Seriously. Why Plan?

Hello, my name is E and I like to plan.

I have been known to stay in bed, plotting my options and determining the perfect order for attacking my day, not actually getting up to face the day until I am sure I have found the most efficient and pleasant method for facing the day. Every day. Because brushing my teeth and washing my face are not always most practical in the same order when you consider the room temperature, how many family members are awake, and which obstacles stand between me, my coffee and my morning paper. Things change and I change with them. Just let me have my plan, my coffee and my paper and nobody should get hurt. (Hey, no promises. I only have a plan and two contingency plans. I don't know that you won't get hurt if you refuse to stick to at least one of the programs.)

So, Granna asked for a spring break with Princess Pea Pod and then my friend A invited me to fly out to visit for a few days. Cool! Except that, long story short (don't you dare laugh at the irony of me making anything short. Or laugh. I might have.) My plans went KABLOOEY! My friend R and her kids were going to be in Woo-Pig-ville when Princess Pea Pod was going to be where they live. My plan to get principessa and her sidekick L together were nullified. My flight didn't pan out. I was bummed to miss time with A, but thankful to have time with R. However, my date night with Hot Daddy kept getting bumped to "tomorrow" until the day my brother called and said, "Your child is crying. You need to call her right now."

Homesick. Our principessa was so very homesick that she didn't want to wait long enough for Granna to bring her home. It was supper time with R and her family, but we never had figured out what to cook, so the plan wasn't really derailed anyway. Not that it mattered. We were out the door pronto-tonto to meet Granna halfway. It was not really all that long before she was in my arms. And here's the deal... I know by now that God's plan is better than mine. So I was bummed when I didn't get to go see A, but I knew there was a reason. I was a bit anxious when I didn't have a supper plan, but there was a reason. God knew what we were going to need and set His plan into motion before it made sense to me.

I am probably not going to change much, but there has been a change to my plan lately and I hope to keep it. My first plan is to remember to go with His plan, because it is always better than mine. That's why He is God and I am just a woman living day to day by His grace.

P.S. I hope to get that date this weekend. It hasn't become a plan yet, though.

Teachable Moments

There's no telling how many times a day I say something as a parent that I simply never imagined I would ever need to say. It happens so often now that I rarely stop to acknowledge the oddity of the words coming out of my mouth. I shouldn't be surprised; she wasn't a year old before we were saying, "We can't get anything past her." She was in preschool when we realized we couldn't dodge a sticky situation by spelling words. We tried speaking in slightly obscure code phrases, but she rises to the challenge and decodes them anyway.

Today I needed a little of this stuff:

I was still drinking my coffee and doing the crossword puzzle in the morning paper. It was so peaceful. Princess Pea Pod got up and came to give me a really great hug. She brought an envelope to me and asked if I could help her mail it. It was this:

That's an order form she pulled out of her most recent National Geographic magazine. Do you see the note where she sealed it? It says "Can I come visit you?" She can't get enough National Geographic! Still, today's first teachable moment is that you need to discuss visiting arrangements with your parents. It's a pretty cool destination, though. Maybe we need to add the National Geographic museum to our list.

I was still reveling in the realization that our kid is really into Nat Geo, when I heard, "Is it ok to choose Bill Me Later?" Um. Huh? "No. What do you want to bill?" I turns out that she wants to order The Body: A Complete User's Guide. Not only does she want to order this book, she wants the more expensive deluxe edition. Oy! I got to teach a couple lessons out of that experience. "We don't just buy things and have a bill sent later." "This is a good book for school, but you have a very similar one you've never used." "You are welcome to order this book if you work around the house to earn enough money."

She got interested in her Usborne Complete Book of the Human Body and found that it will work quite nicely for now. She got so interested, in fact, that she asked to replace her science curriculum for the next couple weeks with a study of the human body. OK!

We encounter so many teachable moments every day. Got a good one? Let me know in the comments. It's nice to know we're not in the trenches alone!