Me at UPS sending my signed contract to Tyndale

It’s official.

31 Days to Clean is going to print and I’m just a wee bit excited.

WOOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!!!

{ahem}

I love love love love love the folks at Tyndale. I had the priveledge of meeting them a couple of months ago and they impressed me so much. Just neat people.

We’re hoping to have the book out by Spring 2013 (keyword here is hoping). Thank you all so much for your support of this book-if it weren’t for you, this never would have happened. My deepest thanks.

Also, if you’re excited about 31 Days to Clean going to print, would you take a minute and thank the amazing people at Tyndale? Their Twitter is @TyndaleHouse and their Facebook is Facebook.com/TyndaleHouse.

I’m off to do some happy dancing on this glorious pretend Spring day. Have a beautiful one friends!

You have a wild one, a wild child you feel is out of control.

You’re at your wits about what to do. You don’t want her to become a wild out-of-control teenager, but discipline is not working, in fact, she laughs in the face of discipline. Oh friends, how I understand! I have a nearly 3 -year-old little spit-fire, beautiful, crazy girl, who I love desperately, but who drives me mad sometimes. Mad. As in crazy coo-coo. Just send me to the place with the white walls ’cause mama has lost it.

I mean, what do you do with a child like that? Well, I’ll tell you what I’m learning.

Read the rest at (in)courage today.

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My new blog space should be ready in a week or two…I can’t wait to show it to you! You can subscribe here and the move will be flawless (hopefully!).

Anyone who registers for the Killer Tribes conference TODAY will get my How to Market & Sell Your eBook for FREE plus a 20 minute blog or eBook consultation.

Early Bird ticket is only $89, but go ahead and take $10 off with code: sarahmae

You can do that here.

Can’t wait to meet you!

(email me a copy of your receipt to get the goods!)

I’ve decided to lock-up Like a Warm Cup of Coffee.

It doesn’t fit me anymore.

Very soon you’ll see a re-direct where I’ll be settling into a new blog home. All of you who are subscribed readers won’t miss a thing, as I’m just transferring the feed.

I’ll explain more once I stretch out into my new, wide-open space. Don’t worry, there will still be coffee (some things never change).

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Photo Credit: Locked By Aunt Owwee

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

I was talking with my friend and mentor Sally about homeschooling this morning and what my days look like. I told her that I recently realized I have been overwhelming my six year old, and we aren’t even doing that much. When I explained that we just do some reading and math and tidbits here and there, but that Ella always seemed to be complaining about it, my friend said, “No! Little ones should not be sitting and learning, you should be reading to them and creating beauty and letting them explore. Make their souls alive! If you make them sit and do work now and they are miserable, they will hate it later. Make your home inviting, give them rewards at the end of the week for reading time each day (you reading to them), cuddle, make it fun. No book work.”

How is it possible that Sally is my mentor and friend, I have read her books, and I still didn’t get it?! I’ll tell you the biggest reason, I was reading other homeschooling posts and comparing my kids to their kids. I read about four year olds being able to read, and two hours of school a day, etc, and I think, “I’m supposed to be doing that, I’m behind, and I’m failing my kids.”

Fortunately, I not only have an experienced mentor, I also have a good friend who homeschools and she has given me some wonderful practical advice. For example, she explained that with Ella complaining everytime we went to do school work, I needed to figure out if it was an attitude problem or if she was just overwhelmed. Here’s what I did (based on her suggestion):

I set a timer for 20 minutes and gave her something focused to do that she enjoyed-mazes, drawing, whatever. When 20 minutes was up, we were done. We did this for one week with no other work, and there was no complaining!

This coming week my friend encouraged me to set the timer for 10 minutes of fun work, and 10 minutes of school work and see how Ella reacts, so that’s the plan. Her school work should not be frustrating or hard at this age or it will just discourage her. There will be a time when she’s ready for more, and I’ll know when that is.

Here is some of Sally’s practical advice:

“I started teaching my children to read when they seemed interested and ready and it differed a little with each one, but I didn’t require them to do any work alone reading and struggling with words until they were seven. I read their work right by their sides and mostly read out loud and didn’t require them to even begin text books or curriculum until they were seven and they had some time to practice their reading skills well. I cooperated with their little hearts and personalities, but I was engaged in their little lives pretty much all day long.”

More advice:

Set a timer for 15 minutes to read to your children everyday. Let them know that if we do our reading everyday, at the end of the week they get a reward (a dollar store toy or something). The goal is to build to 30 minutes to an hour and a half of reading a day by the elementary years. For her children that could read, she made them each reading baskets with new and exciting books or picture books for quiet times, and if they they read each day, they would get a star and a certain amount of stars could then could earn them something they’ve wanted.

Also, if you’re kids are miserable learning to read, they’re not ready. One veteran homeschool mama didn’t teach her son to read until he was eight, and now he is a double major in college and bright young man. Sally says that reading to her children everyday at a young age is what made her now grown children brilliant. :)

I’m taking Sally and my friends advice! My focus is going to be on creating beauty in my home, making it inviting, and setting up exploratory areas for the babes.

One more thing I want to mention. I now view T.V./movies and video/computer games as something like a Pandora’s box-once opened, it is very difficult to put back. If you have not yet begun letting your babes watch animated T.V. or play video/computer games, consider keeping that box closed. I wish I would have done that; letting my children watch too much cartoonish twaddle (as Sally calls it) dulled their desire for reading. The good news is that my babes are still young enough that I think I can stuff some back in. If I could go back, I would only let them watch real movies or educational ones, like Pollyanna, Anne of Green Gables, Lassie (original), Curious George, etc., and those for special times.

For more encouragement, read Sally’s blog, I Take Joy. She’s beautiful and encouraging and is a gift to us young mamas.

See you in a month (unless I interrupt again)!

(Me with my precious six year old at her first piano recital-she’s growing up so fast)

I’m scared of losing my children.

I’m also scared of losing myself…and I’m not even sure who that “self” is.

Life has become a disillusionment to me and everyday that I just keep moving without stopping to get a hold of myself and my life, I’m one more day lost. And the days are going by in a blur.

I used to be a good mom. I used to try to be a good wife and homemaker. But something in the last year has changed and now I’m just tired and depressed. I need to come back.

I’m taking a month off of blogging so I can take an inventory of my life, my goals, my purpose. I want to be a wise woman, and a women with depth. Right now, I’m a shell of what I used to be…or who I hoped I’d become.

My plans for the month are to eat. I’m desperate to feast on the Word and let it fill me up again. I’ll also be digesting Tell Your Time, Blogger Behave, and Educating the WholeHearted Child. I need a plan for my life, and I intend to get on with it.

I love my babes, and I love my husband and I am so thankful for our home and the life God has given me. He is so good and so patient and so gentle. But life rushed or lost is no full life, and I need filled. I don’t want to regret my life and how I lived it. The time is now.

Thanks for reading.

“How we live our days, of course, is how we live our lives.” -Annie Dillard

I haven’t written on my blog in a few weeks; I’ve been busy working on Desperate, watching way too many episodes of Bones (we have streaming Netflicks so we can watch the episodes back to back), and reading (The Hunger Games Trilogy and Water for Elephants).

I’m tired most days, but I had a few spurts of energy the couple days before Christmas where I cleaned and organized like I was in a trance. No, I’m not pregnant, but I was seriously nesting.

I only made two batches of Christmas cookies.

I’ve consumed way too many chicken and cheese Taquitos (this is what happens when you watch too many episodes of Bones). I’m pretty sure I’ve gained about 10 lbs. thanks to Don Miguel. *UPDATE*! They’re NOT Don Miguel, they’re Jose Ole! Can’t believe I posted about the wrong Taquitos! :)

Christmas came and went, as did my child-like wonder. Life is becoming such a blur…

Fast and faster every year. The seasons come and go and I can barely breathe them in. Life is spinning and I’d slow down but I seem to thrive in the dance. But one can only dance for so long.

Tonight I plan on curling up with my husband and watching more episodes of Bones, promising myself that tomorrow I’ll make room for the stillness.

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How are all of you doing? Any of you relate with the blur of life and missing child-like wonder? Any good book recommendations (I’m really interested in fiction right now)?

P.S. I highly recommend The Hunger Games. The writing is extraordinary and the story (and its characters) won’t let you go; you’ll be dreaming about the unfolding story for days after you’ve finished.

Read all about the Relevant ’12 speakers here.

Tickets go on sale March 1st.

WOOT!

“…I have tried to make a habit over the years of not listening to people who either criticize me or praise me. Spirituality is a really mysterious thing, and I feel as though I have received various coordinates from God over the years in terms of what I need to be spending my time and my work on, and that’s really what I’m listening to. If following faithfully along those coordinates puts me in a season of praise with a certain group of people, that’s fine — but I don’t do it to get in those graces, and neither am I upset if that also costs me some people along the road. I would much rather be faithful than successful…” -Derek Webb

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Photo Credit: Two Roads Diverge