As time goes by

Today was a day where I said “your son needs to work on his manners” and “do you see your son jumping on the couch?” in moments of frazzle shortly before bedtime and then I had the audacity too say, after they were tucked quietly in bed: “are they not ridiculously cute?”.

So goes life with kids. One moment you feel like the old woman in the shoe:

“….who had so many children she didn’t know what to do.

So she gave them some broth without any bread

And spanked them all soundly and sent them to bed.”

...And the next, you just want to hold them close to you for a couple extra minutes and linger in the moment; that moment where they are just who they are; knowing with the knowledge of experience that little changes occur every day that grow them up to someone else. Sing them an extra song, look a little longer in their little baby eyes and sigh at the fleeting youth of the very young.

 

With the reality of an ever present forgetfulness that pushes old moments into the recesses of the mind and eventually, with enough new ones, nearly out, I would just like to remark on a few current trends in the kid department.

 

That I may remember:

Drake insists on using his own spoon to try and feed himself. Small wonder he eats little with this new development. The way I circumvent his new surge of the will to feed himself is to let him feed me. That boy cannot keep his mouth shut when he is trying to get me to open mine. The truth is, I notice I cannot keep my own mouth shut when I am trying to get him to open his. Touche`.

Mason comes over to give me a kiss, finds my lips and then just stays there looking in my eyes and kissing me. So funny. I smack him on his lips and say thank you to finish it off but if he is not satisfied with the length of the kiss he will try again. Love it.

Daphne telling me that I need to count to ten the other day. Wow!

Mason coming in to cuddle in the morning “I so cold” he says. He likes my pillow better than his dads so he always asks me to scoot my head over.

The way, when I practice my violin, if he is not busy outside, Mason will run to his room to get his little guitar and play with me. Or grab some unsharpened pencils and drum on whatever is available.

When I see Daphne sitting at the kitchen table, or out on the dog kennel, or in her room, or on the pot totally absorbed in a book; not just looking at the pictures, but reading. That is a feeling of accomplishment; I am actually teaching her to love to read, helping to open that world of fantasy and adventure.

Little Drake, when I tell him it is time to nurse and go to bed, will drop whatever he is doing to run to me. It doesn’t matter that he is in the middle of a raucous tussle on the floor with his dad and siblings or that he has small treasures in his hand that no amount of urging would otherwise induce him to surrender. He drops it all, gives kisses all around and pats my back as we go into the bedroom.

 

It doesn’t matter that I had to stand secretly in the kitchen eating chocolate to medicate a temporary stress or hide in the bathroom for five minutes to regain my peace and composure; when life holds this kind of magic, I bounce back pretty rapidly.... I have to, because time goes by and I just don't don't don't want to miss anything.

Prego with Daphne

 

"You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by"

Marriage: Happy Days

It is Thursday, also known as "Married Life Thursday". Time to talk about marriage: the good, the bad and the.....wait for it.....UGLY!  Today I might just ramble a bit, maybe rant a tad and maybe cry a little. The truth is I love being married, even when that man just drives me nuts and I have to admit the possibility that he is from another planet and not capable of understanding Earths language. I still love it and at the end of the day, would rather forgive and at least try to forget, agree to disagree....ish or whatever and just go on playing house and being in love.

Ten years ago we wed. It has been an adventure.

Life is, or seems to be, filled with complexity.

Marriage is…..let’s just say…. complicated. You have two widely different people with a past, with an abundance of emotion, and with baggage still carried around from that past. Then you add kids, pets, in-laws, bills, work, stress, car trouble, health challenges, fatigue, bad weather, irritating behavior, not enough money, too much money (does anyone ever have that problem), home repairs, external drama, difference of opinion, habits (just to name a few), and the difficulties seem insurmountable.

 

It is important to bring marriage back to a simple remembrance of your beginning: “I love you; I am committed to you.” The uncomplicated reality of two people sharing a moment that is full of possibilities.

Chris and I have had circumstances in our lives together that have stripped us of every complicating trivial stress by making us see the comparison between the things we spent time worrying about and what was truly important.

At the time our son Mason was born we had been experiencing a very stressful financial time; Mason, in his first four months, gave us a perspective shift like none we had ever known or probably will ever know. We realized in those months that we either stood together and fought for our son side by side or risked losing him and everything by taking our anxiety out on each other. Everything but Gods goodness, Mason’s life and our family became insignificant and faded into the background. Chris and I have truly become a team, fighting on the same side, experiencing victories together and clinging to what is, rightly, important.

For such incredibly evolved beings, so we think, with practically limitless resources, the ability to get as much "higher education" as we want and just fry the brain with knowledge, the capability of reading any book we want and absorb and grow our grey matter to these souped up genetically modified intellects, we certainly have a problem. With a goal in mind, human nature has the capacity to demand that the body submit to a rigorous training, such as running marathons, bike riding, weight lifting and the like. We want growth and development; we don’t want to stagnate. Yet, marriage, the ultimate opportunity to develop in sacrifice and learn intense self-control, to demand of the body and soul more than is otherwise required,  has a 50% success rate. This should not be.

He gave us what our human make up required; God gave us marriage as our development; the opportunity to war against the impulses that threaten to make us selfish, to be able to see our propensities and in the light of another’s  need, to push our inclinations aside for the person we love.
 

A good marriage has to be purchased; it comes with a price. Most people are aware of the price before they wed but they are so "in love", it seems cheap. Even the vows cover the indefinable possibilities “for better or worse, richer or poorer....” etc. It seems like people look at the price tag after being married awhile and then start to barter: “I will give you this much”.

It is really a non negotiable price; fixed rate, PITI,  for as long as you both shall live. Society puts value on all manner of things, the big two are education and making money (not unimportant things) but God puts tremendous value on this covenant called marriage. We need to let what we say, how we say it and how we act reflect that we put value on what God puts value on.

Marriage is the opportunity to do a thousand small and really quite painless things for someone else; to be your best self when you are tempted to be your worst.

 

“He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

 

Make every day a little happier by smiling at each other, laughing with each other and sharing moments that are entirely your own.

An InLinkz Link-up

Last week of February

The world of blogging is a vast cosmic collectivity of enterprise not wholly familiar to me.

As I do with most endeavors, I began without defined initiatives in mind, to write and explore with some semblance of external motivation, that being, some would read my recordings, giving an impetus for at least the bare attempts at proper spelling and grammar. I have enjoyed the months of writing for the principle sake of writing something and putting pictures of my little ones alongside, knowing my Grandma will be enjoying their cuteness. This simplistic beginning has been necessary for me while the busy everythings of life are often disrupting the even flow of my mental prowess and the wind of unexpected happenings are blowing my hair in my mouth and eyes (figuratively of course). I say all this for the purpose of saying I feel my slow start has been building a foundation that I can eventually build a structure full of interesting artifacts on. Meaning, in every day blogging language: I intend to learn more and maybe, just maybe, pick up a couple extra followers in the months to come (though I am very happy with my current eleven). I guess we will see how that goes. It is fun to sit and talk to my friends.... out there somewhere, battling challenges and learning about life....just like me.

Rambling on:

This week looks good from the vantage of my couch tonight and I am taking a couple minutes to write down appointments responsibilities and put order to its beginning. My sister at Jolly Little Life encourages us on Monday to write down goals for the week that will take a little part of each day. These are three of mine:

 

1.                  Take time to connect with each of my kids on their level every day. How often do the days go by going from one busy thing to the next and us crazy moms who have to keep a dozen things in mind leading up to each separate activity might forget to still cultivate the individuality of the little beings we are working so hard for.

 

2.                  Pick a word a day and use it a hundred times, if possible, throughout the day until it is part of your speaking vocabulary. This is a fun and painless way to teach great vocabulary to your kids. I will even list the words here in case you want to practice too.

Monday: equitable: Fair; unbiased; just; reasonable.

Tuesday: euphony: Good sound, pleasant lilt or rhythm

Wednesday: badinage: light hearted frivolity

Thursday: inchoate: elementary, incipient, or incomplete

Friday: pedantic: stressing trivial points of learning

      3.         Be sure my sink is shiny before going to bed at night. No one likes to wake up to yesterdays residual of mess (though we sometimes have to). Little habits learned help the productivity and peace of the day.

Here's to being our best selves this week and bring in March with a bang.

 

 

 

Never too late to learn something new

It is not uncommon when people find out I teach piano that they lament on the fact that they never took lessons, or took a few months worth of lessons as a kid but never practiced, or hated piano because their mom made them practice five days a week, or something to that effect. I have always said that it's never too late to learn, an axiom I stand behind. So here I am in February with six lessons of Violin under my belt, going for the proof that it really is never too late to learn.

I have to say....I love it.

It has been a while since I have felt so mentally relaxed even though my neck is rigid and my fingers are clamped in a death grip around bow and finger board (no this is not a good way to play). I have constantly to work on my physical relaxation as I try so hard just to get a nice sound out of the strings, but relaxing has never really been my strong point anyway so that's no surprise. What I mean to say is that learning a new instrument has become a lovely enhancement to my everyday life even though in the beginning I thought adding anything that would require a daily investment of time was a bad idea. I look forward to practicing and I am immensely challenged by the difficulty of it.

I have had to get creative with squeezing in a practice session, and perhaps a little unconventional. My favorite times are in the evening, because no one is hanging on my legs, but even my husbands patience (though he does not say so) might be tried if I practiced more than a half hour with him listening to every screeching note, so I attempt to get fifteen minutes in during the day as well. I often will send the kids outside for a good romp with the dog in the dirt and keep an eye on them while I practice on the porch (no complaints from the neighbors yet but the year is still young). Drake loves to sit and put rocks in buckets but is way too little to be unsupervised, so he likes this arrangement of practice on the porch a lot.

 I can't play the Devil went down to Georgia yet but I can play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and am pretty happy about that. I decided initially to learn the Violin so I could have the versatility of teaching an additional instrument to my children (way down the road at this rate) and I didn't realize I would like it so much. Little Mason can tell me all the parts of the violin already and always points to the bow and asks "is this the frog? Why?". I love it.

As a teacher and now as a student I offer this advice:

1.  Find a teacher and take consistent lessons. Even with a background in music and an extensive knowledge of music theory I would have quit already if I didn't have the expertise of a teacher let alone the motivation that one provides.

2.  Find fifteen minutes in your day to dedicate to this new endeavor. Anyone can find fifteen minutes to put to a good use and fifteen minutes every day will make progress whether in an instrument or reading a book or in a thousand other things. Consistency is the key.

3.  Enjoy the newness, adventure and challenge of learning something you have always wanted to learn but never made the commitment to.

4.  Realize that if you have kids they love to watch their parent practicing in the same way they are made to practice. This can actually infuse your child's interest in music with a new sense of passion.

It is never too late to learn something new and you might just find another one of life's many pleasures.

music interlude

I know it is Monday and what I should be doing is encouraging the ever important  endeavor of accomplishing our goals during this pivotal month.

 

February makes or breaks us people.

 

However, since having a forced reprieve from everything but taking care of my little ones fighting sickness, I have determined that March is the new January and I will just breath a little bit this week; enjoy the moments with kids who need extra loving.

 

I invite you to take a little journey of melancholy with me this evening. What I love about life, is the emotion of it. I know we have to think sanely,  live well and reasonably and be steady, but within those confines of steadfastness we have the mighty power to feel, and feel strongly. Music just catapults the soul to a “feeling” experience, where you can linger a little in the throws of a creative and obscure sense of love and laughter, memories and emotion, sadness and hope. I would give you the direct links on youtube but that just might take me all night, I can’t even figure out how to get this huge picture of my face smaller. Listen in this order…but don’t watch the videos, just listen to the songs:

Gordan Lightfoot "If you could read my mind"

Bruce Springsteen “Thunder Road”

Roy Orbison “Love Hurts”

Moody Blues “Your Wildest Dreams”

Josh Groban “To Where you are”

Keith Green “The Lord is my Shepherd”

Valentines Bums

Seven years ago my husband and I had steak for Valentines Day and sparkling apple cider.

 

It was hospital steak. Two days before we had met our daughter for the first time.

 

 I felt like I had been hit by a semi truck and could barely move off the bed but that was a memorable valentines day. 

 

If you have ever gone through the star bucks drive through and the guy handing over your drink asks how you are and you feel your eyes swell, and you just have to get out of there before he asks if you are alright and then the water works really start, then you know how my day was. I spent the day with a nervous empty stomach that no amount of comfort food could encourage to eat. I probably shouldn’t even be blogging given the sad state of sleep over the last two nights, holding my little one as he sleeps, so uneasily; Praying for him as his little short breaths indicate some greater discomfort, but writing helps me feel normal.

 

I spent the day at multiple doctors offices and then multiple pharmacy’s, those of you who know me know that I am very unwilling to run with my children to a place that usually houses a plethora of coughing, sneezing, people in a tight waiting area. But that’s where I was today. A mother knows I guess; I knew something was off last night ….all night and this morning was dismayed but not surprised to hear the recommendation that I get an immediate chest x-ray for my littlest buddy. I greeted the male nurse who had come to give Drake a breathing treatment with a smile even though my panicking son had both his hands down my shirt, trying to find something familiar in the haze of unknown implements poking and prodding him.  He had his breathing treatment and his x-ray and started antibiotics for the first time in his young little life.

 

 My husband did come home with a red rose, an enormous card and a couple bars of my favorite chocolate. The poor man got a sub par style of gourmet; that being a quesadilla with avocado just a little too ripe and cucumber just a little wilted around the sides. I am fortunate that my Valentine doesn’t notice the small nuances of food as long as the overall taste is okay. Ten years of Valentines. We have had dinners and dates and romance. We have written poetry and cards in those years. I daze him with my original poetry penned for and about him and he gives me his little bits of genius like the one I got just today:

 I try hard to be amazing every day and sometimes I just need grace when I am so very far from amazing, sitting with liquid Amoxicillin on my Rock Republic Buckle Jeans and baby boogers all over my blue blouse. I came home at 4:30 and happened to glance in the mirror to see streaks of brown eye liner rubbed under my eyes (Don’t know when that happened but it was likely the Starbucks incident, which means I was wearing my heart around my eyes for at least 4 hours. Look in the mirror once in awhile for goodness sake).   

 

We are night watchers tonight, keeping eye on what we value most. Our valentines day is not as carefree as some past Valentines have been but I am thankful for the arm around me as I cry out the remainder of the day on the couch and the hand to hold as I face what real life sometimes involves.

Here's to being less than perfect but still loved. Happy Valentines Day!

Just so ordinary

Today as I was picking up after the kids for the 70^th time, trying to get the house acceptable to ancillary eyes, I had a moment of thinking in bewilderment “what else have I done today but this?” Naturally my feelings were hyperbolic and I’m sure I could list a great many weighty and important things done today however the sensation of the opposite was overwhelming.

 I was still picking up when my mom came by to drop off my daughter who had spent a pleasant afternoon going for a walk with Grandma and Papa. She asked how I was and I said “fine” then followed it up with “I am a slave, that’s what I am”. She laughed then said something that washed the fatigue from my soul as if by some marvel of eloquence.

She said: “It’s called serving and one of the greatest things you can do on a daily basis is serve your family”.

 When Jesus said “If you want to be great in God’s kingdom, learn to be a servant of all”,  it was pretty cut and dry. I think in our society, service is romanticized to be something a little more spectacular or just a little more blatantly sacrificial. Oddly paradoxical really. Being a servant is to help meet the need of another, it is quiet and glad, unobtrusive.

I need reminders to fight against this idea that lingers on occasion, saying that what I do doesn't have enough value because it is just so ordinary. There really is nothing ordinary about the miracles I witness on a daily basis. Thanks mom for reminding me of what's important. 

 

 

 

If it's slavery, it sure is rewarding

 

Lingering in front of a skinny mirror

Have you ever looked in a mirror while trying on clothes and thought to yourself “I wonder if this is a fat mirror or if it is actually a true reflection”? Sometimes mirrors don’t always tell a consistent story if you know what I mean. Even at my gym along the huge wall of mirrors there is a little portion of about 3 feet in the far left hand corner that bows in slightly creating a more slender version of my reflection and the farther right you go the larger you get.

 At my dentist there is just such a mirror. Not a mirror that makes you wonder if it is true but a mirror that is very definitely what is known as “a skinny mirror”. Every time I visit this bathroom at this dentist I remember this mirror and take a nice long look in it as if I was trying to imprint on my imagination this version of my self.

Three kids later, I have what I refer to as the mom body. No matter what I do, my body is just plain different since having those little bundles of joy and work. So yes I linger in front of a skinny mirror whenever I have the good fortune too come in contact with one and I am not ashamed to say I even turn around to admire my backside in that gloriously slimmer perspective. Yes I am one of the masses of woman who have to fight to get back in those favorite jeans, sometimes having to give up chocolate and even…..I hate to say it, cheese, in order to do so. The gym, the trail, squats, juicing and the like, are all part of the journey back or rather the journey to what I am, a super mom. So I loiter a bit in front of an image of myself not entirely realistic, but I am grateful for the real imperfect thing because if I didn’t have the scars I wouldn’t have these:

In order to link up with Jolly Little Life as she continues encouraging us all to set goals in 2014 I  will remark on three things I am going to do every day this week.

1.                  Be grateful. A grateful person is a happy person.

2.                  Pick an outfit everyday that I feel good in (and this doesn’t include yoga pants).

3.                  Keep the kitchen table clear. This seems to be a hot spot for collecting piles of all sorts of stuff throughout the day, then before a meal it is always in need of a clean.

Here’s to a better version of myself every day