Seat drops in the sanctuary and breast milk in the eye: it's been one of those weeks.

I've shared with you before about what a challenge it has been for me to train Queen (2) to sit quietly through church.  I really struggled with her from around 1 yr to 18 months, but then she seemed to get it and we settled into a routine.  Now that Calvin has arrived, Queen has been testing her limits... again.  I've been sitting on the end of our row in church with Calvin in his carseat/carrier in the aisle and Queen on my other side.  Though I try my best to participate throughout worship, my eyes do tend to dart back and forth as if I'm watching a tennis match.  First I check on Queen then move my attention to Calvin then to Queen again and back to Calvin, giving Queen the eye when needed and rocking Calvin's seat when he stirs or makes a noise.  At one point yesterday when swtitching my attention from Calvin to Queen, I caught the tail end of her doing a seat drop from standing in her chair (we were standing singing) to sitting on the floor.  She immediately realized her folly and began pitifully rubbing her bottom and complaining that "that hurt me".  Thankfully, we were still singing so no one else noticed Queen's acrobatics.  The rest of the service was pretty calm except for when Monk (11) took Queen's hair clip away from her.  In his defense, he said she was poking him with it.  Needless to say, he returned it quickly to her when she cried out, "That's MINE!"  Unfortunately we were not singing at that point.  Let's just say I got two messages in church yesterday, the one my husband preached on from Mathew chapter 10 and the one my children reminded me of:  I need God's grace.  It would be an understatement to say that things have been a little chaotic since Calvin arrived.  I thrive on schedules, order, quiet, calm, clean, and organized.  We've had none of those lately.  I need an extra measure of God's grace to get through these chaotic days without losing my patience with my kids.  I'm so thankful that His strength is manifest in our weakness.  I know that's true, even when it doesn't feel like it.

Now you're probably wondering about the breast milk in the eye.  Calvin's left eye started oozing gunk Saturday and I was so upset about it.  He could barely open it and it looked terrible.  I'm not a doctor, but it looked a lot like when my kids have had conjunctivitis.  I happened to have some opthalmic antibiotic drops, but was afraid to use them on him since he's so young.  I fretted about his eye, applied warm compresses, prayed about it, and called my husband at the church to give him periodic updates.  Then at some point Saturday night I remembered hearing or reading somewhere that breast milk, since it's rich in antibodies, can be applied topically to help fight infections.  I know this sounds crazy, but I started right in treating his oozing eye with breast milk.  It's almost totally healed up today.  I know it wasn't exactly a cotrolled experiment, but whether the breast milk did it or not, I'm just grateful his eye is better.

So there you have it.  It's been a crazy week.  Hopefully things will settle down a bit and slowly begin to return to normal.