Gratitude

What’s working right now…

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Since it’s usually better to focus on the positive, what is working for my family right now?

Sunshine.  Today (and actually for the past few days) the sun is actually shining.  That always changes my entire energy level–I feel like I can move mountains.  I know the sun won’t shine every day, but I’ll definitely take it when I can.  (And when it does rain?  At least my girls are happy.)

 

Projects.  Art projects, craft projects, house projects…I’ve been digging into my Artful Parent book and my youngest and I have spent afternoons trying this and that.  The liquid watercolors are still out on the kitchen table after a week, just in case.  We have salt paintings stacked up on one counter and a large fairy house (still in process) smack in the middle of the kitchen island.  Fabric is piled up next to the bookshelf in the kitchen; my youngest sewed herself a little cat this weekend.  Stuff for potential projects (egg cartons for planting seeds) and almost finished projects (painted wooden discs about to be turned into magnets) are everywhere.  My kitchen is not a minimalist showplace right now….but we’re happy.

Music.  It can be Studio Ghibli piano music in the background of our mornings, or Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony while I’m prepping dinner:  music helps.  I dare anyone to still be in a bad mood by the end of Beethoven’s Seventh.  Truly.

Time outside.  I spent one Saturday afternoon simply weeding and cleaning up flowerbeds.  It was one of the most peaceful days I’ve had.  If the weather cooperates (thunderstorms turn our backyard into a swamp quickly), being outside is a blessing.  A friend commented last night to watch the birds–they don’t realize there’s a pandemic going on.  Sitting on your porch (or deck) and simply watching the animals in your backyard can give you a tiny dose of normal.

Free stuff to do from sympathetic souls.  I’m surrounded by people crowding my inbox with here’s something to help you through this time, for free (or heavily discounted).  We’re in a unique place where everyone, to a certain extent, is dealing with similar problems–and people are ready to help.

Books.  A secret stash of books, to be precise.  After our last trip to the now-closed-library, where I stocked up on things for my youngest, I sorted everything and hid over half of them on the shelf of the living room closet, complete with dividers telling me what was where.  She’s plowing through things faster than I anticipated, so it won’t last long, but for at least awhile I can trade out her finished Magic Tree House book for another one, and set out “fresh books” downstairs on occasion as a surprise.

My new morning “alone time.”  This is actually me trying to spin something that’s honestly making me crazy.  My youngest has been sleeping in a ridiculous amount, rivaling her teenage siblings.  She admitted one morning–after stumbling downstairs at eleven o’clock–that she’d read until after midnight.  Somehow, the little girl who was picking her way gingerly through the Puppy Mudge beginning readers not even a year  ago is now inhaling the Rainbow Magic Fairy books in one sitting–and not sleeping.  I’m horrified.  Our daily routine is totally shot.  Except that it does allow for bonus alone time for me as I start my day, giving me time to do things….like write this.

Think on it awhile.  What’s working for you?

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What’s working right now

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It feels like most stuff isn’t working right now.  Both my girls have had varying degrees of sickness, ongoing, since February 4th.  I finally consented to doctor visits for both, and we now have two bottles of antibiotic in the fridge.  My youngest is especially temperamental when she doesn’t feel well, so random, surprise tears have been added to the mix.  The weather is less than cooperative here (especially according to the public school folk, who have just logged their 57th snow day…..approximately 😉 ).  We are full of snowed in, iced over, sick, cranky people in this house.

I thought I’d spend at least a little time focusing on what is working.  In no particular order:

Walks and talks with my oldest.  I don’t know if this will actually become a habit or not, but right now it looks promising.  The two of us, who hate anything even remotely close to exercise, are actually willing to leave the house after dinner and walk around the neighborhood for awhile.  We can’t possibly be burning calories, but it’s given him some much needed sister-free time and it’s also helped me realize how full his brain is of wonderful and amazing things.

Christmas lights in almost-March.  This is the second year where, after taking down the tree in mid-January, I kept out two strands of lights to hang over the curtain rod on our living room bay.  Two strands of tiny, multicolored lights are exactly the right amount of light to be cozy (and, surprisingly, functional–it’s enough to read by).  I keep them on the same timer I had for our Christmas tree, so every morning when I come downstairs they’re there to greet me.

My youngest and almost-reading.  My five-year-old isn’t reading yet, but she’s suddenly starting to make huge leaps in connections and understanding.  She spends large portions of her day thinking out loud:  “There’s Koda.  K-K-K-Koda starts with K.  She’s furry.  F-F-F-Furry.  F.  F is furry.  Hey, Mama, I can spell ‘run!’  R-U-N.”  I suspect it’s making her siblings crazy, but I love it.

My big kids reading.  My oldest–who will still insist that he doesn’t like to read–has been devouring books over here.  Apparently, the kid who sees absolutely no need or purpose for algebra has no similar concerns with the classic canon of literature, and has polished off The Grapes of Wrath and Brave New World for school while also reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and No Country for Old Men just for fun.  (Um….fun?!?)  That’s only a bit of the list that I’ve been keeping track of over these past six weeks.  After requesting to not have specific “reading for school,” my daughter has been polishing off books at the rate of one per day; some, yes, pretty light reading, but others not so much (she’s knocking out the Mary Poppins series right now).

Snow days on our side.  With both my daughters alternating between “just a cold” and “flattened” simultaneously, there’s been the potential for a lot of missed extracurriculars.  Somehow, the weather that everyone else has been cursing has come to our rescue almost every time, and classes have been cancelled on days (or nights) when my girls would have been too sick to attend.

And, finally….

My husband quitting his job.  Because when you’ve been planning something for six months, it feels good to finally pull it off.  The countdown to “last day” has begun.

 

It’s funny how if I just keep my eyes on the good, the bad stuff tends to fade into the background.

Hope and Change

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A little over a week ago I finally planted the crocus bulbs that I’d bought last fall.  Winter hit early here, and my ridiculous to-do list of “things to do before the first freeze” was pretty much thrown out the window–I was glad simply to have gotten the hoses disconnected before the temps dropped.  (I did also manage to plant six shrubs….and that was it.)

Then it was January and for nearly a week, we had fall again.

Temperatures started out in that “not too bad when it’s sunny” 40 degree range, then up into the 60’s, and suddenly it was genuinely warm.….and I realized that with the ground thawed, I might be able to get those two boxes of crocus in the ground.

That’s when I started plotting this blog post.  Thoughts of hope and spring were collecting in my head and knocking about; I knew I had to work in Anne Lamott’s quote about how

It helps beyond words to plant bulbs in the dark of winter.

So that’s what we did, my five-year-old gardening partner and I, on a blustery 50 degree afternoon in January.  (50 degrees!  In January!!)

 

That was a Tuesday.  Then Saturday came, and the snow poured down…..this is Kansas, after all.

Honestly, even this weather makes me happy.  Nine inches of snow is more than that five-year-old has ever seen….this was the year she finally got to build her first snowman.  And this was decidedly the best kind of snow; the stuff that sticks to the trees and makes everything glorious, but melts on the still-warm streets.

So my thoughts shift to change.  Yes, hope and spring; but also, yes, change….things can go dark and silent quickly.  Those warm, sunny days can come crashing down days later, branches overwhelmed with heavy snow.  Bulbs planted in hope are now buried, a foot deep, under all that’s fallen.

Pay attention, though, to what that means.

If things can turn that quickly for the worse, they can also turn for the better.

Change works both ways.  For the bad…and for the good.

So this is still a post about hope.  Because it is January now.  But in time it will be April.  “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” (Psalms 30:5)

 

Hello, Fall

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We said good-bye to summer today.  Our temperamental weather took care of everything last night….no more mosquitoes, no more 90 degree days, no more air conditioning in October.  (October!  Gah!)

Thank goodness.

I will miss my flowers, though.  It was an exceptionally good year here for the garden…. so good I’m almost thinking I’m a gardener again.  (It helped that we didn’t have to take out any trees this year.)  I’m feeling the need to document what just ended.  It really was a beautiful summer.

As always, morning glories and moon flowers took over the deck railing.  My daughters have started helping me plant these every spring; the plants truly thrived this year.  It probably helped that I actually thinned them.  😉

The view out my kitchen door.  Even the houseplants were happy this year.

I took all three kids to pick out flowers this spring….every one of them chose petunias.  Oh, the petunias.  Those things I’d sworn I’d never grow again because they needed so much attention and upkeep….petunias do nothing to simplify your life lol.  But wow, were they lush over the summer.

And the Virginia Creeper I transplanted from my parents’ yard….the stuff I dug up and drove a half-hour away and dumped in the ground and promptly abandoned for a two- week-long trip….it took hold.  It’s happy.  Not huge yet, but it’s happy.

It was a good summer.  But I’m always ready for fall.

Rainy Mondays

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This is the second Monday in a row I woke to pouring rain.  (So thankful!)

As I got ready I was thinking about how much I love mornings like this.  Downstairs, I found my two daughters snuggled together on the sofa, wrapped up in a comforter, giggling; it hit me again how much we would miss out on if my kids were in public school.  That snuggle time couldn’t have happened at 7:30 in the morning–my older daughter would have been on a bus, headed to a school that starts at 7:50.

This post sums up my heart this morning.

Originally published April 2016

These are my favorite mornings to be a homeschooling family.

No one wants to move very quickly anyway:  first off, it’s Monday, and secondly, it’s gray and dreary and drizzly……

And guess what?  It doesn’t matter.  We don’t have to Go.  We don’t have to Rush and Get Out the Door.  I can sit in the chair in our bedroom and snuggle the almost-not-two-year-old-anymore and spend a good long time reading.  (Mr. Putter.  Again.)  The older kids can stumble out of bed terribly close to the start of our school day and eat their breakfast, groggy, in their pajamas, while we begin our morning together.  Slowly.

 

Isn’t that part of pursuing “enough?”  Knowing when to be slow?

 

 

Beauty in the Valley

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Our pastor ran a sermon series in December called God With Us.  The promo video that ran each week began with a reminder that God is always with us:  “On the mountain…in the valley….”

Ah, yes, the valley.  The first sermon was all about the valley, which is where our family spent most of 2016 and a fair portion of 2017.  The valley is supposed to be a dark, desperate place–“I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” from Psalm 23, right?–but here’s what hit me as I watched the video intro:

Valleys are beautiful.

Honestly, on our trips to Colorado, valleys are my favorite places to be.  Mountains are majestic, of course, but the countless houses tucked into the deeply wooded valleys? That’s where I’d want to live.  There’s beauty there; it’s not hard to see.

There’s beauty in the valleys of our lives, too.

A perfect example came to me a few Fridays ago, when I went to bed early (like before-dinner early) with what seemed to be a stomach bug.  My husband had plans that night, so my twelve-year-old daughter put my four-year-old to bed.  While I lay curled up under the covers, miserable and barely awake, the sound of my older daughter’s voice floated down the hall, reading bedtime stories to her little sister. Snuggles, giggles, a chapter of Betsy-Tacy; A Birthday for Frances….

When did she get to be such a beautifully fluent reader?

Beauty in the valley.

Watching your oldest pull back and withdraw, more and more often, until you fear that depression might actually really win–that’s a valley.  No doubt.

Watching your son buy his younger sisters stuffed animal souvenirs on the zoo trip he chose to go on with the family, smack in the middle of the ugliness….spending his own money to put a smile on their faces….there’s beauty in the valley.

Holding your son while he sobs and begs….begs you to buy him a gun, so he can end it all and just be done with it for good…that’s the deepest, lowest valley I’ve come to yet.

A doctor who returns your calls while on vacation to ensure he gets medication started: beauty in the valley.

Any trouble with friends tripping a switch that still seems to be set to “despair” is even now a very real part of our valley.

Watching the same child–barely 24 hours later–bringing the folding card table up from the basement, setting it up on the back deck, and cooking and serving dinner to his entire family under the light of the near-full moon….that is a step beyond beauty.  That is unbelievable.

Watching my middle child lose her older-brother-best-friend to the gaping maw of depression has been one of the most ongoing, difficult valleys.

Signing off on her “homework” for church and realizing that under “list three ways you know God cares for you” she included, “He gave me a baby sister….”  That is beauty so vivid it brought me to tears.

It’s beauty, too, when the big kids do reconnect and find out they are still friends, even after everything they’ve been through.

I know that God has been with us in every one of these situations.  He was sitting on the bed with us, brokenhearted, while my son sobbed into my shoulder.  He was pulling up a seat with us, outside on the deck, rejoicing in His gorgeous night and healing child.  I know his hand is on my family as we walk this rocky road, full of switchbacks, that winds through the valley.  But I’m also realizing the valley can be an amazing place, full of beauty, if I can just pay attention.  I don’t know how much longer our valley is.  I do have faith there will continue to be beauty along the way.

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I am sitting at the kitchen table, eating breakfast with my four-year-old.  The rest of the house is quiet; the older two still asleep, husband at work in the basement.  She is quiet, too, as she digs into her warm bowl of oatmeal.  She-who-will-not-be-hurried is deeply focused.

She pulls up a spoonful and holds it over her bowl, watching.

Finally….finally….she looks at me and explains, “I’m watching the steam.  Steam is beautiful.”

Steam is beautiful.

There you are, friends.  Your mindful moment for the day, brought to you by a preschooler.  Steam is beautiful.

Go out and find something else beautiful in your day.

 

“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.  Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.”–Psalm 19:1-2

Unplugging

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It was around Halloween that I realized what I was doing.

Each time I’d see a little uplifting reminder float by on my Facebook feed….

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I’d always finish it with, “….but you could get off your phone and do some of it.”

Because truly, sometimes it’s not an unreasonable to-do list or the busyness of a certain season.  Sometimes, it’s just me being lazy.

I finally decided to do something about it.

The first baby-step was to deleting the two real estate apps off my phone.  We have no intention of moving, and if a house pops up for sale “that I’ve always wondered what it looks like inside,” I can get on the computer.  No more mindlessly scrolling through houses and suddenly realizing an hour has gone by:  check.

The next step was scheduling an email check into my morning routine…on my laptop.  I suddenly had a new goal of not being on my phone in the early morning, at all.  Was that even possible?  All I knew was that I didn’t want my four-year-old to grow up seeing me glued to my phone…..and I wanted to see my four-year-old grow up.

Next up:  not faithfully keeping up with reading blogs.  No more daily check-ins (though occasionally reading is definitely still happening).  It occurred to me recently that I’m not trying to build a brand, launch a product, sell an item or make a name…..so why on earth do I feel a strange sense of obligation to keep up with this?  No more.

The last step was deleting the Facebook app.  I’d already made a decision, after an exceptionally good Halloween, that I wanted to take another break from Facebook; I wanted to enjoy the holiday season we were having instead of constantly being bombarded with other ideas and wondering if we should be doing things differently. This fall and winter have been so different from last year, as my son continues to climb out of depression.  I want to enjoy it!  I want to savor this time, not compare it to someone else’s holiday–or not even be truly present for it in the first place.  Bye-bye, FB.

My mom and I had a conversation not that long ago about how technology has gone from a blessing to a nuisance.  While I don’t want to get rid of the internet, I think the line that got crossed awhile back–that “smartphone” line–has turned something wonderful into something awful.  I can objectively see the benefits of the internet.  Right now, it’s hard for me to see the good in a smartphone.

Rant over.

She keeps me young

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We made our annual trip to the Cider Mill this past week.  The weather was absolutely perfect for the fall trek, cool and crisp with plenty of sunshine to keep us warm.  We wandered the grounds, ate our doughnuts, and drank our cider, and then (of course) I took pictures like a crazy person.

Hide and seek at the Cider Mill….because, why not?

I started innocently, following the kids around and snapping occasional pics. Then it was goofy poses, to get them willing for the follow-up attempt at nice poses.  The beauty of digital photography is that you can take literally a hundred pictures and know that somewhere in there are two or three keepers.  Pic after pic of my kids on hay bales and rock walls, being crazy, being silly, and finally being “smiley for the camera.”

When I finished and turned them loose, I turned to see an older woman smiling and holding out her phone.  “Would you mind taking a photo of us?” she asked with a smile, gesturing toward two young-adult daughters and her husband.  “We  never manage to get all together like this.”  I agreed–who wouldn’t!?–and snapped a handful of pics of the four of them.  As I handed the phone back, she complimented me on my “beautiful family” and my four-year-old’s darling dress.

I smiled sheepishly.  “That was a hand-me-down from sister,” I admitted.  “We didn’t save hardly anything between my older daughter and the surprise, but we saved that.”

She laughed.  “I wondered about that!  That was me, you know.  I was the surprise.”  She was smiling mischievously.  “My mom always said–she’s ninety-seven now–my mom always said, ‘She keeps me young.'”

I burst out laughing.  “That needs to be my phrase!  I’m always looking at her saying, ‘Oh, baby girl, Mama’s so old….”

“NO!” The woman was beaming.  “She keeps you young!!”

I sincerely hope I can adopt that attitude.  A shift in mindset of that magnitude changes everything.  I wonder what adventures she’ll lead us on; what paths we’re going to walk down because she exists.  I know that the past two years of depression with my oldest would have been incredibly more difficult for me, without this little one’s unrelenting joy and sunshine to wrap myself in.  Snuggling with an inquisitive, cheerful preschooler has been a blessed antidote to many of my days.

Maybe the “keeps you young” has already been happening.  Maybe she, with her sweet spirit and loving nature and concern for others, has been keeping me from being beaten down prematurely as we walk the dark, ugly path of depression with our son.  And how blessed we are now, to have him healing and returning–almost always–to his tenderhearted, sweet self (with that sly sense of humor).  She was, somehow, always thoroughly untainted by her brother’s moods; now that unceasing joy allows us to rejoice more deeply in the healing that is taking place.

Our lives were changed dramatically with her arrival.  But as my husband and I were discussing last night, there hasn’t been a single change for the worse.  God knew exactly what we were going to need at this point in our lives.  We can’t imagine life without her.

Yes, she keeps me young.

 

 

 

A little bit different

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I think, if you sat our family down on the front steps of our home and took a photo, we would look like the perfect microcosm of average suburban America.  Three kids, two dogs, 2,300-square-foot home….it all screams “average.”

I forget in how many ways we are different, and are living life in a simpler way. We haven’t gotten too off-course from my goal of “enough” (in spite of birthday season), and we really aren’t quite “average.”  The past few days reinforced that idea for me.

In a way, it started Monday night; the last night of a four-week Bible study I was attending.  We usually have very quiet evenings, and me being gone four Mondays in a row was a serious shock to the family system.  (Obviously, they all did fine.)  Bedtime hugs and kisses were doled out at 6:40pm since I wouldn’t see kids until morning…..

…and the next morning we hit the ground running a bit harder than usual.  I dropped my youngest off at her preschool, then stopped by the library on my way to a chiropractor appointment.  I had a bit of time at home (long enough to flip laundry) and then collected my older daughter to tag along as we picked up the youngest from preschool and headed straight to Target for a quick lunch (um…ick) and a shopping trip involving birthday gifts for their brother.  We were having all sorts of fun, wandering and smelling candles, when I literally gasped so loud it scared the girls.

“I’m supposed to get your brother to his appointment at 2:00!” I hastily explained, and once I checked my phone I realized we were fine. There was no more moseying through the aisles, however, and we headed straight for the checkout line.  As I pushed the cart towards the door, my youngest reminded me, “Don’t forget his treat!”

Oh, yeah.  We stopped back by the deli and grabbed an Icee.

Headed for home, unloaded stuff, loaded boy, sat in a waiting room for an hour, and tried to breathe.

Back home I collected the girls and RETURNED to Target WITH the Redcard to get our 5% off all that stuff we just bought earlier.  (Sigh.)  One last gift for brother.  A few clothing items for my older girl, who is rapidly (again) running out of clothes to wear, regardless of how often she does laundry.  Got home and started dinner and ate together--on days like today, I consider the fact that we still managed to eat together a HUGE win.

While my husband and older daughter cleaned up dinner, my son and I jumped back in the car so I could drop him off at a homeschool group event.  I hung out to talk a bit, then headed home to put my youngest to bed while my husband ran to the grocery store.  Once both girls were down, I headed back out to make sure I was there to pick my son up at 9:00; only to check my messages in the parking lot and realize the group was running late and maybe push pick-up back to 9:30?

Well…..guess I’ll gas the car now.

Returned for pick-up and more talking.  Home by ten.  Completely sacked out by 10:45.

I knew going into the week that Tuesday would be the worst, Wednesday would be a bit better, and by Thursday, the end was in sight.  At some point mid-Tuesday, I stopped and looked around and had a sudden, deep awareness that some people live like this all the time.

Mine were a crazy few days, but for many, that is everyday.

That is how countless people are going through their lives:  a bit like pinballs, bouncing from one thing to another in an endless–and sometimes mindless–run.  That is what an average day looks like, for an average person.  And thankfully, SO thankfully, that is one way we’re different.

Today we are home.  Home for an entire day.  The bigs are at the kitchen table with me, coloring while I write.  The four-year-old is camped out in the living room with her My Little Ponies  My laundry for the day is done and my daughter has started hers.  The kitchen is clean and the coffee is fresh.  We have discussed a library run, and put it on the back burner.  All the kids are still in pajamas.  It is the best kind of day–especially after the week we’ve had.  I’m so, so grateful that this is our normal; that we are, actually, a little bit different.