Manna tastes like Manna

Up till two months ago, for the last six years I have had a migraine almost everyday. I had tried almost everything to figure out what was going on. The doctors tried preventative medicine and muscle relaxers, chiropractors tried adjustments and supplements, and I've tried every over-the-counter drug, exercise, and home remedy that I could find. Finally my wife  did some research and found the answer with a cold twist. It was the food I'd been eating. Hormones in chicken and things like soy sauce were causing almost all these problems. My wife changed our meals and the ingredients used to make them and went organic. I wont lie, I miss white all purpose flour, and I cry myself to sleep when I remember the taste of refined sugar. When I remember the migraines however, I quickly forget about the way food used to taste. The children however have differing opinions on organic food. Jack seems to have the strongest. The other day my wife made some pumpkin bread and chocolate brownies with a organic sweetener called sucanant. As soon as I put it in my mouth all I could taste was wheat. My wife proceeded to tell me how she herself had thought it tasted funny and when the children ate it Jack almost cried. I remembered that my son loves wheat bread. Using a little trickery I told Jack that it was wheat bread and he gobbled it up. I felt triumphant, until I realized we didn't have any real brownies...

Lily of Death Valley

We have all undoubtedly heard our parents say that one day we would get paid back for being ornery. I hope that's what you've heard anyway, if not that just makes the way I acted as a kid even more worse then I thought. Anyway... Today I'm going to give you a few stories of what being paid back in full looks like. Her name is Lily...

The first warning signs of Lily's coming doom were in the womb. When my wife was pregnant with our second daughter she literally threw up for 24 hours straight. This was on top of her usual morning sickness. Lily's birth was the most painful for my wife, she broke my wife's tail bone on the way out as a "thanks for the stay!" The next few days she was with us were wonderful, in hindsight it was a picture into her personality. This little girl is a complete 50/50 of cute and monster! Don't get me wrong, I love my little monster, and her cuteness tends to erase the carnage she can wreak.
We were blessed with Jack and Anna who are amazing sleepers. Their bedtime is from 8pm-8am and they took naps from 1pm-4pm. If you have children you know how amazing this is. Lily on the other hand thinks schedules and nap times are her play thing. The night Lily came home was the worst night (in an annoying sense) that this family has ever known. As I mentioned in Plague of Froggy, Lily's scream is the loudest most annoying scream I have ever heard. She can stop an entire store of customers in their tracks when she wants to, and she has. That was the scream that we dealt with all night that first night. She has not disappointed in being the most infamous of our four as she has grown up. These are some quick stories of her recent doings:

Lily wanted to "hold" her baby brother Max. She asked her mother to "Ahh" Max, because when children hold babies everyone goes "Ahh!" My wife allowing for her request held Max as she let Lily "hold" him, but Lily was unhappy because he was touching HER chair.

As part of the kids lunches my wife included crackers. When Lily ran out of crackers she called my wife a "Mother F*****" to our complete and utter shock. In reality she was saying "another cracker" but the damage was done, our shocked faces had sealed the deal and she deemed it funny. We now dread the day they serve the kids crackers at church for snack.

She had a stint where she would scream in the middle of the night and when we would enter the room she would cry out "Doggy! Where Doggy?!" Doggy is the equivalent of Froggy in Lily's eyes (my children aren't very original with naming their stuffed animals) As weary eyed parents we would search the room looking for where she had thrown the stuffed dog only to be to hear "Doggy!" in the cheeriest voice. When we look up there is the dog sitting right beside the little girl. Stuffed animals have it out for me, I can tell by there beady little plastic eyes.

I have many more stories of Lily, physical violence is her specialty, but I will be saving those for her upcoming birthday which is February 8th.  She will be turning 2. Please pray for my family, all condolences are appreciated.

Plague of Froggy

 You can learn a lot from your children. Most of the lessons are excruciating however and you'll need a good supply of pain reliever. Pride is usually what your children chew up, swallow and leave for you in their diaper. If  your children are potty trained however you'll tend to find it waiting to be dumped in the toilet... flush!
It was a Monday night and we had community group (Members of our church  get together on a weekly basis for fellowship and bible study). Almost all the members of our group have children so parents take turns watching the kids in a separate room. That night was our turn.
The night started out fine and really nothing happened that led to what happened when we got home. Being in a small room with seven children (I must confess that four were our own) must have been fuel to the fire. I have no doubt what, or should I say who, the match was for this fire. Lily, the third mini-horseman, screamed inconsolably for eight minutes of a ten minute drive. We've had this happen before. My wife and I are no strangers to our children's screams of unhappiness in the car. Jack once screamed for four hours out of five and a half on the way home from my wife's parents. This was different. To put it as plain as I can, Lily's screams could give smoke detectors a run for their money. It was after this short drive with the sounds of hell roaring from our soon to be two year-old's mouth that we came home to boiling tensions between my better-half and myself.
Getting four children ready for bed can be a hazardous job under these circumstances, all it takes is one rouge wave to capsize a ship. That one rouge wave's name was froggy. Froggy is Jack's stuffed toy that is his best friend. Sleep is unthinkable, long travel is undo-able, and careful deliberation is incalculable without the stuffed frogs bulging eyes to look on him. The realization that bed time was upon him came to our son's mind and froggy need to be added to his beds dressing. That is when it happened. Froggy was nowhere to be found. This has happened from time to time so my wife and I checked all his usual haunts. Below Jack's bed, behind the corner of our sectional, the chairs of our kitchen table, but still we could not find him. Bickering between my wife and I ensued as we told our son to go to his room and wait for us to bring him his friend.
I am not proud to say bickering turned into an argument about organization and if Jack was too old for a stuffed animal to be at his constant side. I argued that if he lost his frog then tonight was the night to say goodbye to froggy. My wife asked if I would be the one to get up with Jack and console him through the night ahead. I stupidly answered that no, I would not, I had to go to work in the morning (I really think we're pre-programmed with moronic things to say in arguments). It came to the point where I had had enough. I told my wife I was done looking, if she wanted to waste her night looking for the frog she could, but I was done and wanted to relax before bed (again, my brain and my mouth not work so good sometime).
As I was half-listening to my wife's response and in the process of sitting down in the recliner I was rolling my eyes. And as my eyes reached the apex of that roll this is what I saw:

Hanging from the ceiling fan was froggy. Our son had developed a habit of throwing the frog up there and trying to get him stuck on the fan, but it had been a couple of weeks since he'd done it, so it was off our radar as a usual place for froggy.
 The lessons our children teach us are never intentional, but the way God uses them are. Pride... flush!

Raising the 4 Horsemen

Parenting children can bring healthy challenge to a young father. Passing on our knowledge, praying it's wisdom, can be rewarding in so many ways. The blessings our children give us stay with us all our lives. Little ones shape us, change us, and... Well that's what I've heard anyway. So far the challenges I've faced are usually in dominance, rather what a wolf pack might go through. Knowledge has been passed down, and passed down, and passed down. Knowledge has been passed so much I feel like it's gas, it apparently stinks and is a good excuse for them to leave the room. 

My name is Erik, I am about to leave my twenties and I have four children, four years and under to push, pull, and prod me out of them. I have an unbelievably patient and awesome wife who is the only reason I am still alive. Anything the children have learned that is worthy of retaining my wife has passed on to them. My children, who will be the main subject of this blog, are named Jack who is four, Anna who is three, Lily who is two, and Max our seven month old.

I will make a simple request to you as you read these stories. Please understand I love my children. I am absolutely crazy head over heels for my kids. That's the reason I am writing, if I get to have this much fun (sometimes in hindsight) you should be able to share in it.