Freedom!

I am proud to announce that today we paid off our only credit card and are now free of any consumer debt!! Thanks to our tax refund we were able to settle with the credit card company for less than half of what we owed!!! This credit card has been such a financial burden throughout our entire marriage... when we found out what our refund was going to be this year both Thaddeus and I prayed about how God would like us to use His money... we both felt God telling us to be done with MBNA (at first I didn't want to listen and it is still hard to know that most of our refund went towards that instead of other needs we have), but it is such a blessing to be on the right road to even more financial freedom and to know that we are following God in this decision.

Bennett is 21 months old!!

(not the best picture quality, but she sure is cute!)

Bennett turned 21 months old a couple of weeks ago... I cannot believe she will be 2 soon!! She is such a little sponge following her brothers around trying to say and do everything they do. She is also such a girl!!... she's pretty dramatic and doesn't put up with the boys pushing her around. She is totally obsessed with Spongebob Squarepants.... it is the only show that keeps her attention and she loves Patrick and Gary the snail. Bennett also enjoys playing with her play kitchen... she pretends to fill cups in the sink and will share her drinks with you.

She knows tons of words and loves repeating things... we are avid movie quoter's in the Seydel house and even Bennett has some favorite quotes. From Despicable Me she likes to say "it's so fluffy!" and If we say squid launcher she says "Oh Yeah"! So hilarious!!

We've had a long winter filled with sickness... mostly ear issues. She had tubes put in her years last July and the left tube fell out just before Christmas.... really 4 months is all we got!? Any of you moms out there with kids who have had ear infections/tubes can understand my frustration! So, Bennett ended up having an infection for over a month which developed into bronchial spasms (asthma cough)... we got on meds and she's been good for a couple weeks now. On top of the ear issues/colds she has also been cutting teeth like crazy and we also took away her pacifier!! Nights for the last couple of months have been hard, but are getting better now!

It's been a long time since I've updated on Bennett's eye stuff... back in October Bennett had surgery on her eyes to straighten the alignment (she was born crossed eyed, and surgery w/ patching is the only way to correct the type of crossing she had). The surgery went great... it was an outpatient surgery so we were home by noon and by 5 that evening she was playing and eating normally. There was some redness in her eyes for about a week and you could see the stitches if you looked closely, pretty cool. So six weeks after surgery we had a follow-up appointment with her Dr. who was very pleased with her progress... her eye alignment is very close to centered now and to the untrained eye you don't notice any crossing. We have to go back in July for another follow-up appointment, but until then we don't have to patch or anything. The whole surgery process was much easier than expected (besides all of the patching issues we went through beforehand) and we feel so blessed that her eyes look so good! We know that any day her brain could just stop using the eye correctly and start crossing again, but we know God is in control and we are just so thankful!

Good Reads

One of my new year's resolutions this year is to challenge myself to become a better me... I don't know if your'e like me at all, but I have a whole laundry list of things that I wish I did better or things I want to change about myself. I am very lazy and undisciplined so changing anything about myself is very hard... but I'm tired of making excuses!! So, I have been reading a few books and trying to work on being a better me in the areas of parenting and marriage.

"Scream Free Parenting" is a book about putting yourself first and working on your own issues (anger, anxiety, reactive responses). Instead of trying to train our kids how to act, it talks about using the principle of showing them how to act by the way we act/handle situations. One quote that really spoke to me said "... a shift from controlling your kids' behavior to influencing their decisions. Your goal is not to control. Your goal is to influence." I try to control what my kids do... how they act at a restaurant or a store... instead, I need to be teaching them and influencing them so they can make the right decisions, and by keeping my cool I am reinforcing their good behavior. I'm not very far into the book, and am not a fan of how "self help" it is, but I think there are some good bits I can take from it!

The other book I've been reading is called "Confessions from an honest wife". Marriage is hard, and mine has a handful of issues that we are dealing with... I like this book b/c it is real. The author interviewed many different women and the chapters are experts from those interviews... real life stories from real wives. Women can be very superficial, and especially in the church we tend to feel like we have to be perfect and act like nothing is wrong, when really we're not fooling anyone! Marriage is hard, and without support from others who have been or are going through issues that you and your spouse deal with its hard to get through.

Here's a rather long exert that I really identified with... "I began to see how I live a life of recipes and methods. The small group, the Bible reading, praying, and tithing- much of that is for a purpose of following a formula so that my life will turn out the way I want. I realize I'm doing the right things, but I'm using them to control the outcome of my life." "It's an absurd notion that I could contain God in a method, but thats what I've been doing. So this is my challenge: relinquish control. And it scares me. It means if I walk out from under the canopy of formulas, I walk out knowing anything can happen. Of course, anything always could, but until now I've lived under blissful delusion. So here's where it leaves me: I must approach God as I am. I must ask him to purge my current way of thinking and being. That means my husband and I need to spend time with God separately and then together as a couple. My dilemma is making this head knowledge real in the practical workings of my life. I must learn to be, not only do."

I feel like I'm at this point where I am finally starting to grow up and see that I can change the way I think and the way I act... I don't have to be like my parents just b/c thats how I grew up and the way I was taught. I am apart of a church and Jesus' family, not just a religion where I do things just to be called a Christian! Jesus meets me where I am right now... he takes all my junk, cleans me up, and helps me see that I am so much more with Him than on my own.