And a new week begins....

I've realized that I shouldn't leave two depressing blog posts in a row and then disappear for nine days. Thank you to everyone who emailed me and asked if we were okay. I'm sorry I didn't even take the time to pop on here and post a short, "Hey! We're fine, just a busy week" message.

But... here it is... Hey! We're fine... it was just a busy week.

Seriously, thank you to everyone who emailed me. Some of you even de-lurked (!) to email me.. and I want you to know that I really appreciate it.

The truth is... and it's not that interesting... is that we had a garage sale over the weekend up at our church. It was one of our fundraisers for the India trip and - including the sale - we worked on it for 49 hours total.

It wasn't yo' grannies garage sale. Oh no, we do everything bigger in Texas.

It was an uber garage sale.

And, man, did it take a long time.

So that - plus running around to different therapies and other various commitments - meant that we were up at 5:30 and often not home until 10:30 at night.

Of course, the kids were angels last week. I think the key to their success is keeping them away from home. hee hee. They do great when we're away. It's when we're home with nothing to do that mayhem starts.

Honestly, though, I do feel like I'm getting a slight.. and emphasis on slight.. grip of things. This whole journey is also making me realize how uptight I am about certain things and how much control I want over a lot of things.

Basically, we have two girls in this family who are both fighting to be queen of this castle... and I'm having to learn which battles to pick and which ones to let slide.

I think it tells you that in every single parenting book out there.. but, you know, I'm a little slow with getting the message sometimes.

Sometimes though, I wonder if all this RAD reading hasn't messed me up a bit. There are sooooo many philosophies out there.

One of them was great, but it made me question every move my kids made.. "Are they being truthful or trying to manipulate me?" And I couldn't live with second guessing every move my kids made. I mean, it was causing me to wake up every morning and view my kids as little manipulators. I was growing resentful and it showed.

Then another book told me that my kids live in constant fear all day long. And if I found myself getting mad, then I needed to sit back and reflect on what made me so angry. If my kids lied, I needed to reflect on what great lie was told to me when I was younger that would make me so angry when my owns kids were caught in a lie.

What?? Couldn't it just be that I don't want my kids to grow up to be a liar liar pants on fire?

One book says this, one book says that. One website says this and one says that. I don't know what to think.

But now that we've been at it for a month or so... I'm beginning to realize certain patterns and behaviors and have been able to pull bits from this book and bits from that one and put together some kind of formula that's working right now.

I will try to blog about that later today. This post was actually - really and truly - meant to be a "Hey! We're alive!" post, but once I sit down at the computer, my fingers start going a million miles a minute.

So, I'm going to cut it short here and try to post later on today about what we're doing and what is causing my attitude to change and what we think the future might hold.

Things aren't perfect here by any means. Little N has been working us since 6:30 in the morning.. pulling every trick in the book. But my attitude is changing - a tiny bit - and it's making things somewhat manageable.

Okay, I'll blog later about it all.

Just wanted to pop in here and say that we're still here.

Be back later. :-)