were green. I was texting three people furiously just to keep my cool and not lose it on him in the mall. I thought we were going to have to have an emergency therapy session. We ended up leaving the mall WITH NO SHOES after looking for two hours at five different stores. I cannot even. (Don’t worry Derick saved the day and my sanity.)

My middle child Lyla basically needs to start a cotton garden in the back yard and learn how to weave her own fabric, because everything she owns is “ugly.” Also, basically she hates me because she outgrew her Cardinal’s baseball t-shirt, I sold it at a yard sale, and had yet to buy her a new one. I guess it’s a tough life to wear a blue and white J.Crew tank top with a ruffle and some sassy red pants to a Springfield Cardinals game with your Grandpa. Thank goodness she got over her “summer flu” before school starts for her this week…just in time to give it to my youngest.

That means he is basically eating nothing but popsicles for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Which is more sugar than he is used to eating. Which has completely thrown off his sleep schedule. But the other night at dinner, in a moment of a miracle family dinner around the table…Coen whispered. Mic drop. Basically the rest of us were like, “This is the cutest thing we have ever seen, OH MY WORD how funny!” Seriously it was like all the stress of back to school, new routines, sickness, tantrums, and hard headedness washed away. I like to think those are God’s little winks to say, “hang tight mama, I will send you something to get you through another day!”

But I have to tell you about the sleeping situation with Coen. We took down his crib rail to make his bed a toddler bed a few months ago, and he is loving it, but he also acts like a toddler 007 now. The other night he snuck out while Derick and I were watching a movie and took every clean diaper out of his bin, got out every toy and stuffed animal he owns, took them to our room, got some chapstick, and then went back to bed. Too bad I don’t have one of those video monitors. Tonight as I was laying with him praying to Jesus that he would go to sleep because my arm/side was killing me from laying there for eleventy million hours…his “falling to sleep” routine basically consists of: checking to make sure that I am still next to him, wadding up his swaddle blanket and using it as a second pillow, kicking off his blanket so he can hike his leg up like he is lounging on a beach in Tahiti, then deciding it would be more comfortable to actually use my shoulder as an ottoman, and then reaching for my hand to hold and then laying there sideways like he is on a jungle gym. But that hand holding…it melt my heart in ways I don’t even understand. I just take it as another God wink that says, “Mama, you are right where you need to be.”