2 years down, 13 to go

Another milestone today.  Ewan “graduated” from preschool – translation: today was his last day of preschool and they had a nice little program with fun little certificates for the kids.  I would like to say that Ewan was teary eyed about leaving this nice school and his friends there… but no. He’s been cheering for a month about the end of school and having “play at home days” for the foreseeable future.  I’m not sure if I want to cheer or cry at the thought of many unending play-at-home-days. I’ll get back to you in about 6 weeks to let you know…

The Processional

Never knew what a May Pole was until today

A lollipop to soothe her fury that she wasn’t involved in the program

His first, and hopefully not last, diploma

The McGraduate and family

Big Game Today

Okay, I’ll admit it I like soccer. My 7 yrs. of playing Howard County Rec.  soccer  gave me a love for the game. I know it’s the cool thing these days to say you follow soccer (thank you Stuff White People Like). But, I actually enjoy trying to keep up with it. Now, I can’t tell you all the stats or who is on every team.  But, I love reading about it online and absolutely love the Fox Soccer Channel.   Right now, I am bleeding blue, not Tar heel blue, but Chelsea Blue. Today is the European cup final against Manchester United. MU is the Chicago Bulls of the late 90’s. Beckham played on MU for a while and now MU starts  the best soccer player in the world - Christiano Ronaldo. It’s sure to be a tough match today. I sure hope my boys - Ashley Cole, Andriy Schevchenko, Didier Drogba  can pull off the upset.

So this is why I’m so exhausted…

Liesl had a rather disruptive change this past week — probably the biggest change in her little world since she was weaned. Last Monday was her last day in diapers! It took a about 3 days — days filled with a gamut of emotions for both her & I, but I think I can say she’s potty trained. No, I should still say, potty training….

The person who is affected the most is ME, because now I must monitor Liesl’s bathroom habits throughout the day. It’s an added element to our day that I know I must endure for the next few months, until this “big girl” thing is truly mastered. And of course, it’s tiring — and the harder I want to work at it with her, the more tiring it is (which is why I’ve been putting it off). Now she sports some very sparkly princess underwear, and sometimes she sports them on her noggin. We’re so proud of how well she’s done with this very disruptive milestone!

This Blog is out of balance

We need more about MY hair on here

lost an easy 2 pounds

I’m feeling lighter, in more ways than one.

Never Satisfied - hair edition

(I wrote this last night - and deleted it an hour later because I was afraid. But I just got a note from a friend on the west coast that read it in that hour, so I’m reposting it, despite the fear. Thanks Jaime.):

I need to take some time out to talk about something distressing. Men, navigate away. This may not interest you and will most likely annoy you.

Ok, so I’ve heard time & time again from other women that “My husband/boyfriend wants (or likes) me to have long hair.” And, usually these woman have long hair. I know that – in general – men like long hair. Sorry to any man being lumped into this long-hair loving category, but I’m going to step out on a blogging limb and say that most men like long hair (long hair = hair that is to the shoulder or below). I have my strong opinions about why this is but I can’t say too many revealing things all at once or you may think I’ve lost my blogging mind.

I have been “growing my hair out” for the past 15 months or so, and my hair is longer now that it’s been in about 4 years and I consider my now shoulder length hair to be “long.” You know, though, I’m saying right here for the record that this is definitely the longest my hair will ever be again. I just can’t stand it. It’s thick. It’s heavy. The ends are dry. It’s not curly. It’s not straight. It’s “wavy.” If I want it to look smooth and luxurious I have to spend 20 minutes with the blow dryer on HIGH and my hands literally get cramped from using the round brush to get it straight…. If I want it to stay curly for more than 4 hours I have to load it up with product, dry it (for just 10 minutes this time) but then I can’t even lay my head down on a pillow during the day lest my “curls” become mere frizzy waves. Or putting on a hat? Hair suicide. Anyone with curls or waves knows of this woe. Not to mention the amount of product required to get my amount of hair to behave is ridiculous.

And I’ve been battling about all of this in my mind for the last several weeks: Why am I going through this?? Why do I now have “long” hair, only to hate it most of the time — except for the days I spend the 20 minutes with the blow dryer on high — and I’ve concluded that I so badly desire to be attractive that I’m willing to put myself through hair distress! This is foolishness, I know, but isn’t it so easy to fall into this? Who the heck cares what Jodie McMullen’s hair looks like?? As if having smooth straight hair makes me more acceptable.

I know I’m not alone. It’s in our blood, us women. From the dawn of time we’ve been told by the world and our own flesh that we’re not good enough, and we women both love and hate this curse. For example, when I see women wearing stiletto heels or sucking in their stomach rolls, plucking thick eye brows, waxing, tanning, highlighting, eyelining, needing to feel needed & important, etc etc… Pheew. I’m not the only one who wants to look like something I’m not… I’m trying to cover up that I’m ordinary. I wake up looking pretty bad every morning and I go to extraordinary lengths to cover that up.

So my women friends, this so easily is my gospel — where I find life & acceptance. It’s always been a struggle, since I was a girl. Many many of my memories of myself as a teenager are connected to my efforts to look desirable to men. Straightening my then very-long hair, burning my skin to a crisp, wearing tight clothes, flirting… oh yes, I’m saying it, my friends. I want my hair to be a certain way so that I appear, in this case, to be more feminine. I have seen freedom & change in my life in wanting to be attractive to other men - but I still want to appear attractive to people in general, or to give off the impression that I am one of those girls that has good long hair…

But the truth for me is, I like short hair. I want to high-5 women that have short hair. But here I am, trying to hold on to some notion that I can again have long hair and like it…. I’m not saying that I must deny myself of all enjoyment in this area — because I do really enjoy the artistic/expressive side of make-up, hair and clothing. But I hope you get what I’m saying about it becoming more than enjoying it for what it is — just hair, make-up and clothing.

Jeff is so great. He is careful to let me do what I want with my hair — but in the end he wants me find freedom from the hair-hold, which for me means having hair that’s not luxurious in the way that might come to mind when you think “luxurious.” I really was hoping that after 30 I might get over some of my issues… like using appearance to find acceptance, but it’s just not happening. This ball & chain will follow me further, but I AM encouraged that Christ is working in my heart and has shown me this. It’s change - it’s progress. And as my husband preached today from the pulpit, I’m here to tell the story of what He’s doing in my life because this is how we make Christ known. May your week start off with freedom!

my new accessory

Before you infer that I got some part-time work at Old Navy, I will jump right to telling you that this is my new nifty language learning accessory. A quick background: Jeff & I signed up for a beginners German class at the community college here last month — but it was cancelled last minute due to not having enough students…. Woah, wait a minute here. What???  A German class not having enough students in Howard County, MD?  I still can’t believe it.

Anyhow, we found a good second-best option (or maybe a better-yet option): we’re signed up online with Rosetta Stone — and we can go online at any time for 6 months to access any of their German lessons.  So far it’s been working out great - and they sent us this little microphone headset thing  so that the program can critique our pronunciation of our Ich and auf Wiedersehen’s.  So this is how my evenings are being spent as of late.

I suppose it may have been “fun” to be in Frau Kirsch’s community college class — but honestly I’m glad to be speaking into my little microphone for the time being.  There will be many years of real life critique ahead of us in Vienna, so I’ll avoid it till then….

A beautiful thing

One who runs hard, falls hard

7 Little Known Random Things

OK, so a few of my friends recently posted 7 random/little known facts about themselves, which I found entertaining — so here I am. Another combination for you: Quiet Friday night + Jodie home alone + Jodie reading blogs + Inspiration of little known randomness posts = This Post.

1. I loved Little House on the Prairie as a girl. Being the oldest of 3 girls I was, obviously, Mary, in my imaginations. I even went as far as thinking I was going blind in 1st grade. Seriously, my parents took me to a specialist because I was claiming that I couldn’t see the chalk board at school anymore. It was a while later that they realized that my “condition” (Pretend Eye Failure) was brought on by watching the LHOTP episode where Mary went blind in the middle of the night….

2. The first (and last) time I wore a bikini was when I was 16 years old. I was on vacation with a friend’s family and we went to a water park where I busted out my new $5 triangle-topped bikini and white virgin stomach skin. We were 16… and we were dumb… and didn’t wear sun screen… and we laid out for 2 hours. I spent that night in a cold bath and was laid-up in the hotel room the next day.
3. I sucked my thumb as a child… and struggled against it as a young adolescent…. and even had reversions in COLLEGE, which I realized only when I woke up in the morning with teeth-markings in my thumb.

4. I have a very rigid routine when I get ready for bed and get myself ready in the morning. Meaning, for example, at night I start by brushing my teeth, wash my face, floss teeth, blow my nose, apply toner, apply chapstick, pin hair back, lotion hands, go to the bathroom, check on the kids (which is a whole different routine within this one), adjust our sound machine volume level, crack our door, turn out light, sigh heavily when I lay down my my pillow. good night. (wow I’m tired all of a sudden) It all must happen in that order so I don’t forget to do anything.

5. I have PCOS. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. In an effort to keep it light here, I shall just say that this has greatly affected my life in many ways.

6. I do a good Jar Jar Binks (Star Wars) impression. And a pretty darn good Ann McMullen impression.

7. I think my dream job — if I were living another life sans family and any sense of stable community life — would be reporting for NPR and doing human interest stories. But I do not want another life other than this one, so my job of reporting human interest stories will remain a line item on a list.

I don’t necessarily like updates… but if I must:

I’m not really into normal, everyday, tell-people-what-we’re-up-to, “updating” on this blog… it gets boring, in my humble blogging opinion. There’s gotta be some sort of story or theme for me to really get interested — and I honestly censor myself MOST of the time. See, if this were an anonymous blog — if no one knew who I was (i.e. if my mother-in-law couldn’t navigate her way to this page) — this blog would most definitely be more interesting than it is.

But, I realize that sometimes people may WANT the occasional life-ish update. I mean, we are headed down the missionary road — living our lives as pretty much public as it gets — mostly due to support raising and the package that it brings — needing people to pray for us and our ministry and allowing people to “know us” (if “knowing” means blog and praying-letter-reading) in more intimate ways than the average person may let people know them over the internet…

Honestly, there are times that risk of “putting ourselves out there” feels hard and I want to divorce the blog altogether. And other times I really enjoy the “creative” aspect of posting here. Like, I liked thinking about my best friend from high school (see below) and writing a bit about our relationship. I like telling small snippets of our story of living with my in-laws (you guys have read about .03% of the stuff that goes on in this household). I sometimes/usually like letting people into our lives through these avenues. Again, I censor myself so even as I say that last sentence I know that obviously people aren’t really being “let in” further than reading some of our stories and seeing some pictures. But I really believe that God has given me the freedom to bring part of myself here to this blog, and in a way I hope it brings Him glory because he created me uniquely (even though it’s easy to feel so ordinary) and with something to offer others — and you people actually come here and read it….

I wasn’t expecting to say all of that — but before I hit “DELETE” on the the previous two paragraphs (I’m choosing NOT to censor) — I’ll just move on to posting some photos from the last two days — to give you a day-to-day update on the McMullen clan.

First, playing with Daddy Monster late this afternoon

Jeff doing his infamous cackle to get the kids riled up

Liesl, gravely concerned about the Monster

Ewan loving every minute of it

An evening out, on our way to the Missions Conference

(they’ve earned back-seat privileges)

This is our table display at the conference about our work in Vienna. Jeff even wore his Vienna “Wien Energie” soccer jersey tonight.

Do we look like we belong here?? Sometimes to our amazement, yes, we do. Not because of anything we bring to the table, thank you lordie — but because we’ve been made New by Jesus and we have that story to share in Vienna. That feels really exciting (!) to me! (when it’s fresh in my heart…). This week at Chapelgate church’s missions conference has been so amazingly encouraging for us — perfect timing for us weary support-raisers. Thank you to everyone involved there and all who have spoken words of grace to us and shown kindness to our kids.