Play-Doh Monkeys and Temper Tantrums

Maybe I'll be better at this now that it's summer...and my life has slowed down quite a bit. For now anyway. I went back and read a couple of old posts and it was so strange. For some reason, I don't like doing it. I remember how I felt and the place I was in spiritually when I wrote them and going back there kind of makes my belly hurt. Isn't that bizarre? However, I do remember how much it helped me to process things and I'm feeling that need today. So I think a blog post, my Waterdeep Pandora station, and a cup of Fage yogurt should do the trick right now.

I spent this past weekend in St. Pete with Courtney and Mikey and Andrew. Courtney had a meeting from 9-4 on Saturday and Mikey had to work so I stayed with Andrew. I also got to spend Mother's Day with Courtney so it was all around...a sweet deal. Courtney is a great mom and I'm so proud of her!

Andrew and I had lots of fun drawing pictures and making Play-doh monkeys and painting Mother's Day cards and watching Thomas the Train DVDs and of course, playing with trains and cars. When I started thinking about it, it was the first time we've ever had a significant amount of qualitity time, just him and I, since he was born! It was so nice to learn the little things that God has used to make him uniquely him- things I had never gotten to notice before. For example, he has such specific attention to detail! He noticed a little spider on the other side of the glass door from across the room! And then we layed on our tummies infront of it for a good fifteen minutes discussing all it's physical characteristics that could help us create a fitting name. I believe Silly Legs was the final choice. And he's such a goof ball! We would be so silly together! I forgot how liberating a child's acceptance of pure, unadultrated silliness is. I said, "You are such a goofball!" He giggled. "Yep Aunt Caitlin! Sometimes, I'mmmmm a goofball!"

He's such a good helper too! I found myself going into Nanny mode when left alone with a child for so long and I hated it about myself. But I didn't even need some of my instincts! Before I could even ask, he was already helping me clean up when we were done with something. When I didn't know where he was and ran to make sure something wasn't broken, he would be pulling up his stool to do exactly what he needed to be doing. It blew me away. This kid was more advanced in a lot of ways than Emre! (I would attribute that to A. proactive parenting-or any kind of parenting for that matter and B. the value we place on independence in our family- or our society, if we were to compare the two).

It surprised me how conditioned I was in Turkey...in a really not good way. I had to remind myself over and over again that it was okay for Andrew's shoes to not match his outfit and if he wanted to run around in his T-shirt and underwear...that was okay. If he didn't have a full bath and was chilly for a second, no one was going to yell and if he didn't eat a certain thing Courtney wasn't going to be mad at me. I found myself contantly adhering to rules that had made me fear failure for so long...I had to keep telling myself "you don't have to follow those rules anymore, Caitlin. Take it easy."

I'm beginning to wonder how many other things I am carrying around from that experience that I should let go of. Like I don't remember having this fear of trusting other people to do things I feel I should be doing before I went to Turkey. Asli had very regimeted roles each person was supposed to play in the house and when we tried to help each other, she always found out and it always blew up in our face. I remember so much yelling in that house. SO much yelling. It's strange how this coming August, I'll have been back for a whole year yet sometimes, I still have to remind myself that if I let people help me, no one will yell at me. In fact, there's a good chance that no one will even be mad at me. Isn't that absurd?! I discovered this all from a day with my three-year old nephew!

Another thing I felt like God was trying to drive home to me actually came out of the worst temper tantrum I have EVER seen Andrew throw. For the record, we didn't have a single problem together :) However, when Mommy came home and told him we were going to the mall, he was NOT feeling it. She had told him if he was good, he could get an ice cream and a book before he left. Well, he was not good so therefore did not get the ice cream and book. When he discovered that he wasn't, in any way, going to get what he wanted, all Hell broke loose. All the way back to the car, he asked Courtney to leave him alone, then started crying, then started SCREAMING at the top of his lungs and when she picked him up he flailed all around and eventually bit her on the face. As she is my sister, I had to restain myself from snatching all his hair out when I saw that, but I must say, I admired her restraint. She didn't kill him or even act like she wanted too. However, when she ran into the grocery store, she left him behind and I sat with his screaming. I told her not to worry, I'm not really phased by temper tantrums anymore. Emre set the bar pretty high.

As soon as Courtney got out and didn't take him, he freaked out again on a whole different level.
"I WANT TO GO WITH MOMMY!"
"Why? You just bit Mommy in the face."
"BUT I WANT HER!"

Later that night, before I fell asleep I was chatting with God about the day and I got the strangest visual of me behaving towards Godexactly as Andrew had towards Courtney. "Excuse me!" I thought. I am not a temper tantrum thrower, thank you very much! Even when I was little Mom said I never did. She said "you always regulated your feelings freakishly well." But then I started being confronted with a lot of questions I didn't want to answer.
-How many times have you been aware of all I have to offer you, but done what you wanted anyway, knowing it was wrong and would end badly?
-How many times have you gone from demanding I leave you alone to running from me to being blatantly angry with me when I didn't give you what you thought you deserved?
- How many times have I tried to hold you and you not only squirmed away but HURT me out of your own selfishness?
and the worst
-How many times have you treated me like that then been scared shitless (excuse me) when you thought I had left? How many times have you waited to want me when you were scared, when you were sad, when you were hurt?

I wasn't comfortable with the answers, the honest ones anyway, to any of these questions. Ifelt extraordinarily humbled. As if God was reminding me, "no matter how strong you think you are or how much you think you've got figured out, you are still just a child. But you are my child. And you need me. However, you have to know that you need me...or you'll just be the kid screaming hysterically in the backseat when things didn't go their way.

Do we know that we need God? Not just want him around when things are hard but actually NEED him, no matter how things are. Andrew didn't understand that he needed his mom. In fact, he knew he wanted something so much that he'd rather reject and hurt her. He waited to need her until he was scared he had lost her. The honest answer is, I don't know I need God. I feel like if I were to honestly look at my life, it would reflect my desire to 1. Wait to spend time with God when things are terrible and 2. My desire to cry out to God for other people. I almost always leave myself out of the equation. The reality that I need God for ME, not as the answer I give other people, but because I am a sinner, because I don't have everything figured out, because I don't know what's best for me...that reality has completely slipped my mind.

It doesn't surprise me that God had to completely take me away from everything I use to distract myself before I could hear what he's been trying to tell me for a couple of months now. My prayer is that God will start taking down whatever wall I have around my heart that keeps me from understanding my need for Him, and also his love...that I need him not because he's some demanding, over-baring father, but because he loves me with a love I can't experience anywhere else.

So anyway, I feel better now. Maybe it made sense. Maybe it didn't.
In other news, I have training for my job at JCrew tomorrow for three hours before class...so that should be interesting.
I am recently obsessed with Tyrone Wells...I can't stop listening to Sea Breeze.
These are the pieces that popped out on Pandora...
"Are you scared? If you're scared you're not alone. I once thought I was brave." The Second Day by Kendall Payne
"Lord you know every mistake I've made but still you chose to wash them all away." Far Away by Steve Wiggins
"The world was singing 'My Deliverer is coming! My Deliverer is standing by!'" My Deliverer by Mitch McVicker

That's enough rambling. Continuous streams of consciousness are boring.
Love to you.