A Day in the Life of a Working Homeschool Mom

Every now and then I like to just log what a day in my life looks like.  This is not necessarily a "typical" day. (I'm not sure I have typical days). We do not have big church dinners every night - they happen about once a month.  I do have evening meetings at church at least 4 evenings every month, sometimes more.  And this day was unusual in that we skipped the kids' extracurriculars in order to make the day work, because they conflicted with the church dinner.

But this is what our life looked like yesterday, for what that is worth.



6am, my alarm goes off, but I push the snooze button.  I hear my husband up and heading out for his day, but sleep through that.

7am, I actually wake up, and realize I've missed my husband's departure for work and that my son (whose "computer day" it is) is up and on the computer already.  I get up and make some coffee, and take care of my morning routine, etc.

7:30, my daughter gets up and begins to watch some videos, my son heads out doors to take care of all our animals, and I call my mother to chat and to discuss the last four books of the Bible that we've been reading for Mother-Daughter Bible Study.

8:00, I break off my conversation with my mother so I can call and cancel a doctor's appointment.  Then I call the kids in to go over their school planner's together and decide what needed doing today.

8:15, we begin a bit of schoolwork: my son does some piano practice, then starts trying to catch up on physics lessons (we were behind because of some sick days last week).  My daughter wanted to work on an Animal Presentation we have coming up at the end of the month.  I read her a book about her animal of choice, then she began to copy out a bit she wanted to put on her poster board.

8:45, I threw a load of laundry in the washing machine, and then made some photocopies of school work to be done, and started to pack backpacks with other school work.  My kids finished their work and each took a bit of a break (one on the computer, one with an audio book to listen to).

9:00, I call them in to do one of their Drawing Labs, this one to sketch pets.

9:20, we pack the rest of our stuff up and head off to church (for work).

9:50, we arrive at church, the kids set themselves up in a classroom (building with blocks and watching a documentary about the space race on netflix) while I get to work at my desk, mostly cleaning up from Sunday and recording attendance numbers, also calling people back who left messages and sending reminder messages to my childcare team for the evening.

11:00, an appointment arrives to talk to me.

11:40, I am done with my appointment, gather up the kids, and head out to get some lunch.

11:50, we order our sandwiches at a local shop that uses gluten-free bread.  I spend the waiting time reading Growing Souls, a book I'm reading for work, while the kids occupy themselves drawing on napkins and chatting with each other about space travel.

12:15, we get our sandwiches and leave, also picking up my husband's drycleaning from the shop next door.

12:30, it's back to work, eating my sandwich at my desk while I work on writing up a report and a lesson plan, and the kids watch a DVD on the TV in the corner of my office while they ate their sandwiches.

1:15, my kids head off to a classroom (where they do some of the homework I packed in their backpacks and also just play with some wooden blocks and plastic animals), and I have a meeting with our minister.

1:30, I get back to my desk and get to work sending emails to prep all the teaching and volunteer teams for the coming Sunday and attend to other little admin tasks.

3:00, I gather up the kids again and head back home to let my dogs out of their crates.

3:15, we stop at the library to drop off books and pick up those that have come in on hold.

3:45, back home.  Quick care of animals, then my son got on the computer (it's his computer day, we alternate).  My daughter watched a science DVD I had assigned, then did violin practice.  While she was watching the DVD, I quickly wrote my weekly email to church parents from my home desk.

4:15, I called both kids in to do a spanish lesson (on DVD) while I folded laundry off the drying rack and hung up wet laundry to dry.

5:00, I supervised the kids doing some chores: washing dishes, taking out the trash, tidying up.

5:15, we left to head back to church.  We listen to our current audiobook, The One and Only Ivan, in the car.

5:45, arrived, I did some work at my desk (writing up a Parent Info sheet for our upcoming OWL class)

6:00, a community night dinner began at church.  The kids and I got food, they headed off to the nursery to eat in there and play with their friends, while I joined a table of congregants and chatted.

7:00, the educational program for the evening begins.  The Pastoral Care team arranged for a guest speaker on Disaster Preparedness, and two volunteers have also designed a kids program about it.  My kids got to do the kids program, but I unfortunately had to head into a Program Council meeting instead of learning all the things I should be doing at home for Disaster Prep.  The kids will have to tell me what we're doing wrong.

7:50, there is a break in the meeting I am attending, which fortuitously coincides with the end of the children's program so I am able to thank the two volunteers, check in with my nursery staff, and help my kids transition to independent hanging out time in my office.  They had my laptop from home, so they watched another episode of the NASA space race documentary series.  I also take some time to help someone who popped into church hoping to figure out how to use the church laptop for a presentation she is doing on Saturday.

9:15 The meeting runs late, so it's pretty late when I can finally tell the kids to pack up.  We listen to our current audiobook, The One and Only Ivan, in the car on the way home.

9:45 We get home.  My husband has spent the evening alone as a chance to catch up some work at his computer.  The kids say they are still hungry, so we feed them some leftover soup, then they have to do their evening chores and routine.

10:15 The kids are in bed, my husband and I chat a bit, then put on an episode of Dexter.  I set up my laptop on my lap and write up the draft of my Take Home email that goes out after the Sunday lessons with extension questions and suggestions.

11:15 My husband heads to bed.  I start writing this blog post, but give up and go to sleep about midnight.

And that's a wrap!

I'm Back!

I've been off in the land of Charlie Brown (St. Paul) attending a conference for work (I blogged about the conference over on my other blog).  It was a great week, with lots of professional networking, inspiring ideas and presentations, and time by myself in a hotel and eating out a lot.  As much as I love being a mom and a cook and a radical homemaker/small scale homesteader (while also working full time), it's still a nice break to go stay somewhere and have others clean up after me and feed me.

But what did I do with my kids for this week?  Well, this is one of those times that it's really good to have some other homeschooling mom friends.  We paid a friend to watch the kids during the days that my husband worked, and I left them for the week with frozen meals and activity bags packed and with a lot of worries and lists and all the laundry done and instructions for when kids needed to be where ...

And my husband ignored a lot of it and did things his own way and some of my prep was useful and they didn't get any schoolwork done and took an impromptu weekend trip away with my in-laws to the beach in Oregon ... and they were just fine without me.

Don't get me wrong - they were still very happy when I got home and I still feel needed.  My daughter said "thank goodness you're home because I need laundry washed!" and my son said "please make a salad for dinner because Daddy didn't feed me any vegetables all week!", but they also said they had fun and they obviously had some good bonding time with their dad, without me there to be the automatic first responder.

Absence may not make the heart grow fonder, but it really does give you some perspective and more appreciation for things often taken for granted.  Taking time away from my family does them no harm, and gets increasingly easier as they get older.

So don't be afraid to take some time away from your kids.  Your partner can handle it.  Really, they can.  We may want to be needed, but we should also let others go without us every now and then.  It gives them a chance to unfurl their wings and discover what they are capable of, and it gives everyone a chance to see you as more than a reliable caretaker.

Small Victories

 Sometimes the trick is to break life down into small bites. An overstuffed linen closet is frustrating because you can never find the right sized sheets for the various beds in your household? It took me 30 minutes to pull all the sheets out and sort them and decide which to donate so the closet isn't so full. Some bags I already had lying around served to hold all the queen sheets in one bag, double sheets in another, twin in a third, and pillow cases in a fourth.

  

Or maybe it's the office at work that is dirty, cluttered, and driving you crazy?



A good use of summer slow down time at church is to clean that office all up!



They were actually small investments of energy in the big picture, but I am feeling so relieved and happy with these little victories.

Seven Fun Things From Church Today

1. A class of 3rd and 4th graders who build their vision of Solomon's Temple out of Duplos and then are so excited to show it to me and get me to take a picture of it.  Features to note: a water slide, a book open for the Priest to read from, and out of the camera shot, a rainbow standing over it all.

2.  Four year olds who sit on the rug in their classroom alone while I have to run out looking for a teacher after a volunteer doesn't show ... and when I get back without anyone and realize I have to cover this class myself (along with supervising the six other classes going on) the kids say "we were Statues!".  Darling little ones practically ran their own class today.

3.  Getting to pop in and watch 5th and 6th graders do a little skit based off "clues" for the Cain and Abel story, and see them create a whole new scenario.

4.  Holding hands with good people in the High School group gathering.

5.  Having great advisors come in and enrich the Middle School lesson so much.

6.  Getting to introduce a new little one to our Nursery.

7.  Arriving in time to find my daughter is the last one in her class of 1st and 2nd graders and is valiantly still trying to hold their model Ark of the Covenant up "because all my friends left me when they heard there were cookies!".

Doing Church

I get up very early on Sunday mornings to get to church in time to set it all up.  Part of what makes that actually pleasant is that I listen to eTown which airs from 7-8am on Sunday mornings here.  In a lot of ways, eTown feels like church to me.  There is good, soulful music that frequently has a social or uplifting message.  There is conversation with the artists, usually focused on what inspires them and what their mission is.  They also honor someone every week with the "e-chievement award" and discuss the justice or environmental work that person does.

This feels like church to me.  I'm uplifted and inspired, moved, challenged, comforted.  So should I just get up and listen to the radio in the morning and then go home?

Of course not (even setting aside that not showing up to work would be a bad idea).  It wouldn't be enough, because passively listening to the radio is not Doing Church.

Listening is part of Church.  But, in much the same way that going into nature alone is not Doing Church either, listening and not having to give something back to those around you is a completely different experience and only half (or less) of the equation that is Church.

When we Do Church, we take our place in a community.  It means interacting with other people.  It means being open to experiencing the jagged peaks and valleys of other peoples' lives, as they bring into the church their greatest Joys and Sorrows.  It means passing a tissue to a woman who is crying during the sermon, even though you have no idea why she has been moved to tears.  It means singing the Birthday Song for the 6 year old and the 98 year old at the same time.  It means signing up for cookie service and for the march on the capitol building.  It means that new ideas will challenge you.  Sometimes you will change your mind, sometimes you will just have to agree to disagree.  It means offering to hold the baby for a little bit, or holding the door open for the elder with a cane.  It means being challenged to explain what you think and believe and who you are to other people, who are also engaged in thinking about what they believe and who they are.

Listening to the radio on my way to church is important to me, but it cannot be the whole experience.  For me, as a Religious Educator, the radio show replaces what I missed in the worship service.  But all the rest of it ... all the unpredictable, messy, human parts of it, are the real heart and soul of Church for me.

Here I sit

Here is the compliment to my previous Here I Sit post (maybe I'll make a thing of doing these sorts of posts).  Here is my space in my office at church, a place where I sit only slightly less than I sit at my desk at home.  Here, you can see that I am eating my lunch at my desk.  I'm loading updates on my computer software, getting a quote out of Everyday Spiritual Practice, referencing my calendars and my Little Book of Things I Need to Do.  This space is frequently covered in craft supplies, binders of curriculum, attendance sheets, registration forms, and catalogs.  Here I like to sit and sort it all out, file it, keep the wheels rolling and the balls in the air.  This space is less for contemplation and more for the ministry of administration.  I sit here three afternoons a week, and then it is the dumping ground for all the things I don't have time to attend to on a Sunday.  On Tuesday I come in and shovel it all back off and file it, respond to it, get it back under control.

Here I sit.

Holiday Weekends

The holidays are busy times for me at church, although it usually settles down by the second half of December and I get a little reflective time in the second half of the month.

This weekend was the biggie.  A holiday variety/talent show on Saturday, then church Sunday morning and taking the youth group to the zoo for their light display Sunday evening.

Everything involved my family as well, so they are just about as tired out as I am.  I'm looking forward to my day off tomorrow!

The Day of the Dead

Today is Dia de los Muertos, or The Day of the Dead.  It is a primarily Mexican holiday, in which people remember their loved ones who have died by cleaning their graves, bringing food and drink and flowers, and having what seems like a party.

Our congregation has marked the Day of the Dead with an intergenerational worship service on the Sunday before for as long as I have been here.  Originally, a member who grew up in Mexico began the practice, but after a few years she passed the leadership of the service on to the worship arts committee, and I have been involved in this service ever since I became the Director of Religious Education here.

A few things really jumped out at me last Sunday as I sat in the service.

When people are called to come forward and place mementos on the altar, almost everyone does.  Everyone is touched by death.

The pain of loss may lessen with time, but it's still there.  Some people are in tears for a loss that happened many, many years ago.  A twin sibling that died in childhood.  A baby stillborn.  A child or young person.  A spouse tragically killed too young.  Or other losses that surprise me that they are still so raw: parent, grandparent, aunt.  We will always mourn.

I know that some people avoid this service every year.  Not that many people bring their children.  But for many, this service is important.  They come to cry.  They come to see their tears as part of a larger picture of the cycles of life and the larger life of the community.  To truly engage with life means to truly engage with death.

Over the years my "list" has grown.  At first I was just placing a memento for my lost pregnancy (and no matter what some may say, that was a "real baby", and I still mourn it), then for my grandfather.  This year it was my unnamed little peanut, my grandfather, and my other grandparents.  More life also means more loss.  

It is real, it is unavoidable, it is part of the experience of living.  

It is the ultimate Great Mystery, the Final Frontier.

We live In Between (as our reading on Sunday by Richard Gilbert says).

Or, in the words of Tim McGraw, "I hope you get the chance to live like you are dying".

The Happiness Trap

In my study reading yesterday I came across this notion: The Happiness Trap.  That, in fact, focusing too much on whether everyone is happy will lead to stagnation, the status quo, and stunted personal growth for all involved.  In this sense, when we work hard to "keep everybody happy", we are actually failing to promote spiritual growth, and often failing to live our greater mission.

Times of conflict and discomfort, then, would actually be times of great growth and a necessary phase in community life.

This notion is simultaneously eye-opening, comforting, and discouraging to me.

Eye-opening because I recognize in myself the traits of a people-pleaser, and because I know that it is easy to evaluate your work with the question "is everybody happy about it?".  If that is truly my only goal in life, I can see that I could be doomed to be pulled this way and that, and never actually get anywhere in the end.  It might be like trying to spread out pizza dough by pulling it to the right ... and then noticing that it is too thin on the left so you pull it to the left ... oh dear now it is misshapen so you pull it upward ... and you never get it right.  But if you just give it a good spin ....

It is comforting because in times of conflict or discomfort I can become depressed, which is associated with feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.  No matter what I do, it will be wrong in someone's eyes.  No matter what I do, somebody will still be unhappy with me so what's the point.  I can't please everyone, so there is nothing to be done. But if I realize that this phase is normal, that we are all growing, and I focus on healthy growth or myself and others and on the fact that we will be stronger afterward - made wiser by the conflict - perhaps not happy about it but better in someways.  Well, that is comforting and gives me something to hold onto.

And then it is discouraging also because really - as someone recently said to me - "if I grow anymore I'll be in the stratosphere".  When I was in Grad school we got to the point where we would say, "oh great, another f-ing Learning Opportunity".  Growing and learning is exhausting work, and it would be nice to imagine that at some point we are Done.  As though there were a point where you had Graduated From the School of Life and now you will walk around in perfect wisdom and live happily ever after.  It's discouraging to realize that we are never done.  There is no happily ever after, just Happy for Now.  If we are lucky, the Happy/Comfortable times come often enough to get us all rested up for that Disequilibrium phase where we will be made uncomfortable and forced to grow.  But the comfortable phase won't last forever.

Oh great.  Another Learning Opportunity.  Another Growth Experience.  Another time of discomfort and disequilibrium.  And I'm alive and growing, and that's how it works.

Welcome Back to Church

Many, many UU's take the summer sort of "off" from church, and so we drop down to just one All Ages Religious Education class in the summer.

Yesterday we went back to the full array of classes, and had a big crowd show up.  For the first day of class, we concentrated on playing icebreaker games to build community, and on writing a Covenant in each classroom for how the children or youth will be together this year.

It was pretty energizing to see all that activity in our classrooms again. I'm looking forward to a great year!

The Rest Comes Easy

Ahhhh.  My dear husband gave me a fabulous gift this year for my birthday - a Weekend!  Well, actually it wasn't a weekend at all, because I can't take a weekend off work right now, what with it being church start-up season.  No - he took two days off work so we could go away together and I could still get back in time for Sunday.

Perfect.


 

Hanging in there

(Sometimes, being between two hard places actually is good)

Things are a bit tough, but so far we're hanging in there.  I'm very busy at church, and the church is going through a very rough experience, but we'll get through it.  Life is busy at home too.  Really, it would be enough to "just" be a stay-at-home mom, but to do a full-time job and homeschool is A LOT.

My house isn't as clean as I'd like, and my garden is just done for, but otherwise we're making it through.  I'm getting it all done, and taking care of myself at the same time.  It's going to be OK.

The recent UU World article examining "Obama's Childhood Unitarian Universalism", says:

Despite his childhood exposure to Unitarian Universalism, Barack Obama found his religious home elsewhere - just as too many of our young people do.

9 out of 10 Unitarian Universalist youth will leave UUism as adults.  I'm not sure how many of them eventually come back, but overwhelmingly we are a denomination made up of transplants from other faiths, as Seattleite from Syracuse recently described.  I, too, in many ways am a transplant, although I transplanted myself while still in my teens so sometimes I get counted in the demographic of "life-long UU" depending on where folks are drawing the line.

My family roots are in Presbyterianism, and I have attended my grandparents' church whenever we go back to visit.  But my parents both drifted from their family's religion and became part of the "Nones" - for "what is your religious affiliation?" "None."  I grew up with no church, plenty of skepticism and cynicism about organized religion, a very large dose of New Age dabbling, and an unhealthy vein of fear and paranoia about being persecuted for our religion or lack-there-of.

I found my own faith home when I first walked into a UU church, but I had a long road to travel before that home noticed me back.  A decade of attendance in UU churches, in fact, always feeling like an outsider, being asked if I was a Visitor even in a church I'd attended for more than 3 years, and existing on the periphery or church life.

In her article, Thandeka speaks of the age-fracture in our congregations.  We do a poor job of bringing people of different ages together, of creating multi-generational community.  And there is a chasm that our young adults fall into.  We have a warm and vibrant community going on for youth - CONS are a big part of that - and I think we've got a pretty good thing going for older adults.  But most mid or small sized congregations don't have much of anything for young adults.  A youth who has experienced a vibrant youth group community and then is just dumped into the big pool of adults is going to feel lost and alone.

Young Adult groups are part of the solution, I think.  More of an effort to invite young adults in and take them seriously - so they don't feel invisible for a decade like I did - would also help.  And changing the way our RE programs prepare children and youth for a future adult religious life would also help.

I, personally, think UUism is pretty darn awesome, and that it has a lot to offer as a life-long path.  It's worth the effort, I think.

Color Fun

We are doing camp at church this week, for the 4-7 year old crowd, with a theme of "Rainbow Camp".  The Rainbow is a way to remember the UU 7 Principles, but doing a rainbow theme is also a great excuse for a bunch of fun activities with color!



And this idea, which I got from the blog Salt and Chocolate, was a huge hit.  Baking soda in trays, with  small containers of vinegar colored with food coloring.  I mixed it up a bit and did some water and some vinegar and didn't tell the kids which was which, so they got the surprise of not knowing if it was going to fizz or not.  Some pipettes so they can drop it on the baking soda, and they would have happily just kept going with this activity.

There's a bit more breathing room ....

The calendar is finally opening up, with a bit more room to breathe.  Sure, we still have baseball season now, and a Youth Bridging service to plan, but the Religious Education program at church is about to switch to the much easier summer program, my UU History class wrapped up, I've delivered my sermon, and we'll soon be finishing up our PE and martial arts classes and then taking a break for the summer.

I'm hoping for (and needing) a bit of rest this summer, but I know that summer gets busy fast.  I need to start laying out a summer calendar now, and then penciling out days and just writing "Chill Out" on them!

Work/Life Balance and the Religious Professional

Here is where I want to be on Sunday evenings.  For the last decade, my husband and I have had dinner at his mother's house almost every single Sunday night.  It's Sunday Night Dinner - a family tradition and institution all it's own.  His sister makes it, we make it, our children have grown up expecting that they will see their grandparents every week for dinner.

This year I took on a new time slot for hosting a Young Adult group at church, and let myself get convinced that Sunday evening was the right time for Young Adult ministry.  And I started missing a lot of these family dinners as a consequence.

I have a great job that lets me have time off during weekdays that most other people don't get off.  But I also am working evenings and weekends - the time that most other people do have off.  And I'm seeing that there is a real problem of becoming separated from your family because you miss Sunday Night Dinner, or because you have to be at a meeting the evening of your son's birthday (never mind that you took him out to lunch - the rest of the family is doing a dinner), or because you can't go away for a weekend ever.

It's not just about time, it's also about Together Time.  I'm going to take the kids to the ocean this month - on a Monday-Tuesday.  That's when I can go.  But my husband works a "normal" job, and so he can't go with us.  He could go if we went Saturday-Sunday, but I can't be gone on a Sunday.  It's a struggle to find whole-family time.

But I'm setting some limits.  I'm taking some steps of self-care and one of them is that I really cannot be responsible for young adult ministry in my church.  I already have enough to do with ministry to infants through high schoolers and their families, and young adults have different needs, some of which are to meet during the times that I really need to keep for my own family and marriage's health (example - Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings) and so that I can also have a social life outside of church.

Next year, you won't find me at church on a Sunday evening.  My family has a norm of sitting down to a nice meal together on Sundays, and that's where I'm going to be.

The church was hopping

Whew! I am exhausted and wiped out after a 13 hour day, but I am so pleased with our first go at having a weeknight dinner at church followed by activities for all ages. The new 1/4 time Connections Coordinator and I came up with the plan, and we did it as a Taco Potluck - everyone brought ingredients for tacos and then people could build their own tacos as they pleased. When we thought of this, we were hoping maybe 30 people would come.

40 signed up to bring something.

And 60 showed up!

The majority were older folks without kids, but there were still over 10 families present, and several parents got to participate in activities that they normally cannot do, because we had childcare available at church for the night.

It was great. Now I need to put my feet up and recover!

Is church unfriendly to the unmarried?

I've just read the book After the Baby Boomers, and the main take-away I got from the book is a feeling that the church isn't doing a good job ministering to young people who aren't part of "families". We put a lot of focus on Family Ministry, as being the alternative to ministering to mostly empty-nesters and the elderly. But what about all the people who don't fall into either category?

After the Baby Boomers looks at a LOT of statistics, and one that jumps out is that there is a huge gap in church attendance between people who are married and those who are unmarried. Being married makes you much more likely to attend church regularly. And yet, overall, the rate of marriage is decreasing among younger americans so that being married with children is no longer the norm but the exception for those in their twenties, and is becoming less the norm for those in their thirties.

Correlation is not the same as causation, or I could say "which comes first, the chicken or the egg?". Do people who go to church because they just have some sort of "church personality" also get married younger for the same personality reason? Does church attendance mean that you value marriage more and are there-for less likely to choose an "alternative lifestyle" (calling the norm "alternative" is silly, but in this case it's alternative to the traditional)? Or is church culture unwelcoming to singles?

Even if it's a combination of all of those reasons, the only one churches can really DO anything about is the last. How can we better welcome single young people and what ministry do they need in this stage of their lives?

Leggings!

Here is something Terribly Serious for us to debate: should women wear leggings to stand up in front of their church?

Last weekend I stood up as part of the worship service at my church - something I do quite often as a lay leader and DRE. Here is a tiny clip I took from a video, just so you can see my "look".

The full effect was very close to this look by movie actress Liv Tyler (I flatter myself that I looked at least this good).

But I was wearing leggings, and in a recent post on "Beauty Tips for Ministers", this is a big No No.

Fellow DRE, Chalice Spark, wrote a follow-up post about the different fashion standards on the two coasts - a serious factor here. I am a West Coast DRE, serving in a small liberal city, and most of the congregation wears jeans, or even spandex bike outfits to church on Sundays. Our minister plays it safe and wears the same all-black collared suit every Sunday.

And the debate continues! (We must be in a slow news cycle, UU blogging-wise). Strange Attractor has weighed in as well. From Alaska, she still says NO on the leggings.

I quite liked my outfit last Sunday, and thought it was fitting for a day with a high of 60 degrees and participating in the Coming of Age and Youth services. Of course, lay leaders aren't held to quite the strict standards the ministers are - and thank goodness.

It makes me worry about what I'll wear next Sunday!

My kids and my work

Oh, this is such a balancing act. Everyone who has family and work has to balance the needs of both, but my job happens a lot of the time during family time (evenings and weekends). And the congregation expects to see my family as part of the church community - they will actually remark on their absence if they don't come to church or to various social events. This is hard on my husband, who is not a UU or a "church person" (his way of phrasing it). But he's supportive and so he shows up, often enough and when I need him.

The kids are with me a lot more, and most of the time that's great. They have friends at church, so we are part of the playdates and birthday parties and so forth of the church community. And that's good - for them and for my work relationships.

But then there is the down side, like last week when I was trying to do the RE Recognition reading in the worship service, and Hypatia came up and stood at the pulpit with me and was trying to look over it. The congregation thought it was cute (mostly) but I could have strangled her. Of course, the DRE can't halt in the middle of praising children in order to turn and strangle her own child in church. Urgh.

Today Carbon joined me for part of the Flower Communion in worship, but he was pretty much OK. He stood at my side while I accepted the flowers - it was probably sweet looking. I just worry about how to keep that balance, when I'm teaching or leading worship, between having my children there and part of the community and having my children be distractions or "make me look bad".

A male former-pastor that I know remarked that there is some sexism at play in how much slack the congregation cuts me. When he was a pastor, people weren't so forgiving if he had his kids with him while he had to work. As a man, he was expected to be more dedicated to his work and free of other responsibilities. I feel like he's right, and that bums me out a bit.

On the other hand, I'm happy they do cut me some slack, so I can be a good mom and still have a full-time job.

So it's worth it. I love having my family be part of my work. So sometimes the kids aren't perfect, but the congregation likes to see them there, and it's all good in the end.