Happy Birthday Shauna!

Hope you had a wonderful day my sister. Sorry I missed your birthday and that I wasn't there. I miss you and your family so much.

I am so thankful that God gave you to me to be my friend through this life, through it all. Thick and thin, distance and time. What a wonderful blessing.

It is such a blessing to watch your family grow and see the Lord bless you with a family and beautiful children.

Have a wonderful year and enjoy 32! What a great age! Young and spry!

Happy Birthday!!! I love you!

A Neat Song

This is a song that Peter really likes. He says it is our Mongolian theme song.

I think there is a slide show thing on You Tube that goes with the song if you want to hear it. It is too much for me to download here, so I haven't seen it.

Enjoy!

If You Want Me To by Ginny Owens
The pathway is broken
And The signs are unclear
And I don't know the reason why You brought me here
But just because You love me the way that You do
I'm gonna walk through the valley
If You want me to

Chorus:
Cause I'm not who I was
When I took my first step
And I'm clinging to the promise You're not through with me yet
so if all of these trials bring me closer to you
Then I will walk through the fire
If You want me to

It may not be the way I would have chosen
When you lead me through a world that's not my home
But You never said it would be easy
You only said I'd never go alone

ya oh oh no

So When the whole world turns against me
And I'm all by myself
And I can't hear You answer my cries for help
I'll remember the suffering Your love put You through
And I will go through the valley If You want me to

I'm Learning about Parenting

I am on a discovery of true parenting. Why is it that there is no training for parents? Yes, there are books and websites that can prepare a parent for the events of parenthood; ideas about children’s diet, sleep patterns, potty training, education…

But the actual parenting is not addressed. Parenting is so much more than events. I’d like to see an effort to help young parents understand parenting at a deeper level. For me the whys and philosophy and purpose behind my choices make a big difference.

Homeschooling has brought out a thinking about parenting that previously had not been there. The pressure to be THEE educator in Sierra and Weston’s lives because of where we live, has been a good force to help me understand parenting more.

I am reading a book, Upgrade by Kevin Swanson and it has helped me. It is a pro-homeschooling book and has much of the reasoning behind the homeschool movement documented, and lists some great reasons for homeschooling. However, for me, it has also helped me to consider homeschooling and extension of my parenting and not have it separated in my mind as, “education.”

The education of a child is the responsibility of the parent, whether they are sending their child to school, a co-op, a charter school, or homeschooling. American culture has life all separated into boxes- education in one, spiritual life in another, arts in another…

For each of those boxes, we have an option to outsource that training of our child: School for education, church for spiritual training, various extracurricular activities for hobbies, arts, or sports. While that is not necessarily bad, it is dangerous in some ways because it could sacrifice relationship time with my children and I think relationship is the key to education and parenting.

Furthermore, people are not separated into boxes, education is the preparation of the whole person. It is helping Weston and Sierra become successful adults. This will take specific help, training and education in every area from physical, to spiritual and beyond.

For example, speech therapy is yet another area to invest in my relationship with my daughter, thus strengthening my ability to train her and deepening our love and her faith in my care. This is great, but this type of training in every area is going to take it all--- all my time, all my thought, all my discipline and more.

This realization has caused me to know parenting is going to take everything I am and more than I am through Christ. Before, I really thought that the kids would become who they were meant to be without much direction on my part. It’s funny to actually write that down, but that has always been my idea. They should be independent to play alone, make up games, imagine and play, and follow their interests as they come. I think that independence is good; however now, I think it will take more of ME to parent and train them up so that they can be more than they could alone. That makes parenting, homeschooling, speech therapy, cooking with them and training them to be neater and whatever else comes much more exciting and purposeful.

No news

Hello

There is not much news here in Sukhbaatar. Our kids are getting bigger, it seems by the day. Our team is getting stronger. The church here is progressing at it's nice slow pace.

Winter is melting away, somehow, in the cold windy spring. The kids and I have been out for walks two days in a row now. It's still 20, but the sun is melting the snow and making nice muddy puddles everywhere. I have a deck again.

A cow died in front of our yard, from sickness and the freezing cold about two months ago. Pray for Mongolian herders, there was so much lost cattle from the hard winter we had. I wish I had some time lapsed photography to show you that cow's final demise. It is like a National Geographic out there. The cow is nearly gone. Stray dogs and birds have finished it off except for the two legs, which are still frozen to the ground. :) Lovely. I know you wanted to know that.

Sierra is talking more and more. It is interesting to see her progress through the typical "how a kid learns to speak" chart, she is like an 18 month old . She is babbling like an 18 month old would and really using more consonant sounds. This week she said please, thank you, brother, dog. We are working with her steadily. Pray she progresses at her pace and then become a normal little talker who is jabbering my ear off. :)

Weston is learning the piano with a program his great-grandparents bought us for Christmas. It is really cool. I'll post a video of that soon. It is a really a neat computer program with a digital piano keyboard. He also finished the first half of Kindergarten yesterday and we are moving up to a phonic reading curriculum now because he knows all the letters and sounds. He can write all the capital letters alone without tracing and now we are working on the remaining lowercase letters.

Peter is preparing a lesson today for church tomorrow. He just found out he had to teach yesterday, lovely. It takes a long time to prepare in Mongolian and then there is the actual speaking which is harder still. It makes for such a light and funhearted day!

I am typing here and enjoying the Internet, but really I am ignoring housework and chores that must be done. :)

So with that,
goodbye and goodnight or good day depending on where you are on this beautiful globe.

Silly Fun

Weston watched that show Wipeout while we were traveling. Have you seen it?

It is an obstacle course show with big red balls people have to jump on and they fall off into water or mud. It is silly, but a bit addicting as the viewer watches these grown adults make fools of themselves as they run, jump, fall, get filthy, and totally WIPE OUT!

It is the perfect show to capture the mind of a 5 year old boy. He thought it was awesome! Weston made a Bunnell Wipe Out course in our living room because he thought the show was so cool. Peter helped him expand it to a two room course.

I couldn't resist videoing the kids and of course, Peter. And turn about is fair play, so then Peter videoed me while I played Bunnell Wipe Out.

It is a very flattering view of us both!!! Ha ha. It shows how lithe and agile we are, indeed, we are Spring chickens!!! ha ha ha..... Can you hear my sarcasm?

Then Peter used his new, super-cool Macbook to make a video out of it!

Happy Viewing.

Back online

We're back online- finally! Yay. I spent an hour today at G Mobile politely applying pressure until it was fixed! I'm so glad.

A lot going on here.
We are most likely moving in April. Our friend and co-worker, Sharon, has finished her commitment to teach English here and her apartment is available.

This winter and last, our city has kept the apartments very warm so this is an option for us when earlier it wasn't because the apartments were too cold for my precious children! :)

We'll be sacrificing a room and moving down to a 2 bedroom and the yard (which is only usable 4 months of the year!)

We hope it will mean a little less work for us.
No more-
feeding dogs
making dog food
cleaning poo
weeding our yard
bringing water in
bringing water and mess out
burning trash
chopping wood
gardening (kinda sad)
driving to work and warming the car.

More time for:
our family together
ministry
language study
home school
speech therapy

Hopefully less isolation for me because:
I'll have to go outside with the kids
I can see the beautiful river and forest from the 4th floor
I'll be closer to school and church

AND
We'll be cleaner-
Wash dishes easily!!!
We can take a shower in hot running water EVERY day!
and wash AND rinse our laundry everyday if needed!!!
and have a toilet....

The last four reasons are good enough for me. Goodbye house!

Sierra- speech therapist and mothering

We had a great meeting today with Gillian. She worked with Sierra for about 1 hour.

At first, Sierra acted like a wild monkey and ran and screamed around.

Then Gillian got out some books and I sat with her too. She calmed down and then Sierra worked with her. She pointed and enjoyed interacting with Gillian.

Then she got out the chocolate-- Sierra's cooperation and attentiveness was perfect then. She worked on tongue movements and sounds with both Weston and Sierra. When they performed enough times, like Pavlov's dog, they got a treat. They both enjoyed it immensely---- especially the treats.

She told us what we know, that Sierra is delayed in speech and language. She said not to worry yet. Gillian was definitely stumped by our girl in some ways. She said she'd be expecting a lot more tantrums and fits because Sierra can't communicate. She was truly stumped that Sierra seems unconcerned about persisting in talking.

Gillian was encouraged that the new verbalizing and babbling had only been happening since fall. She said since she is making progress that it's not time to rush back to the US- yet.

She is willing to work with us and see what progress we can make. We have a list of therapy that we must do.

Our first goal is to work on Joint Attention and sustaining attention so that more therapy can take place. This includes things like- taking turns, face/eye contact and cooperation for a goal time of 10 minutes.

The second goal is to work on imitation (which you can't do if there is no attention!) This involves tongue and lip games/exercises and improving sound repertoire.

Thirdly, imitation of sounds and modeling sounds by playing noise games, making consonant sounds together and modeling full words.

This all boils down to one thing---- time and effort. These are the areas of motherhood that I lack in- you know the on the floor playing together. Playing games, reading, giving the children undivided attention.

While we were flying back to Mongolia I read a book called- Steady Days- A Journey Toward Intentional Professional Motherhood by Jamie C. Martin. Isn't that an enticing title? I would love to be a more professional and intentional mother. It is totally opposite to, "getting through the day, making sure everyone is mostly clothed and fed without anyone getting severely injured" which is my current goal!

Most of the book is being more organized so to make the most of the time with the children. There are suggestions about how to do this which included organizational tools and things.

The best part of the book is what she calls a "motherhood conversion." This really resonated with me. She defines it by telling a story about a new mother who has high hopes as her infant enters the world. But suddenly she realizes that her life will never be the same again and that her world revolves around her children.

This is great:

• "The idea that there is no holidays from mothering. Growing up with a traditional school year filled with holiday and long summer breaks or working in jobs with vacation time and sick days doesn't prepare parents for this completely consuming role... It is a beautiful job--- don't get me wrong--- but downtime is generally a thing of the past."

This is the best paragraph of the whole book:

• "Gradually however, I began to welcome the dynamics of my new life. I decided to try and embrace them as wholeheartedly as possible, instead of fighting the inner battle over the interruptions to "my" time. This was my conversion experience. Once I was able to accept the fullness of my new life, it them became possible to enjoy it much more." p. 56
  

Sometimes when I feel like a "bad mom," I realize I'm still growing and learning and improving- just like any professional. I am undergoing a motherhood revelation- and conversion of my own.

There is a woman here who has 8 kids. She is what I call a "Jedi mom." She's a mother who has things under control with a calm precision. When Weston was one, I complimented this mother. At that time she had children from the ages of 17 down to 2 and she told me something that really encouraged me, "I've had 17 years more practice than you." That is so true. It is good to see progress.

Anyhow, I think becoming a lay speech therapist is going to help my motherhood goals.