Author: lifewithesther15

I'm a stay-at-home mom with 10 kids and a wonderful husband. I'm a follower of Jesus and I am also a second generation missionary kid who grew up in Kentucky, Haiti, and Alaska. I have a lot of stories and I enjoy sharing them.

Chef Wars

My husband’s brother married a lady from Nagaland (northeast India thereabouts) many years ago and they have made their home with their children there in the city of Kohima. They have come to the states for a long-overdue visit and we have come up to be with them and my husband’s parents.

My sister-in-law Asanuo is an amazing cook. (She is also one of the sweetest people you’ll ever meet!) She has her her own baking business in Kohima, and if you want to see her amazing creations you can check out her Facebook page, Asanuo’s Kitchen, to see some beautiful work.

Here we are on vacation together and we are all trying to share the cooking. I have everyone over to where we are staying and I cook up some boxes of pasta, throw some jars of pasta sauce on them, add some browned hamburger, and voila, supper “à la Esther”. Quick, easy, filling, inexpensive. This is how I cook. Then Asanuo offered to cook. We had chicken with caramelized onions, gravy, pan-roasted asparagus with almonds, rice, and cranberry sauce, with a nice wine on the side.


I am one of those interesting people who has somehow become a worse cook over time instead of a better one. When I first got married, my idea of cooking was to make some boxed mac and cheese, add a can a peas and a can of tuna, and serve it up with pride. My husband taught me how to cook Rice and Beans, Shepherd’s Pie and how to bake homemade bread. I took off from there and became a pretty decent cook. But as the kids multiplied an interesting thing happened. They started expressing their opinion about the food. And after a while it just wasn’t fun to try new recipes because at least half the kids were going to have something to say about it. And even when I let them know that I was not interested in their opinion, and actually, they were not allowed to express anything but positive opinions at the table (they could keep their negative ones to themselves) they would still pull faces or just push the food around their plate. And so my creativity died a slow, drawn out death and I eventually developed a menu that would ensure at least half the kids ate at each meal. But, it kind of took the fun out of cooking. And I will freely confess that my cooking is not very inspired. And maybe it’s not fair to blame it all on the kids, I may have just burned out a bit from doing so much cooking.

That brings us back to cooking for the family. Asanuo is obviously the chef-level cook from the fancy French restaurant type, while I’m more of the short-order cook down at the local fast food place type. I have decided I am not going to feel insecure about this. Instead I’m going to try and figure out how I can buy groceries and let Asanuo be the one that cooks them.

It’s a good plan.

 

9 Down 1 to Go

So, this is all about potty-training. Not super-interesting to the general populace, but I’m a mom, it comes up, and it’s my blog. So I get to have a day where I pontificate about potty-training. 🙂 

I am feeling the need to celebrate. I believe that I have now successfully potty trained my 9th child. There is nothing more delightful than to see your potty-training child stop playing with his toys and run for the bathroom…without you saying a word.

I have potty trained 9 children. This is proof that practice does not make perfect, the more you do something, the better you get is not true, and repeating an activity over and over again does not make it more bearable. I extremely dislike potty-training. I’m horrible at it. It requires a level of calm and patience and kindness over a prolonged period of time that I find really hard to muster.

All of my kids have potty-trained later than their peers. But this is because, in my mind, potty training is all about me, not the kid. I am not willing to engage in potty-training unless I know that I am looking at a couple weeks where I’m going to be relatively unstressed, and where I know that I can make myself be sweet and patient, even while I’m cleaning up the 20th potty accident in one day. I had hoped to potty-train David when he was about 2 ½. He is now 3 ½.  It’s a good indicator of my mental state this past year that it is only in the past couple weeks that I’ve been willing to tackle the job. Even then, when he had pooped his pants for the 5th time I finally lost it and heard the words coming out of my mouth, “If you poop in these pants again I’m going to spank you!” My oldest daughter was walking by and heard me. She raised an eyebrow and said, “Don’t children respond a lot better to positive reinforcement?” Umm..Yes. So I went to the store, bought a bag of chocolate and told him he could have some every time he successfully pooped in the potty. And that was that. We haven’t had another accident. (Because my kids seem to really respond to treats!)(Probably because I’m the mom who never buys candy and who gives them watermelon for dessert.)

All of that to say, when I finish potty-training a child, I feel like celebrating. I’m not really celebrating my child’s achievement. My kids are smart and awesome, and with a different mom they probably would have been potty-trained at 2 yrs old. No, what I’m celebrating is that I somehow managed to achieve a level of maturity that enabled me to love my kids and to show them grace while they conquered this milestone. Even when they peed on my shoes or pooped on my couch. Hurray for me.  

 

It’s All About Principles

Our family undertook a 1140 mile trip to Maine from Tennessee to visit family. According to the maps app it should have taken around 17 hours of driving. The maps app  doesn’t take into account the fact that 10 children are going to need around one potty break per hour, and the app doesn’t take into account the fact that Mom said No Way are we going to drive through the night and then show up in Maine exhausted while all the kids are well-rested and ready to go out and explore. Mom is getting too old for this 17 hours of driving thing. No thanks. So we camped one night. Of course the hope was that we would camp at the half-way mark, somewhere in Pennsylvania, but after 7 potty breaks in 9 hours, my husband had enough. We camped in West Virginia. All that to say, the entire trip took about 26 hours of driving plus another 13 hours for camping/sleeping.

I’m sure you’re curious. What did 10 children do for that many hours cramped up in a van? And how did Mom and Dad survive? And now we will get to the point of this piece which is Principles. I am not a fan of electronic devices. In our parenting ignorance, we bought our first 4 children a device around middle school age. As we watched our kids get sucked into all that the internet has to offer, we decided that we were not going to repeat this mistake. The next unlucky 6 kids will not be getting a device. We’ll get them a smartphone their senior year of high school and call it good. In our middle school and high schools the kids are handed out laptops to use for the school year so it’s not like they’re totally deprived anyway. I would like to add that I am not interested at all in changing other parent’s minds on how to handle technology. We’ve just looked at what is working and not working for our family, and this is the decision we’ve made. So, founding principle: as little technology as possible please.

A friend of mine offered to lend me her travel dvd player for our trip. I nonchalantly said, “Oh, thank you! But we’re fine. The kids will read and color and bring toys to play with.” Because, Principles! I also want my kids to learn the art of sitting and thinking and looking out the window and amusing themselves. Because, Principles! It’s good for them!

The kids each packed a backpack full of toys and books and crayons and coloring books. I bought a couple travel games and a couple new toys to amuse them. We had a good supply of snacks. We were ready! (I would like to add that my teenagers brought their devices. I haven’t tried to seperate them from their devices. It’s kind of like taking drugs away from an addict. In my passive aggressive way, I’m just waiting for their devices to break and then I won’t replace them.)

This Principled Mama now has to confess that by the middle of the second day, in a bid for peace, I was holding my iphone up by the ceiling of the van so that everyone could see it and letting the kids watch Frozen, the one movie that I had downloaded on my phone. (Incidentally, this movie was downloaded on my phone the last time we took a trip to Maine). So here I am, holding my arm up in the air for an hour and half so that my kids can watch a movie. Why were my kids squinting at a tiny screen while my arm felt like it was going to break off, when they could have all been watching movies on a nice travel dvd player? Because, Principles!  Sometimes I want to kick myself for being so principled.

The Story of How I Mistook My Husband for a Rabid Raccoon

One of my goals for this blog is to get all my older pieces all in one place, so I will occasionally be posting old stories from Face Book. This is actually the first story I ever wrote about my family. It takes place about 5 years ago, when we had 8 children. Enjoy.

So, we sold our camper this summer and this weekend we went tent camping for the first time in 6 years. Aside from the deflated air mattress that had me sleeping on the hard ground the first night, the flash flood that had me sleeping in a puddle of water on the hard ground the second night, and the nonstop cloud of gnats and mosquitoes, the trip did have it’s high points. Like going swimming at the river and spotting two water moccasins (at least that’s what they looked like!).

 

The climax of the trip though was the third night when I was anticipating sleeping on my brand new air mattress that my husband so thoughtfully left the wilderness and went to Walmart to buy. I had all the kids bathed and was trying to usher them into their tents (older kids in one tent, younger kids with mom and dad in the other tent) and Andy was at the bathhouse showering. The older kids refused to enter their tent because they had spotted some various bugs in the interior (yes, they are city kids), so I told them to sit by the fire and wait for their Dad while I took the younger ones to bed. I was trying to feed the baby and get my other little ones to calm down when the peace was shattered by screams of SNAKE!! I yelled the helpful advice of, “It’s Ok, just calm down and wait for Daddy.” The screams rose in decibel so I told them to come get in my tent and zip it up, no snake could enter. The screams got even louder as my son Levi managed to choke out that the snake was heading for my tent. Some kids ran in the tent while the others hopped up and down screaming. So, I handed the now also screaming baby to an older sister and went outside to “handle” it. This is surefire evidence that the mothering instinct overcomes other instincts as my children definitely learned the scream and hop up and down at the sight of a snake, from me.

 

So, Levi, with shaking finger, points out the snake to me, which, sure enough, is only about a foot away from our tents. I was able to recognize the snake as a copperhead because only that afternoon I had been googling poisonous snakes of Tennessee after our swimming experience. So, after uselessly yelling for Andy (who was relaxing in the shower while all this was going on), I bravely grabbed a handful of gravel and threw it at the snake until it slithered off into the woods (right next to the path to the bathhouse, which I then and there decided I didn’t need to visit any more that night!). The kids were hysterical so I ordered them all into the van. I also climbed into the van, turned the motor on, and after reading some bible verses about stepping on cobra’s heads and not being hurt and explaining to the kids in detail how snakes are not actually out to get humans and really don’t want to have anything to do with us.. and googling on Andy’s phone about copperheads and finding the great news that copperhead bites are Generally, not fatal, they finally calmed down to a mere whimper.

 

Andy, comes back from his shower and finds the van running and all his family inside. He doesn’t have a lot of patience for Fear. He walks around the campsite with a light and scares away any remaining snakes and then, with some eye-rolling, he leaves us huddling in the van and goes to sleep in the tent.. alone…on my brand new air mattress.. while I try to get comfortable in the front seat. So, I have the window down because it’s hot but I’m very nervous about this (maybe a snake will fall out of a tree on my car and then down in the window?)

I finally manage to fall asleep by the open window. Suddenly I hazily see two eyes at my window and my sleeping brain tells me that it is a raccoon. So, I scream and try to shoo it away but it won’t go away, it just keeps staying, in fact, it seems to be leaning in to the car (maybe it’s a rabid raccoon? Why else wouldn’t it run away?). The raccoon also seems to be yelling something. Something like, “Stop, it’s me!! Stop!” I jerk awake and there is Andy looking at me like I’m some crazy person. “What is wrong with you?? I’m just trying to bring you a flashlight in case you need to get out of the car!) Now the entire car is screaming (imagine a dark campground, a mom and 8 children all sitting in a van, screaming as loud as they can). This is when I start considering just starting up the car and driving the 2 ½ hrs home by myself. We can come pick up Andy in the morning.  I check the clock, it’s midnight. Only about 6 more hours till light. I can make it that long. I miss my camper.

Art Therapy

This past week my brother and his family came from out of state to visit my parents. My parents live about an hour away from us and so we went out Friday afternoon to visit and had a mini family reunion. My brother has 4 kids and I had 8 of my kids there so it was a full house. Kids were running around everywhere having fun. Then my 3 year old came into the kitchen, where all the adults had gathered, and he was crying. He crawled up into my lap and said that his brother had made him fall on the ground and hurt his knee. I tried to kiss it better and he said it helped but he was still sad. He said that he needed to go draw a sad picture. I said OK, patted him on the head and sent him on his way. He returned with this picture:

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He said he was going to go show this picture to the brother that had hurt him.

Fortunately the 6 year old cousin drew a picture to help cheer him up.

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It’s a turtle spider. It worked. My 3 year old felt a lot better after getting this picture. Thank goodness for cousins.

What would we do without art?

Pursuing Rachmaninoff

This post is a lot longer than my others, and it’s not funny. But, it is: Life With Esther.

Thirteen was a pretty crazy year for me. My family was living in the north of Haiti, my parents  serving as missionaries. I was in 8th grade, attending a small mission school and I was enjoying the school year as we had new classmates, a new teacher, and our small junior high class was determined to have fun. My birthday was the end of September and my classmates surprised me with some birthday presents. I felt grownup, beautiful, and ready to conquer the world. One week after my birthday, there was a coup d’etat and the president of Haiti was overthrown. The whole country was turned upside down, and our lives right along with it. We were stuck in our house for about a week, as the roads were blockaded, and then my parents felt we would be safer if we moved to a nearby missionary compound. We stayed there a month or so, laying low.  Then the decision was made that all Americans had to leave the country. We were told that we could take a 40 pound bag each. All our other belongings would stay in Haiti. Whether they would be there when we returned, or when we would return, nobody could say.

We flew on a small plane back to Florida where we stayed a couple days, then we drove a car up to Kentucky, where we had lived before. My mother was able to get a job as a Physician Assistant, I went back to the middle school I had attended when I was in 6th grade, my brother went to the high school, my dad found work. We settled into a fully furnished farmhouse that was in a completely different part of the county than I had lived in before. I came in to the school year in November. I had essentially missed 3 months of school and everyone was concerned about me being able to catch up. In order to help me, they did not put me in the honors classes that I had always attended, they also, for some reason did not put me back with my old classmates, but put me in an entirely different group of 8th graders. And so, though it was my old school, I was surrounded by strangers, doing school work that was not very challenging for me.

I had very bad anemia which made me weary and want to sleep all the time. I also went through a very deep depression. I kept a journal that was full of all my dark thoughts. We stayed in the States through June and then made plans to return to Haiti. Before we went back, my parents attended a missionary conference and my brother and I went to the adjoining Missionary Kids Camp. During that camp a speaker taught on the fact that we can’t rely on our parent’s relationship with God, we have to form our own relationship. I dedicated my life to God during that altar call, and later that evening, while walking through a field, staring at the stars, God spoke to me, told me he loved me, and that was the beginning of my life-long journey to know and follow God.

Back on my 13th birthday my brother had given me 2 cassette tapes that he had recorded for me. He had borrowed a friend’s classical music library and made me a compilation of some of the best piano music ever. My recording had Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No.2, Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue and his Piano Concerto in F. I listened to this music nonstop. It was the constant accompaniment to all the drama of my life. During this year I read Bodie Thoene’s Zion Covenant Book series which followed some Jewish musicians in Europe during World War II. I dreamed of being a musician, playing with an orchestra, playing this music that I was listening to. Somehow being a part of this amazing musical passion, even if only in a small way. It did not seem like an impossible dream. I had been playing piano for a while now and during our time in the states my parents arranged for me to take lessons. Those lessons and my practice time at home were the bright spots of my life. And, as I practiced my pieces, there was always the dream that one day, I would be practicing the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. One day.

Fast-forward to present day. I’m 39. I had just come out of a rather long depression and was also dealing with a bit of a mid-life crisis as I contemplated where I was and where I was going. After high school I had pursued the dream of Rachmaninoff until, after 2 years of studying piano performance at University, I had realized that I actually, really hated performing. I had then taken time off school and went overseas for a year, came back to the states, got married, got pregnant, and that was that. My next 18 years were spent pregnant, nursing, changing diapers, homeschooling little ones, keeping the house together, doing life with small children at full-speed. As I stopped to look at my life, I wondered about my past dreams that I had laid aside. I wondered about my future, what will I do when the kids don’t need me full-time? I wondered about my significance in a society that no longer honors the role of a stay-at-home mom. I asked myself the age-long question of “Who am I and what am I doing with my life?”

During all this angst, my husband took me to see the Knoxville Symphony. We didn’t know much about the program, we were just excited to go hear some good music. We were late and got to our seats just as the lights were coming down. I squinted in the dim light, trying to see my program and made out the words Rachmaninoff. Oh Good! I love Rachmaninoff. Then I looked at the stage and saw a big Grand Piano in front of the orchestra. Even better! A piano concerto! I was so excited. The conductor came on stage, applause, applause, and then the guest performer came on stage and something in my throat caught. She was a tall, dark haired woman, beautiful figure, beautiful red dress. She looked like my “fantasy” me. The Me that I always wished I looked like. And then she sat down at the piano and yes, she started playing Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2. My concerto. I was in shock. I felt like crying and laughing at the same time. And I thought, “Really Lord? You’re going to rub it in my face? My old dream? You’re going to show me everything I missed out on?”  I felt very fat, and dowdy, and unaccomplished as I sat and watched this beautiful woman play my concerto. But, the music was breathtaking and I couldn’t help just luxuriating in the rich sounds of Rachmaninoff.

Then, something unexpected happened. They were at a very tricky rhythmical section and suddenly, the soloist wasn’t in sync with the orchestra, she had made a mistake. The conductor turned his body slightly to her and started exaggerating his movements as he tried to help her get back in place. I sat up straighter, scooted to the edge of my seat. What was she going to do? I watched as she valiantly played through the section and got back on track. My heart was pounding, I sat back in my seat, let out a big breath. Man. I suddenly remembered how much I disliked performing, how stressful it was for me, the fear of making mistakes, the inability to always play perfectly, the tension from having a lot of people watching me. And I thought, “I’m glad I’m not her!” And then I smiled in surprise. Yes. I WAS glad that I wasn’t her.

I looked across at my husband, grabbed his hand in mine. His hand was tough and hard from all the construction work that he did. He went to work early every morning, came home at suppertime every day, tired. He went to work for me and my children. He provided for me so that I could pour all my time and energy into our children. And even though we didn’t have a lot of money, he splurged and bought these tickets so that I could see the symphony. Just because he knew that I loved it and he wanted to make me happy.

I thought about my children at home. My older children were babysitting the younger ones so that Andy and I could have a date. My children were so amazing. They were so talented, funny, kind, entertaining. And each of those amazing children looked at me, and called me “Mom”. I was suddenly overwhelmed with how blessed I was to be their mother.

And I prayed now, a prayer of thanksgiving. “Thank you Lord. Thank you that isn’t me on the stage. Thank you that I am sitting here with my husband. Thank you that I have a whole house full of children, waiting for me to come home. Thank you for this life you have given me.”  And maybe some tears came down my cheeks. But they were tears of joy. I am Esther Picazo Heneise. I am a wife. I am a mother. I am me. And I am thankful.

And I sat in the darkness, surrounded by Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2, and life was good.

 

There’s No Such Thing as Privacy

Small children do not understand privacy or personal space. It’s just a fact of life, something you have to live with. One day, after getting sick and tired of being touched and pawed by little hands, I told my 5 yr old that I had a bubble around me. It was my “personal space bubble”. She wasn’t supposed to come into my bubble. She thought that was pretty cool. I thought it was cool that she understood what I was saying, until later, when I heard her tattling to me, “Mommy! She got into my bubble! And I told her not to!” I’m all about kids having personal space, but I’m not about to start policing people’s bubbles.

Anyway, personal space. I needed to jump into the shower. I instructed my 10 year old to watch the 18 month old while I was doing this. I went into my little bathroom that has a little walk-in shower and I locked the door. I did not want children barging in to use the bathroom while I was relaxing in my shower. A little later I hear my 3 yr old trying to talk to me through the bathroom door. I can’t tell what he’s saying but it sounds urgent. I yell for him to come into the bathroom so I can hear him. He tries the door, but of course it is locked. This is a small bathroom, so I just have to take one step out of the shower to unlock the door. Simple. I unlock the door, return to the shower, and tell him to come in. He opens the door and informs me through the privacy of my shower curtain that the honey container is not working. Hmmmph. This is obviously something urgent that required interrupting mom’s shower. Wait. Why is the 3 yr old trying to use the honey container??? I quickly inform him that he needs to ask his older brother to come and help him. Good. Case closed. Back to my shower. Suddenly the shower curtain is ripped open and the 18 month old, holding a biscuit in his hand, wearing a diaper, runs into the shower. AAAACKKK!!!! GET OUT!! GET OUT!!! I grab the small child and remove him from the shower, but he’s still in the bathroom. The 3yr old panics when he hears me yelling and slams the bathroom door shut, locking the 18 month old in with me. I’m yelling at the 3 yr old to open the bathroom door and get the baby out. (Side note: when talking to 3 yr olds, it is always wise to talk calmly and slowly, using simple commands so that they don’t get confused) (Other side note: I was not doing any of the above.) The 3 yr old cautiously opens the bathroom door and looks at me. By this time I have grabbed the shower curtain and wrapped it around me in an attempt at modesty while I try to shoo the baby out. But wait. The baby has rearranged his diaper in such a way that if he does his business it’s going to go all over the floor, not into the diaper. So, one hand holding a shower curtain to my chest, the other hand reaches over to rearrange the diaper and then push the baby out of the bathroom door. The door closes. I lock the door. Step back into the shower.

Yeah. There’s no such thing as privacy.

Wrapping Paper Confessions

Recently my 10 and 9 yr old boys were invited to a birthday party for one of their friends. I took the boys shopping so they could pick out a present to take. They had a lot of fun picking something out but when we got home I realized that I had forgotten to buy a gift bag. I went and looked through my small collection of gift bags but only found pink girly bags. Those were not going to work. And then, I found a little bit of wrapping paper. Perfect! I’ll wrap the gift!

Ok. Pause button.

I need to explain a little bit about our family and gift wrapping. We have 12 people in our family. That means 12 birthdays. If life was fair and consistent that would mean that we have one birthday a month. But no, life doesn’t work that way. We have 5 birthdays in the months of March and April, 4 birthdays between Aug 22 and Oct 2, and then one per month for Nov, Dec, and Jan. That’s a lot of presents in concentrated periods of time. I do not like wrapping presents. Gift bags are my friends. But, I do not like spending money on gift bags. Basically, when it comes to wrapping presents, I’m a cheapskate. I just can’t justify in my mind the expense and time of wrapping that many presents. Now at Christmas I break my rule and I sit down for several hours on Christmas Eve and wrap presents for 11 people. We don’t go overboard with gifts but even if everyone just has 4 gifts, that is still 44 presents. Can you see my dilemma?  

I discovered over time, that really the whole point of gift wrapping is simply to make the present a surprise. Right? So, the present doesn’t have to be wrapped up in shiny paper or put in a pretty bag with handles, it just needs to be hidden!  I have found that bath towels do the job really well. Just lay that present in the middle of the towel, wrap it up, and Voila! a hidden present! No tape or scissors needed! If the gift is really big, say a bicycle, a blanket works just as well.

The funny thing is that my kids think this is normal. You know how little kids love to give gifts. Well, every time it’s a birthday all my little ones go and grab their favorite stuffed animals/toys and they wrap them up in towels and bring them down to give to the Birthday Girl/Boy. My husband Andy and I are trying to picture how this will play out in the future lives of our children. They’ll be married and the first birthday will come around and they’ll present their spouse with a bundled up towel. I’m thinking in order to save some future marriages, we’re going to have to sit down with them and have a “talk” before they head out into the world. The Gift Wrapping Talk. Honey, there is something I need to tell you before you leave home…

So, back to my boys taking a present to a birthday party. I found wrapping paper and even managed to find some tape. The present I was going to wrap was in a box. Very simple. Nice cube shape. Alright, one more revelation…the other reason I wrap our presents in towels is because I’m really bad at wrapping presents. Really bad. I’ve watched tutorials on youtube, watched friends of mine, watched my husband…None of that has helped. I just can’t get the silly paper to lay straight and not crumple up. So, here I am, trying to wrap this present. I should have  let the 9 and 10 year old tackle the job as they probably would have done it better. As it was, I finally ended up cramming all the excess crumpled paper underneath that little triangle fold that you always pull up and I put tape on and it looked ok. Well, it looked like a small child had wrapped it, but that is the benefit of having children. I handed the present to my boys and let them take it to the party and everyone there assumed that the boys must have wrapped it. I was just proud of myself that it was wrapped in paper instead of a towel.

 

To Write a Blog or Not to Write a Blog

I have decided to start a blog. Whether this is a good thing or not, time will have to tell. I have always said, quite determinedly, that I would never write a blog. The only blogs that I am familiar with are the kind that dispense daily wisdom, encouragement, and good advice. I don’t feel qualified to do any of those things on a regular basis. Sure, every once in a while I might have something profound to say, maybe I can speak a word of encouragement, but I know I couldn’t do it repeatedly. I also don’t have a lot of advice to give out. (Ok, I have a ton of advice for my children that they are subject to every day, like, brush your teeth, don’t wear old faded t-shirts to church, don’t eat bread with mold on it. But, that’s just part of being a mom.) My life is a bit chaotic and I am still trying to get it together. When I have achieved the perfect weight, can keep my house clean every day, and have attained a certain level of awesomeness, maybe I’ll start dispensing advice.

I certainly don’t feel like I can give out parenting advice either. Having 10 children has taught me that really, I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’m just winging it every day. God and I have a daily agreement that he’ll give me grace for today and I’ll try to listen to his advice instead of going ballistic when my kids do stuff like pour cooking oil all over the kitchen floor. Yeah, there are some shortcuts we’ve figured out that work for our kids, but I’ve been around enough families to realize that my shortcuts don’t necessarily apply to everyone else. And so, all of this is why  I have said that I will never write a blog.

Well, then I had it pointed out to me that a blog can be about anything. I don’t have to instruct, lift up, or be positive. Yay! Maybe there is a place in the blogosphere for me after all. I do have a bit of a crazy life, and I enjoy writing about it, and it’s fun to share my stories with other people. So, if you are interested in reading about the crazy adventures of a mom of 10, then you are at the right place. Welcome to Life With Esther.