Since Julia was born (actually the day before) I have been taking a break from teaching my Wednesday night class. Melanie is scheduled to teach the month of September and then I was going to pick up again.
Well Sunday she told me I could take a break indefinitely. And it feels kinda weird. Lazy almost. I did find a cute craft I am going to help the girls make probably after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, but until then I guess I'm just going to go to Bible study on Wednesday nights or fill in as needed.
I've been teaching on Wednesdays for about 7 years so it just feels weird. I love teaching the girls, but things have changed some since that became my daughters primarily. It's hard to teach your own kids in a setting with other kids. You are either harder on your own kids (that would be me) or easier. It's just weird to change from parent to teacher. I haven't taught Katelynn at all, but teaching Haley is stressful to me, just like parenting her is my biggest struggle right now. I waver somewhere between the hands off take responsibility for yourself approach (which is not really my forte and often feels like an uncaring parent which I am definitely not) to being too much in her business which just encourages her to rebel.
So not teaching her on Wednesday nights right now is definitely a blessing. I love that girl, but as my oldest, she and I get to deal with all the parenting firsts, and I expect more from her. It's just hard!
So I am getting some mental space to just parent and not parent and teach and to focus on the other areas of my life where God is developing me and growing me. Not working and only teaching Sunday every other week should give me free time, and it does, but I need to decompress during the day some to deal with the evenings. I do have 6th, 5th, and 3rd graders with homework to manage as well as the responsibilities Daniel has from playing football (mainly chauffeuring him around or getting Bj to do it.) NCIS is my current time waster during the day and I'm really enjoying it!
I need to get Julia on a more consistent schedule, but I'm not really dealing with that yet. She eats about every 3 hours during the day and has two 4.5 hour stretches at night. The main thing I'd like to do is stretch her to every 4 hours during the day and eating at 6:30 or 7 in the morning to better facilitate my work schedule when I go back. That means I need to feed her at about 9:30 at night and again at 2. I don't want to wake her to feed her in the middle of the night, so I'm just not there yet. I think Seth ate at 10, 4, and 7 during the night for a while, but they were concerned about his weight and pushed me to feed every three hours (which I did during the day but not at night). Without those concerns, I just need to try to get her to eat every 4 hours. Yeah, I'm not dealing with that or moving her to her crib for another week or so. Seth was in his crib at 6 weeks, and she is a much better sleeper, so I don't anticipate any problems. She sleeps great in her Rock 'n Play, so that was definitely a good investment if any new or soon to be moms want my recommendation.
I am scheduled to preach on October 18th, so I've started getting some thoughts together. We all know that what I study now is most likely not what I'll be preaching about, but I am getting back in the habit of studying and listening for God to speak. It's been a couple of weeks since I've spent the time in prayer/studying like I like to (with good reason and I know God understands).
A break from some things and diving into others. That's how this life works and I'm trying to enjoy where I'm at before it changes again.
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