Trying to be Cheery

This week has been one of those weeks where it's taking lots of effort to be cheery. Here are a few things that have made me smile. Some of which have even made me laugh out loud.

1) New Years Eve was very low key. Homemade pizza and a new tradition of writing secret notes to ourselves to open next year 12/31/14. Irina didn't quite understand, but drew a lovely picture that we sealed up. Luke and Ethan worked excitedly to fill out their notes. Aaron needed a little help writing his answers. We each wrote one thing we were looking forward to in 2014, one thing we want to see God changing in us and one thing we wanted to commit to praying for.

Since I helped Aaron, I got a sneak peek at his answers. They made me chuckle!

a) He's looking forward to us adopting a baby girl in 2014. 

    (HA!! Clearly he has no idea how hard life has become recently.)

b) He wants God to give him more freckles. (Hee Hee!!)

c) He's praying that we'll get a dog or cat. :) 

(I think we'll need to wait on this a bit.)

2) New Year's Day we went for a bike ride in a nearby neighborhood with sidewalks. It took two cars to get all six bikes to the path. The boys were fighting over who got to ride in Daddy's car. To make things clear, Darin drives a 1998 Honda accord with over 200,000 miles. The paint on the roof and hood is peeling. And yet, the boys were arguing over who got to ride in the "cool car!!!!!!!" This cracked me up! I hope Luke thinks it's cool when he gets to drive it in 7 years. ;)

3) We've been working really hard to establish a regular schedule. I have a talkative and needy shadow from 7:30am until 9:30pm or later. (more on that later) We have rest time for one hour every day in which each kid plays independently and quietly. Each kid gets 3 tickets to come see Mommy during the course of the hour.  Irina is doing great and learning how to play independently. We've gone from coming out of the room every couple minutes to sometimes playing happily for the entire hour! She is so excited to earn her prize!

She's been enjoying playing with duplos and has long conversations with the little people. 

If I walk past her door, there is lots of happy chatter going on in there!

The other day I found her teaching school to her baby doll Polina. 

When I came in, she was grading Polina's papers. So cute! 

In contrast to those happy moments, we are still in need of your prayers. Specifically, please pray for bedtime and Irina's sleep. She refuses to go to bed most nights until long after she is tired. I can't go into the details, but this is not a passive refusal. She's still often waking in the night and needing comfort. Please pray that she'll get the rest her body needs and that she'll feel safe and loved. Please also pray that God will help me be compassionate with her after very long days. Every night we talk about all the people she knows that are sleeping. She reminds me every night that Jesus is not sleeping. She says, "Jesus. No sleep." Jesus is watching over Irina. Yes!

In the coming days, I am committing to writing down and memorizing some Bible verses that will help me replace negative thoughts that keep streaming through my head during difficult times. (A great suggestion from a friend!) If you have a favorite encouraging verse, please share it with me.