what God in us looks like

EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEONE TO LOVE THEM LIKE THIS.





AFTER THEY'VE BEEN ACTING LIKE THIS

more rules

Don't use scissors on your clothing.

Don't use scissors on your brother.

Don't jump out of your seat and roar at the dog in the middle of supper time, especially if the dog is being quiet and good in her crate.

At nap time - stay in bed, stay quiet, go to sleep.

At bed time prayer - lay still, fold your hands to keep yourself out of trouble, use a respectful voice.

Don't wear shoes in the house if you have been walking through the chicken coop with them.

Stay in the bathroom when you are brushing your teeth.

Stay in the bathroom until you have underwear on. And pants.

Do not lick the windows.

Do not lick the car.

No part of the dog should go inside your mouth.

Stay in bed until the first number is a 7.

No, that's the last number. The first number is still a 6.

If you want to play on pbskids.com, you have to run 5 laps and do 10 sit-ups.

Do not jump on the inverted laundry basket. In fact, let's just stay off of them altogether.

Do not drink the bathwater.

Do not snitch daddy's bacon.

If you are not eating it from your own plate, what makes you think I'm going to let you eat it from my plate?

If you are going to whine, then go whine in the living room.

You can keep crying, but you have to sit in timeout until you are done.

We appreciate you cooperation.

Not as planned - 2

I would like to make Saturday evening more of a time of preparation for us. I want to do things like lay out clothing for church, start oatmeal in the crock pot, and stock the diaper bag. Last Saturday, I was completely foiled.

Julia woke up from her afternoon nap with labored breathing. I was thinking that it was just some extra snot in her nose or her throat. Fortunately, her daddy was more concerned about it than I was. (This is why the child has TWO parents.) Steve's parents canceled an evening out with friends to come and watch Paul while we took Julia to the urgent care. We delayed long enough to eat some supper first.

I had been thinking that the clinic would be open 24 hours. It is not. We were fortunate to arrive less than an hour before it closed.
It was a new facility, and the waiting room was very child friendly. Julia fell asleep in our arms while we watched a movie on one of the TV sets in the waiting room.

We waited an hour and a half before getting in, which really wasn't too bad. By the time the nurse saw us, Julia had started coughing and she sounded like Darth Vader's child, so it was easy to diagnose her with croup. They checked her oxygen level and it was down to 93% of normal. The nurse said they want to keep it above 92%.

Sleepiness made Julia understandably unreasonable, and she cried whenever the staff had to do anything with her. The doctor prescribed an injection for her so that the medicine would be fast acting and told us to drive home with the windows open, because the cold air would help her air passage open.

Julia got a Popsicle and some stickers for her woes. By the time we got home, she was feeling chatty again, and she slept through the night easily.

There were a bunch of things that went right Saturday night that could have gone very wrong. If we had tried to wait out the night, she probably would have started having frightening coughing fits. We would have had to drag her to a children emergency room in the middle of the night, and her oxygen level could have gone lower. I'm grateful to God for the relative ease of the evening, and to Steve for being alert to Julia's need.

Julia is doing much better now. Last night, after being excused from the table, she started running laps around the kitchen while the rest of us finished eating.

P.S.
Both Paul and Julia's lips are healing nicely too.

Not as planned

I think that the problem yesterday was that I didn't let Julia bleed on me. And clearly, I was meant to get bloodied at some point. The day started with Steve and I hustling the children out the door extra early so that we could drop Squirt (our newly named Jetta wagon) off at the dealership for a checkup and an oil change. We drove Tiny (the behemoth white Suburban) back to town to drop Steve at work and take Paul to preschool.

Except that I missed the fact that his school was on an hour delay for teachers' meetings. Oops. It didn't really make sense to drive all the way home at that point, so Paul showed me his playground (in the 40's and rainy weather), the children collected some pine cones, and then we drove to a local fish market.

Except that the fish market didn't open for another 2 hours. Oops. It was lit and looked like it should have been open, but it was not. So we went to the grocery store to buy a snack for the children. I found some not-too-sugary snacks and was ready to check-out, when Julia announced that she needed to go potty. Delay delay delay. And some extra delay because Paul was getting annoyed with the pine sap he had picked up on his hands from the pine cones and wanted to wash his hands a couple of times.

There was a bit of a line at the checkout. They opened another lane and a kind man let me cut in front of him because I think he saw the fires of frustration at being late starting to burn in my eyes. We accidentally left the pine cones on the checkout counter. Paul asked me a couple of times to go back for the pine cones. He was denied.

I had hoped to shop for a flower-girl-appropriate dress while Paul was in school, but there wasn't enough time after the delay. Julia and I went home and relaxed for a little bit. I asked her to go potty before we left to pick Paul up, but she didn't want to. She was goofing around and I was trying to hurry. More fires of frustration burning in my eyes. At some point I grabbed the step stool from her so that I could position it properly for hand washing and she fell forward. Her upper lip caught between her teeth and the wood and she got a little cut.

I managed to comfort her and clean the blood without being bled upon. Then we hurried out the door.

We picked up Grandma on the way to Paul's school. After getting Paul, we all went to the mall to look for dresses. We shopped for a little while, then went to the food court for lunch. I let the children climb on the little riding toys while grandma got her lunch. While they were playing, Paul tripped and caught his lower lip between his teeth and the metal step of the toy.

There was no avoiding the blood that time. I don't want to say that it was bleeding like crazy, but there was a significant outflow. His first reaction when I got to him was to grab my face with both his hands and drag his bloody mouth across my face. I'm really not sure what that was supposed to accomplish. Maybe he associates me with comfort, so he was trying to apply mommy-comfort to a localized area of pain?

We got him (and me) cleaned up, and within half an hour he was running around and playing in the (padded) child play zone. The inside of his lip has a tooth pattern cut into it.

The kids were quite a sight when we went to pick daddy up from work later. Squirt's air conditioner had disintegrated, so the cost of the car repair left Steve feeling like he had been given a fat lip too.

I think they are feeling better today. Maybe we should all stay in the padded play zone for a little while. :-)

Julia Big Milestone

I have to brag on my daughter.



She has made it 7 days in a row with clean dry underwear. I promised her if she got 7 smiley faces in a row on the calendar that she could go pick out a back pack of her very own.



At first she wanted a black backpack with a tiger on it. (Just like big brother's backpack.) When we got to the store, we went to the section with the backpacks for small children. She saw Dora the Explorer and all thoughts of a black backpack left her mind.



Okay, she did notice that this backpack had no tiger on it, but she's alright with that now.



She still wears a pull-up diaper for nap time and bed time, but I feel like this accomplishment is worth some grand recognition. Yay Julia!

Don't fly into Logan

“Don’t fly into Logan.”
That was Steve’s only request of me when I was planning to come out to Boston to visit him while we were dating.

Steve and I only had about 2.5 months of dating before he graduated from college and moved to Boston. He moved to the Boston area and I took an engineering co-op job in Rockford Illinois. Since that time, we had been maintaining a long distance relationship across time zones.

I have been told, and have to support the notion, that long distance relationships are a bad idea. Agreeing to a long distance dating relationship usually means signing up for a long, drawn out, painful break up. I seriously discourage anybody from attempting long distance dating. My college housemates and I seemed to make an art form out of long distance dating, but as a group, we defied the odds.

So Steve and I had been doing a lot of talking on the phone, but we were low on shared experiences and face to face time. I was going to fly out to Boston for a weekend. Steve recommended I fly into Providence, Rhode Island or Concord, New Hampshire. Both were further from Steve’s home than Logan, but once you fought the Boston city traffic, it took just as much time to get to Logan as the others. Steve couldn’t stand Boston traffic. I found affordable tickets from Midway airport in Chicago to Providence, Rhode Island on Southwest Airlines(I’m giving them a plug here because they helped me later).

Steve couldn’t stand Boston traffic. I was terrified of Chicago traffic. But I learned there was a shuttle bus from Rockford to O’Hare. At O’Hare I could take another shuttle to Midway. The shuttles between the two airports were supposed to run every 15 minutes.

I got to O’Hare and waited for over an hour – no shuttle.

I had not given myself enough time to wait at O’Hare for an hour.

Finally, three strangers and I hailed a taxi. It should have taken us about 40 minutes to drive to Middway, but I’m sure it took over an hour because the traffic was so bad (which is probably why my shuttle bus never came). As we approached the airport, I felt like I could have looked overhead and seen my flight take off.

I was almost in tears. I had missed my plane. It was my responsibility to get to the airport on time, and I failed. I thought I would have to buy a new ticket, or cancel my trip. I went to the airline’s help desk and told them what happened. The kind lady didn’t even miss a beat, but started to help me find another flight.
There were no other flights on Southwest from Middway to Providence that night.
There were no other flights on any of the carriers from Middway to Providence that night.
She told me that if I could get to O’Hare in the next 50 minute, that there was another flight from there to Providence. I told her I would never make it in time. I thought a moment. “Um… can you get me to Concord?”

Steve and his parents were supposed to meet me in Providence. Looking back, I think it is a real testament to how much I trusted Steve that I got on a plane to another state without actually talking to Steve first. Cell phones weren’t so ubiquitous then, so I couldn’t call him directly. I called my grandparents in North Carolina, just so that somebody who knew me would know where I was. The Kuhlmans were paged in the Providence airport and told where I was going.

Steve drove across 3 states to come get me.

They were nubby little New England states, but it still made for a late night. My new flight was delayed. I chatted on the flight with a man I recognized as a Canadian engineer by the pinkie ring he was wearing. Steve met me at my gate. He had never looked so good.

That’s part of how I knew he was the right man for me.

Happy Valentines Day!

Here at the Kuhlman farm, we don't usually do much if anything to observe St. Valentines day. Maybe a little chocolate, or a little gift that wanted an excuse to be given, but nothing more than that.

So this year we're doing a variation on that theme: raspberry plants. Nearly every year we've been on the farm we've added some sort of fruit-bearing plants. For example, last spring we added the blueberry bushes. The first thing we added was either a red raspberry bush (that is finally coming back from a couple really hard years) or a couple apple trees. Sarah had been hinting real hard a couple months ago about wanting some black raspberry plants for our yard.

Coming to the Kuhlman farm the week of April 13:

- 10 Bristol Black Raspberry plants

- 5 Anne Yellow Raspberry plants








Happy Valentine's Day Sarah!








UPDATE: Yesterday I also ordered the new flock of chickens for a May 3 delivery...'cause nothin' says lovin' like 25 day-old chicks.

Separation anxiety

The last few weeks, Paul has been struggling with some sort of separation anxiety. He doesn't want mommy to leave. He doesn't want daddy to leave. He doesn't want grandma and grandpa to leave. He doesn't want the two graduate school women he just met an hour and a half ago to leave.

It's not that he is clinging to us constantly. At home or church, he's perfectly happy to run off and play, even where he can't see us. But when we try to drop him off for preschool, or leave for work in the morning, he becomes distressed. He keeps insisting that he needs one more hug, one more kiss. He becomes frantic and sometimes has to be restrained to let us go. Then he is fine just a few minutes after the final farewell.

I've asked him why he is upset and he told me that he's worried about me.
"Well, what are you worried about?"
-"I'm worried that monsters or dinosaurs are going to eat you."

It's really hard to argue with that.

I've tried praying with him. "God please help Paul know that you love mommy very much, and that no matter what happens that you'll take good care of me. Help him know that You love him very much, and no matter what happens that you'll always take good care of him and be with him."

One of the graduate school women pointed out that it is often hard for adults to remember God is with us, much more for a little one who hasn't had much practice trusting God yet.

I think this anxiety has been spurred in part by one of Paul's new classmates. Every time I've seen that little guy dropped off in the morning, he's been in tears, weeping for his mom. I think some of the other children are observing him and thinking, "Hey, maybe there is something to be worried about!" It seems that Paul's fears are also being fueled by his childish fascination with dinosaurs, monsters, and slightly scary things.

He's been acting like this for a few weeks now, but I'm still hopeful it is just a phase, and that soon our confident little guy will come back. All this would have made so much more sense to me if had happened right before or after one of our trips to the Czech Republic. The last two days he has awakened early and hurried downstairs to make sure he got to say, "Goodbye," to daddy.

So far Julia seems to be immune to his fears. She's just grouchy and doesn't want to go to the babysitter's house in the morning. She clings to me like she is some sort of little starfish until Jenny turns on Blues Clues. Then Julia forgets I exist and wanders off to watch TV.

It seems like there should be some happy medium for me between being the source of anxiety, and being blotted out by child cartoons. I guess I'll take what I can get.

From the mouths of my children

On the way to church, both children were in the back seat, hooting like owls.

“Are you guys owls?”
“Yeah.”

A moment later Julia was saying, “Werf, werf werf,” like a puppy.

“Julia! What kind of owl are you?”
“I am a werfing Dog Owl.”

-----------------

Yesterday when I asked Paul what his job was this week in preschool he told me he was the schedule person. Usually I have to really dig to get him to tell me what he does. But, Paul said he likes being the schedule person because he gets to “tell everybody what to do.”

Kuhlman Speak Decoded - Part 1

Daddy flakes = Honey Bunches of Oats

Grandpa flakes = Raisin Nut Bran

O's or Mommy O's = cheerios

"I want dates" & "I like dates" = I like dried pitted date fruit.

"I like watching the baby turn on fire and go through walls" = we've been watching the "Incredibles" short cartoon called "Jack-Jack-Attack"

evening beverage = chocolate milk before bedtime

stuck like a rabbit on a stick = stuck or facing a dilemma (courtesy of Steve)

defile the bathroom = going #2

barley juice = beer

daddy's chocolate milk = Kahlua & cream

Go-go = Paul's toy snake

Keiki Nai'a = Julia's toy dolphin

Square pants = Julia's pants with a plaid pattern on them. (DOES NOT REFER TO SPONGE-BOB!)


Mommy's treasures = the stuff in mommy's jewelry box

"Mommy you smell bad. You should use some white stuff." = Paul would like me to get out the deodorant so he can play with it.

eagle wings = Paul's big blue bath towel. (we haven't heard that one in a while though.)

Evidently, draping a washcloth, tea towel, or blankie across your belly makes you a "cleaner." I'm not really sure what that means or where it came from.

"Was that a duck?" = "Please excuse me for being so rude as to pass loud gas in your presence."

Ogre mommy and the snow

In the brief amount of time between recovering from a head cold and the snow all melting, I decided that the children and I should all go outside for a bit. The last time I had taken them outside, Julia got too cold too quickly, so this time I pulled out Paul's old, size 3T snow pants. I knew they would be huge on Julia, but they would also keep her toasty warm.

Julia didn't want the snow pants. I suppose she might have realized that the red snow pants were a little too eye-popping with the pink winter coat, but eye popping color combinations have never slowed her down before. She wailed. She wept. She kicked and fought to get away from me. But I decided that I was going to win this one. We WERE going outside, and Julia WAS going to wear the warm snow pants. Once she and Paul were suited up, I let Paul and Maggie outside to play while I buttoned on my own coat, and Julia vented some more toddler rage.

Before I even had my scarf on, Paul was at the door, crying to come back inside because it was too cold. Being the warm, compassionate, frustrated, ogre mommy that I am, I refused him. We were ALL going outside, and we were going to like it, even if it killed us.

I decided that we could all make it down to the barn and back so that I could slop the chickens. Then we could go back indoors. I led crying Paul and crying Julia down to the barn. It WAS cold out.


Paul would not have been so cold if I could have found his gloves for him. I gave him mine. Julia's scarf is also lost in the house somewhere, so I gave her my scarf. By the time I slopped the chickens and collected some eggs, the children had calmed down and warmed up a bit. Paul threw some snowballs. Julia stopped crying. Ogre mommy got too cold, so we went back indoors.

about Steve

Shortly after Steve and I were married he took me on my very first backpacking trip. We traveled to Red River Gorge, Kentucky with some friends. Steve had been on many backpacking trips before and had a lot of cool gear. I, being a newbie and a bit too frugal, had somewhat less cool gear. Most notably, my boots were not adequate for all day hiking with a big load on my back.

A few hours into the hike I had blisters on my heals and toes. I was grumpy.

On the evening of our first day out, the group of us were cutting cross country on a ridge top, frantically trying to find a way down to the valley so that we could have water. The area had experienced a fire not long ago. The trees were scarred and there were many charred branches on the ground. The undergrowth had returned pretty well, and it was scratching the daylights out of my legs. I was more grumpy. My feet had taken a pounding, I was very tired, I was a little scared about not having enough water, I was being scratched and dusk was closing in on us. I didn't have a walking stick.

At some point while we were zigzagging across the ridge I saw a walking stick sized branch lying on the ground. It was slightly singed. It was thin and slightly bent. I doubted that it would take my weight. But I snatched it up as we hurried by. I tested it. The stick didn't break when I leaned on it. It was the perfect length for me. It was already relatively smooth to hold and it didn't have any bits that needed to be trimmed off. It was my new best friend.

From that point on, the stick didn't leave my side. At night, I could barely hobble from our campfire to the tent without it. I named the stick, "God saw my need." In my previous day-hiking experience, I had never needed a walking stick. They had only gotten in my way. And I hadn't really been hunting for this stick. It kind of leaped out at me. It was exactly what I needed.

At the end of our hiking trip, I left "God saw my need" at the trail head for the next person who needed it. Steve got me some good trekking poles.

Later, I started to see that walking stick as a metaphor for my marriage to Steve. I wasn't really looking for him. He kind of leaped out at me. He wasn't what I'd envisioned. He was maybe a little singed around the edges. I was uncertain that he would hold up underneath me. I didn't think I NEEDED him. God saw my need.

Steve is just the right fit for me. I have tested him, and he hasn't broken. I depend on him profoundly. I feel a little lost when he is away. He's my best friend.

Thank you, God, for seeing my need before I knew it. Thank you for giving me Steve.

Happy Birthday, my love.

Things I Like About February

We celebrated the end of January by staying home with head colds. Ah well. I shared my guacamole the next day with friends whom we invited to share lunch with us after church.

On to February. Head colds aside, we're doing pretty well. I'm loving all the snow and cold this year. No seriously. All the white is reminding me of my early childhood in northwestern Pennsylvania. Okay, so I do have a bruise on my hip and tried to wrench my wrist when I fell on the ice. Twice. But we've had some brilliant blue skies to go with the gleaming snow and ice. And each time I come inside from walking the dog, I feel like I have faced some challenge and achieved a success.

But I'm afraid all this lovely snow is going to melt soon, and I'm going to have to face plain gray February again. So here are some
Things I like about February

Valentine's Day decorations. I'm really not that into Valentines Day per se. I found it irritating and slightly depressing when I was single. I find it mildly stressful and weird now. It's like someone is telling me my relationship is messed up if I don't feel profoundly romantic for 24 hours in the middle of February. But I really like seeing Valentines Day decorations around. The bright red hearts. The bunches of flowers. The red, heart trimmed, mylar robot balloon floating over the produce section at Kroger. (Special recognition goes to Julia for pointing that last item out to me.) It's all rather cheerful.

The days are getting longer. They were getting longer in January too, but now you can actually TELL that they are getting longer. My morning commute and dinner time are not so dark.

I like being able to divide a month equally into weeks. 28 days = 4 weeks. Pleases me.

Ash Wednesday. I'm looking forward to Lent as a period of time for spiritual focus and renewal. I did a modified fast last year and read "Through the Looking Glass" by Lungaard. God really blessed me through it. (In spite of myself.) I'm not sure how I'm going to observe Lent this year, but I'm excited about it.

I like greeting people with "Happy Groundhog's Day!" My grandmother's family came from the Punxatawny area. I feel like I'm connecting with my roots, even if superficially.

I like having an excuse (cold weather) to make and eat soup. And leftover soup. Steve and I aim to make a big pot of chili this weekend.

Steve's birthday! If it weren't enough that I'm glad he came into the world, I also get cake!

Ordering vegetable garden seeds. We're going to give Hidatsa shield figure beans a try again and we're adding fennel to the mix. Hmmm... fennel. I'm not sure what we're going to do with fennel, but I'm sure it will be tasty. Just thinking about gardening makes me feel warm and earthy.

Quotes from the kids

I've gotten back logged on recording some of the fun things my children say and do. Their sentences are becoming more complicated, and it's becoming harder to remember what they say. Here is what I remember, or some close approximations.

Julia at breakfast:
Mommy, I'm going to tell you a story. There were 3 little pigs. They went to the wolf's house. The wolf said, "I Don't Like Pigs!" The next day they went to the wolf's house. The wolf said, "I Don't Like Pigs! I'm going to huff your puff!" The next day...

Paul with some VeggieTales characters:
This is Junior. He sings songs. Really pretty songs.
That's Jimmy and Jerry. They mostly mess around.
That's Bob and Larry. They sing the song at the beginning.

Julia, while standing on a little step stool with a Super Hero pose:
Am the Power, and the Glory, and the Kingdom forever!

My children appear to have delusions of grandeur. Both like to claim to be Baby Jesus when they are wrapped up in their towels after bath time.

Paul, while spinning in circles:
I'm a tomato tormado!

They have taken to taunting each other, but most of the time their taunt's don't make sense. I will hand each of them an apple and then they will start chanting at each other, "I have an apple and you don't!" Sometimes I feel like I am raising looney tunes.

Paul, in an effort to put off bedtime, launched into some pretty good theological questions. It started with something like, "can God hear me?"
Mommy: God can always hear you, because God is everywhere.
Paul: Does that mean we run over God?
Mommy: Hmmm. Well yes. But it also means that God is running over you. Does it hurt?
Paul (grinning): No!
Mommy: God is spirit and does not have a body as you and I do. So we can run over each and it's okay.

That's all I can remember right now, and it's time for bed.

Happy Ground Hog's Day

I'm not much of one for New Year's Resolutions toward self improvement.

Here are some Ground Hog's Day Resolutions toward keeping me a pleasant person:

I resolve not to fold the laundry more than once before it gets put away.

I resolve to water my houseplants once in a while.

I resolve to make monthly meal plans.

I resolve to look at my monthly plans.

I resolve to get groceries that match the monthly meal plans.

I resolve not to go too crazy over finding coupons, because for now, cooking from scratch and using a meal plan is sufficient for our budget and my sanity.

I resolve to be more intelligent about how I save money by doing smart things like PAYING MY CREDIT CARD BILL ON TIME. This has been an embarrassing bane to me. I pay it, but I keep remembering it late. It's time to turn it around.

I resolve not to drink more than 1/2 cup of caffeinated coffee at a time.

I resolve to let myself buy curry powder rather than mixing my own, even though I have a glut of coriander seeds from potted cilantro plants that got away from me.

I resolve to keep one open jar of peanut butter in the refrigerator for Steve and one open jar of peanut butter in the cupboard so that the peanut butter will spread more easily on the bread, crackers, or tortillas. (Steve, please note that the refrigerator peanut butter may lose its place of prominence on the door.)

I resolve not to go to more than one grocery store in one day for the sake of shopping different sales. I may visit more than one grocery store in a day if I'm looking for a very specific ingredient AND I don't have any children with me. Trader Joe's counts as entertainment and does not count against grocery store visits for a day.