Child number 5

So a couple of weeks ago, my husband and I adopted a little girl....she is tiny, adorable and covered in soft fur. You got it...our new little girl is of the canine variety. We have named her Pumpkin, and she is by far the cutest puppy I have ever owned. As I already knew, but had conveniently forgot the moment I laid eyes on the adorable puff ball, having a dog is almost exactly like having a baby. I knew that for the first little while I would have to be taking her outside every 2 hours. I didn't realize that she was going to be as emotional and full of drama as all my other kids though. If I do not great her in the morning with a hug and an excited, "good morning Pumpkin!" than she is mad at me and will not come when I call her. If I tell her "No" about chewing on something, then try to pick her up, she tucks tail and runs as though I beat her regularly. WHAT IN THE WORLD!? I never thought a dog could be so dramatic! We took her to the vet last week, and when they gave her shots, she cried so hard you would have thought she was on fire...for over 2 minutes!!!! Even the vet was shaking her head and saying, "Wow, I have never seen such a little drama queen!" Turns out our precious bundle of fur is also the biggest wimp ever. She is scared of the dark, of the wind, of baloons, and any adults besides me and my husband. She refuses to eat out of he food dish because her name plate on her coller bumps against the dish and startles her. Trying to get her to go potty outside, at night, in the Kansas wind is REALLY interesting! She is such a spaz, she is adorable. I sure hope she grows out of some if it!

So how does having another very dramatic, high maintanence "child" effect my life. Well, I have to say, it is kind of fun having a baby around again. Pumpkin loves to be held, and would be perfectly content to be up against my shoulder (baby burping style) all the time. As a result, I have found myself with the baby sway going on again. For those who don't know what the baby sway is, go into any church with young families, and stand at the back of the church and watch. If you see someone swaying back and forth from foot to foot, male or female, chances are they are either holding a baby, or have a baby in the nursery, and have "the sway" so ingrained in them that they don't even realize what they are doing. I found myself doing "the sway" in the grocery line the other day and had to chuckle. What is my reason for swaying, "Oh, I have a puppy." Hehehe...That's a new one!

I have also found one more reason for stress and perfectionism. Pumpkin is potty training. I have this horrible gut reaction every time she has an accident in the house, that now she will never be potty trained. Every mistake is one more sign that I am not training her well, or focusing on her training enough...as if I don't have ANYTHING else going on, like...taking care of and homeschooling 4 kids every day! I have also found that the constant stress of getting her outside to potty has me even more flustered. I keep having to interupt everything else I am doing to run her out to the back yard for potty time. By the time she get's around to actually going potty, I have forgotten what I was doing before I went out. I seem to NEVER get on a roll! Kind of frusterating!

All in all though, she is now sitting by the door when she wants to go out, so training is getting somewhere. She LOVE LOVE LOVES the kids, and wants nothing more than to chace them around. She is a great little vacume machine for under our table, and I just melt when my husband Joe comes home from work and all 5 little kids run to him and jump on him...Pumpkin right in there, her little tail wagging a mile a minute! Joe is her favorite person, and watching him play with her is halarious. Who says big strong guys don't like powder puff dogs.

I want to change

The plan was organization...the result was mommy meltdown. I have not blogged in several days because yours truly was having a full fledged emotional breakdown. It was pretty crazy, no pun intended. I know that in the Bible, Paul talked about the thorn in his flesh. I don't know what his was, but mine is the endless striving to be PERFECT. Why, why, why do I think that perfection is even something that can be achieved I will never know. How on earth does one change their mind; change their inner workings?

Following through

I said I would write at least one sentence, on this blog, every day this week. So here I am. I'm writing. I can't say that anything I say at the moment is going to be cool, funny or insightful...because frankly...we are both just very lucky I am awake and functioning at all this morning. I stayed up until all hours of the night last night, waiting for my husband to come home from a trip to Illinois. It's fantastic to have him home, but I can tell you right now that with the state of exhaustion this momma is feeling right now...perfect is not even on the radar for today's activities. Hopefully I will have humor and stories to share tomorrow

"Hi, my name is Leah, and I'm a perfectionist"

So in very typical perfectionist style. I stopped blogging! The fact that I was not consistently sitting down and with great insight and humor, sharing my life with you all, had me just giving up entirely. It's a classic symptom of extreme perfectionism. Do it perfectly, or don't do it at all! I remember in high school, being called in to my guidance counselor's office to discuss my grades. He was trying to figure out why I was aceing every test and exam, yet failing all my homework. He soon discovered that I was not turning in my homework. I had managed to finish at least half of most of that homework, but in my perfectionist mind...it was better to take a zero than to admit that I had not perfectly finished the work. The counselor was exasperated with my explanation that I just could not turn in things that were sloppy or unfinished because I hated having my teachers think of me in that less than perfect light. Not turning in the assignment at all was at least a version of perfect. Perfectly wrong! He had to explain to me that when you average perfect and perfectly wrong, you are still failing! an A+ and an F - do not average out to a C. A 100% and a 0% average to a 50% which is still an F!!! I was shocked! So I began freaking out to make sure that all my papers were completed perfectly and 100%. There was no wiggle room. I could not depend on my zeros to average out in the end. No, now it all had to be perfect. So I stressed and freaked out and stayed up all night many, many times writing the Perfect (1 page longer than was asked for) essay. *sigh* perfectionist nature was not changed, but It worked for high school, and I passed and graduated with honors.

Now here I am. 13 years later, and the perfectionist streak is still plaguing me. I either have a perfectly clean house, or it is trashed. I am either spending an hour in gods word in the morning, or I haven't picked up my bible in a month...and I am either funny and insightful on my blog (with chosen pictures that show my house perfectly clean and my kids studiously working...my hair coiffed and clothes neat)...Or I do not blog at all...for over a year! Wow!!! well at least I am consistently ridiculous!

So...I try again. I am going to attempt to write at least one sentence a day on this blog for the next week. If I have the time for perfect and humorous...I will do that. It really does make me feel better to share my thoughts and laughter at my life with you all. But on the off chance that life happens...I will attempt to, in non-perfectionist style, at least post one sentence. I can feel my heartbeat speeding up at the thought of that imperfection. This will be a challenge. It will be great perfectionist therapy though.

"Hi, my name is Leah...and I'm a perfectionist."