This year for Halloween Sweet Pea was a pumpkin. He was so cute! Instead of taking him trick-or-treating, we decided to take him to the nursing home that we volunteer at to show the residents his costume. They all loved it! While we were there I decided that this is something we will do every year. The residents of the nursing home get much more out of seeing the little ones in costume than anyone else.

Sweet Pea has been having nightmares for the past week or so. He will wake up screaming and when I come into his room he is stomping his feet and reaching for the door. It has been a hard week because since the nightmares started he has been a little more clingy than normal and has started to not want to nap or go to bed. All of which is understandable considering the situation.

Anyways, it got to the point that I took him to the doctor to make sure there wasn’t anything medical going on and to check and see if he had any ideas on what to do. He confirmed that is was nightmares and told me there wasn’t much I could do about it. Just keep doing what I am doing: Comforting him when he cries and making his room a positive place to be.

Yesterday I was telling a friend what was going on and she mentioned that of all the things I was doing to try to help him, I wasn’t praying for him. I thought to myself…oh my goodness!! Why didn’t I think about praying for my son!? So last night we all gathered around Sweet Pea’s crib with a Bible in hand and prayed over our son and his room. We asked God to bless his room and be present with him all night and then the three of us pushed the Bible under his crib. We kissed him and said goodnight. We all woke up the next morning rested and ready for the day.

It’s funny how when we have an earthly problem we exhaust every possibility before we even think of asking God to take the situation out of our hands and fix it. The Lord is so amazing and he can do wondrous things….if we let Him.

Everyone in our household is now healthy so I will spend some time telling you about the retreat that I went on this past Friday night. It was amazing. I haven’t been on a retreat in more than three years and once I was there I could tell that it was what I have needed all along. With the stress of life I thought I just needed a little break and time to myself but what I really needed was time with my Lord. It’s amazing how the longer we go without being in the presence of the Lord the more that we convince ourselves that we don’t need it. But when that happens we just become more and more stressed out and don’t know how to deal with it.

Thinking back I realize that when I used to go on retreats every few months my life was peaceful and exciting. I would go to a retreat and spend quality time with the Lord which would get me excited about spending time in the Word. A few months later the time would come when life was becoming stressful again and spending time in the Bible became too time consuming. This is when I would always go on a retreat again, become reacquainted with the Lord and become excited about His word and what He was doing in my life. Somewhere along the line I thought I could just do it all myself and there was no need for retreats. That is when life got hard and stressful.

This weekend’s retreat was called “Come Away With Me”. Very fitting for I needed to relearn that it is important to take a weekend every so often and spend it with God. It was a very intimate evening spent with God and my fellow sisters in Christ. We laughed and cried and prayed together all weekend.

If you find yourself feeling down or overwhelmed, just remember that time spent with God can do wonders.

If you are looking for another way to reduce waste in your home this is the way to do it. Visit the website freecycle.org and get a membership with a group in your area. The point of freecycle is for you to look at what you would normally be throwing away and give it away instead. Say you have an old vase or a stack of paper plates that you are just going to throw away with the next day’s trash. Instead post an add on freecycle and have somebody come pick it up that is going to use it. It is very easy and really a good idea.

Before going to church tonight I put an ad up for an old dryer and a coffee maker that we don’t use and I already have responses from people that want to come get them tomorrow! So instead of adding waste to a landfill we are giving these things to people that want to use them! So visit the site and sign up! Oh..the other good thing about the adds is that once you are a member you can look through them and see if there is anything that you have been needing or wanting. So far we haven’t taken anything from anybody but we have gotten rid of quite a few things.

So far it has been fairly easy to do chores with Sweet Pea around. When I needed to do the dishes I just plopped him in is high chair and let him eat a snack while I scrubbed dirty pots and plates. If I needed to vacuum, no problem! I would just strap him to my body with my awesome Moby wrap and go about my business.

As he has gotten older doing stuff around the house has become more of a challenge. Now when I want to unload the dishwasher he wants to take out the dishes and hand them to me so I can put them away. This is not such a bad thing, since it teaches him early on that yes, he does have to contribute something to this household.  The problem arises when I want to load the dishwasher. The dishes are coming out just as fast as I put them in! And unfortunately I can no longer trick him by just putting him in the high chair -  he wails because all he knows is that I get to play with one of his favorite things and he’s left out.

Vacuuming is much harder too. As soon as I have the vacuum cleaner plugged up he rushes over to me and insists on pushing the vacuum too. Oh and the dryer! He loves taking wet clothes and putting them in the dryer. Of course if I’m not fast enough in handing him the wet clothes from the washer, the ones from the dryer get taken out again and thrown on the floor!

This new desire to help has certainly added some comedy to my day, and frustration. I just have to keep telling myself that it may get done slower, but at least it gets done.  By letting him help me and not pushing him away because it is easier for me, he learns that I want and need his help.

About six months ago my mom and I decided to start taking Sweet Pea to visit a nursing home. It has been such a great experience so far because we get to bring a little sunshine to people that are cooped up all day long with no visitors. Over the course of that time we have formed a special relationship with two of the lady residents and one of the male residents. Since Sweet Pea was only seven months old when we started visiting these three wonderful people have been able to watch him grow and learn. They enjoy it just as much as we do!

Mr. L always begins our visit by doing exercise moves with little Sweet Pea. Sometimes Sweet Pea does the little exercise and sometimes he just grins at Mr. L.

Mrs. H can’t get out of bed but the second we enter her room she focuses in on Sweet Pea and makes him smile by calling him Charlie Brown and being very animated.

Mrs. N gets teary eyed just about every time we see her and exclaims that Sweet Pea is the highlight of her week.

Each week I am reminded that there are people outside our bubble that are hurting and need a friend. I hope that by bringing Sweet Pea to visit these wonderful people each week he will grow up to be a compassionate person who shares God’s grace with everybody.