Special performance

The kids had their singing performance at Community Bible Study this morning and I couldn't have been more proud of the.  The older home school kids sang the Books of the Old Testament and Reese stood up and sang with them since she's been practicing with Carter.  They both did so great!  

My dear friend sent me this article today about How to Raise Pagan Kids in a Christian Home and a lot of the points really hit home for me.  It is so crucial that our kids have more than just a cursory knowledge of the Bible and why we believe what we believe.  It's so crucial that they really know about Jesus and what He means in our lives and have a real relationship with Him.

One of Carter's teachers told us to watch for "snow rollers" yesterday and we were lucky enough to see some right in our own neighborhood today.  They are apparently very rare...haven't been spotted in this area in 100 years.  Basically the wind rolls snowballs...Google it for more images and info but they are fascinating.  The largest one here was about the size of a basketball.  I picked one up and they are light as air.  Creation and all the aspects of weather never cease to amaze me!

You can see the little trails...

The remind me of cinnamon rolls...you can see the layers!

Clean to Chaos

It's no wonder parents feel like they are constantly losing their minds...or at least I do!  I left the house with all three kids this morning, relatively clean.  Go me...pat on back!  We arrived back home 2.5 hours later after gymnastics class and a trip to the library.  Both kids ran in ahead of me with the 50 books we'd checked out and all their other stuff.  When I walked in, coats and shoes had been torn off in the hallway.   I entered the kitchen in time to see Carter dump the whole bag of books all over the living room floor...envision, literally books...everywhere!  Simultaneously Reese put a smaller stack of books on the kitchen table.  The books bumped into a box that was on the table which bumped into a little bowl of pretzels and veggie straws Sienna had been munching on before we left, which then went sailing down to the floor.  It landed upside down on the floor sending bits of pretzels and obliterated veggie straws all the way across the kitchen floor.  Well, what else would I spend all my time on if it weren't for my kids?  hahaha

Tested

As if several weeks of extreme cold temperatures weren't hard enough for any parent of young children to endure...we've had teething woes (2 days of high fever and 4 days of incessant crying), attitude issues (whining, moping and general noncompliance), and cabin fever that could literally bring a grown man to tears. (or woman in this case)  I'm ready for spring!  It grows harder by the day to keep a positive attitude when I feel my ideas for "what to do" each day with the kids are stretching thin.  Build a "farm" in the basement with play food and tractors, construct a "Pirate Fort" complete with cannon balls and Christmas lights.  Build a car track down the hall to send cars sailing in every direction...the possibilities are endless.  Sienna has been happily occupying herself by sticker-ing every flat surface in the house.  She is such a little trouble-maker.  Tonight when I picked her up to take her to bed, she had a sheet of stickers in her hand and started sticking them all over my face.

I caught the kids playing "Animal Hospital" in Carter's room today.  He had his one teddy bear all wrapped up on his bed with the head on his pillow and a thermometer nearby.  It was rather pathetic because there was a tear in the arm he'd asked me to mend and I hadn't gotten to it yet, so we then spent the next 30 minutes mending two ripped stuffed animals, a shirt and a pair of pants.  Ah, the unanticipated chores that pop up each day!

Burden or Blessing?

It's sometimes hard to keep in perspective things in our lives that are a burden vs. a blessing.  Children are the first thing that comes to mind.  So many people I talk to these days seem to view their own precious children as such a burden...a drain on their time and income and sleep and sanity.  Don't get me wrong...they are a drain in every possible way.  But being around my own children so much of the time, I am trying harder and harder to pray for them and keep realizing the huge responsibility I have to love them and nurture them and show them what a faith in God is all about, rather than get constantly frustrated that they are taking away from my "me-time", waking me up repeatedly at night, complaining about the dinners I spend hours making, or whatever it might be.

A society that looks the other way while millions of abortions are performed and never thinks twice about the implications this has on our valuation of life is the core of the problem.  Life is sacred, life is precious, our days on earth are numbered, and life begins at the moment of conception.  Any argument about when it begins, other than that, is purely arbitrary and decided upon solely for the convenience of the mother, but with no regard to the child's rights.  Life can't begin at birth for some people, at 16 weeks for others, at 30 weeks for still others.  Babies born months early can sometimes survive, but other women might choose to abort them.  There is a case being fought in court where a father is being charged with murder for giving his wife an abortion pill, which terminated her pregnancy, when she in fact wanted to have the baby.  If he can be charged with murder for this, why are so many others allowing it without a second thought?    Another father is being charged with 2 counts of murder for killing his wife who was pregnant with their 13 week old baby.

This time of year, with the celebration of a great Human Rights Advocate, Martin Luther King Jr., I like to pause and reflect on the gravity of the abortion issue.  At the very least, we all owe it to ourselves and our country to take this issue more seriously and ask ourselves if we should view these babies as a burden to be quietly removed...or a blessing deserving of our protection and love.

Giggles...

It's always good to know your kids appreciate your cooking.  Tonight at dinner, Reese was picking disdainfully at the potatoes on her plate and said, "Mama, why did you put pine needles on the potatoes???"  (rosemary)

Reese was commenting on Sienna's propensity for trouble-making since she started walking and said, "Ever since Sienna got legs she is always getting into trouble!"  Derrick asked, "Didn't she have legs before?"

Sienna discovered, while talking to my mom on speaker phone, that the buttons make a really loud beep when pressed.  So the whole time I was holding the phone up she was yelling "Beep! Beep" and violently pressing as many buttons as possible on the phone.

Even though for months Sienna's only word was "Dada" she's recently, somehow forgotten how to say it.  Whenever she sees Derrick she calls him Mama.  I'll say, "Sienna Dada is home from work and she'll run to the door, saying "Mama, Mama!"  He'll be sitting in the other room and she'll walk up to him and want him to pick her up and say, "Mama."  Poor Derrick!

Sienna also, I am sorry to say, now has a criminal record.  Tonight we went to Target and only after we'd left the store did I realize she had a $1 container of heart sprinkles in her car seat.  I guess I'll need to go back tomorrow to pay up.

The Bacon Diva

Breakfast is a hard meal for me....it's hard to wake up and jump right into meal prep.  Derrick does an awesome job alleviating some of this pain by cooking up a triple batch of waffles or pancakes every weekend that we can use in the mornings throughout the week.  But inevitably there are several mornings where no one wants pancakes!  Today was such a morning.  Sienna woke up in a terrible mood, and by terrible I mean about 2 hours straight of inconsolable crying and wanting to be held.

Reese came down around 7:30 and insisted on having bacon with her breakfast this morning.  She also wanted cut up strawberries and cheesy eggs.  I told her the bacon was frozen and would take a while to cook, but she was determined to have it.  So I was standing at the stove getting her egg when the whining started.  "Why do you always keep the bacon in the freezer? It's taking you a THOUSAND YEARS to cook my bacon!"  All this time Sienna was screaming and clawing at my leg because it's not easy to cook eggs while holding a baby.  I snapped and told Reese if she wanted the bacon faster she could cook it herself, and with this she stomped out into the family room and sat there with a blanket over her head for a good ten minutes.

A "thousand years" passed and I did finally get the bacon cooked, in spite of the screaming and pouting going on.  Everyone enjoyed their bacon and my friend laughingly told me while we sat at gymnastics class this morning that I smelled like bacon.  Oh the sacrifices we make for our children!

I have a dream...

I was talking to the kids about Martin Luther King Jr. today for part of our school lesson, trying to help them understand what the holiday is all about.  It's really difficult to explain things like slavery and segregation to young kids.  It's both interesting and heart-wrenching to watch their faces as you explain it to them and see their little minds trying to process the information.  "Why were there slaves?"  "What does black and white mean?"  After listening to a few minutes of the speech, Carter asked me, "Why does he keep saying, "I have a dream..."?"  I explained to him that back then white people would not allow black people do use the same buses, churches, schools and businesses as them.  He paused and asked me, "Am I black?"  "No."  I told him, you are white.  "Is Reese black?"  "No." I told him, she's white also.  We talked about how sad it is that anyone would ever think it right to say they are better than someone else just because their skin is a different color.

He asked why the video panned to a statue of Abraham Lincoln in the background.  I explained the significance of that location for that speech.  So sad to think that both men, who fought so hard to end the injustice of slavery and segregation, had their lives cut short by hatred and gunfire.

The speech is worth a listen if you haven't heard it in a while...this is a short clip from the full thing:

Simplicity

There were no iPads, iPods, iPhones (cell phones for that matter!).  There was no 3D animation, no Wii or Xbox 360, no table-sized televisions.  Ice cream came in chocolate, vanilla or twirl.  Swingsets had a couple of swings and a slide and maybe some rings.  We would have NEVER imagined a Lilliputian Mansion like this in the backyard!

We watched Sesame Street, Tom and Jerry and Mr. Rogers.

We collected acorns, played in the sprinkler, rode bikes around the block and played hide and seek, made puzzles, played board games, dressed up in funny clothes.  We played in the sandbox and mud, made up games on the hammock, chased butterflies and caught frogs.

And we were so happy.

I was finding myself getting all stressed this morning trying to think of something to do with the kids today.  Should I take them to a museum, the library, out to the store?  But then I had this peaceful reminder during my prayer time...seek the simple.  Stay home.  Let them be creative.  Break out the play dough, or the puzzles, or matchbox cars.

Sometimes I feel like we are drowning in so many diversions and we feel such pressure to continually be outdoing ourselves.  But there is nothing wrong with the basics.  There needs not be a "bigger and better" for everything we do.

It's OK to drive old cars, wear clothes from the thrift store (even I have started to!), cut your kids' hair at home.  It's OK to let your kids entertain themselves for a while every day.  They have vivid imaginations, and imagination is something that needs to be used, like a muscle, or it will slowly die away.  As I type this, all three of my kids are in the other room playing with Legos...yes even the 16-month-old!  They are laughing and having a good time.  I realize it won't last forever, there will be a fight or Sienna will start to eat them or throw them...but for now, there is peace.

Why this constant pressure for more, more, more?  Why the push to expose our kids to SO much when they are SO little, that they lose that sense of childhood whimsy and carefree joy?  I've seen signs for various sports that start accepting children at age 18 months!  REALLY??  Sienna is almost 18 months and I'd never dream of signing her up for a sport.  I can't even get her to lay still for a diaper change!

Sit down with the kids and a good book.  And I don't mean a book on the Kindle or iPad that reads to the kids for you...in three different languages...

As a Christian parent, more than anything else, I want to try and avoid getting caught up in all the materialism, all the pressure to do more and more, bigger and better.  I want my kids to appreciate what they have, to be creative and imaginative.

The best things in this life, the things that really impact us most and are most memorable, are always things that no money can buy...

Boys vs. Girls

Getting caught up on the blog today...

 I caught Sienna running away from the "crime scene"...having dumped out the cereal I just gave her all over her chair and the floor.  Oh and did I mention I just vacuumed this morning?

 On to bigger and better things...more stickers on the fridge...

 Carter was very quietly coloring in the dining room.  He came out to show me his masterpiece...a page filled with colorful men shooting at each other.  I asked him, "Are they shooting water at each other?"  He said, "No, guns."  Great...

But then he wanted to get Reese in on the action. He told her to help him color more men, but she was not interested in creating new war scenes.



She was coloring a sweet picture of sky, grass and flowers and he said, "Good Reese, make lots of big flowers for the men to hide behind so they can shoot the bad guys."  Ugh!

Not hard to see...boys and girls are wired differently!

Reese - top picture, Carter - bottom two...men and tanks, engaged in war

Copycat

Sienna has really started to talk a lot more and also mimic some of the things she sees us doing lately...and it's sometimes quite hilarious.

When she heard me say I was going to exercise the other day, she ran out to where we keep the weights and grabbed one of Reese's little 1 lb. dumbbells and started curling it.  She's now done this several days in a row, grabbing her little weight when she sees me start to exercise.  She'll be ready for 250 lb. weights by the time she's 10....2028 Olympics here we come.

Yesterday she grabbed a tissue out of the tissue box, held it up to her face with both hands, and pretended to be blowing her nose.

Whenever she sees anyone brushing their teeth, she says "Teeeee!" and runs to the bathroom where her toothbrush is.  Good to see her developing good hygiene habits...hopefully it will continue when she has more than 6 teeth to care for.

She is constantly digging through my purse.  If she manages to get my cell phone she holds it up to her ear and will say "bye bye"  If she finds the car key, she says, "beep beep".   This is because she likes to push the panic button and make the alarm go off.

When we go outside and it is cold, she will say, "brrrrr."

There are now super hero stickers all over my floor and refrigerator.  Sienna sees the kids grabbing stickers to put on their sticker charts all the time and has grown quite fond of taking a whole sheet of stickers and placing them all over the house...even on the dog!

It is both funny and sobering to see a person begin to develop language skills and just knowledge of what is going on around her in the world.  Makes me stop to ponder all the activities I do in front of my kids every day...they are always watching and absorbing like little sponges.

Thankful

We've been trying to talk to the kids more and more lately, especially with the arrival of the holidays, about being thankful for all of our blessings.  It's so hard to instill a sense of appreciation into a young child.  It seems their attention span and gratefulness go hand in hand...each lasting sometimes mere seconds before they are on to "the next thing".  It's become so evident to me that no matter how many gifts they receive, no matter what it is they want, and get...there will always be something else they want.  And how can I in all fairness say this is just a phenomenon displayed by children?  Isn't it all of us, who pine for that new coat, television, phone, car, vacation...and as soon as we get it, something else moves to the top of our "Want List"?

So at dinner we've been trying to get everyone to pray and express something they are thankful for.  Last night at dinner, I said my prayer and squeezed Reese's hand to cue her to speak.  She chimed in with her usual statement, "Thank you God for this lovely dinner."  Only this time, she said it in a very garbled voice...through a huge mouthful of cheeseburger!  Immediately Carter, Derrick and I all burst out laughing.  I'm glad she was thankful for the food...but something was lost in her urgency to cram every bite down her throat 30 seconds after we'd sat down to eat!  It's good to have a chuckle, but also be reminded what it means to be truly thankful.  There is the ritual...the rote recitations of prayer, and then the real deal...the pause from all life's busyness and distractions to stop and say, "Thank You, God, that there is food on my table to eat, tonight."

We often seek fulfillment in this life from the material things around us.   Many people are angry with God when things don't go their way.  The leader at my Bible study made a great statement this morning during her discussion of the book of Esther.  She was comparing Esther to Cinderella and saying how there are no promises of fairy tale endings in this life.  There may be no "Happily ever after" here on earth, but God does promise, to those who belive, a "Happily FORever after."  We live in a flawed world...flawed by sin...and it's easy to get bogged down by difficulties, distractions, suffering, and crises.  It's such a powerful reminder that our hope is not in the ever-after but in the forever-after.  That is something to be thankful about!

To help...or not to help

 There are many epic milestones we celebrate with our babies, and today we marked another off our list...the first time Sienna played with play dough!  haha  Well, truth be told, I wasn't even going to let her get near the stuff, but she climbed right up and played really well with it for almost ONE HOUR!!  Only tasted it once or twice too, which isn't too shabby.  Plus we had just made it today, so it wasn't all germy and gross yet.

The days seem long in the winter, in spite of being on my feet ALL day and always with a list of 30 things to get done by bedtime.  Sienna has taken an interest in helping with the laundry which is super cute.  We have lines we hang out clothes on in the laundry room and if I hold her up, she'll grab the clothes off the line and drop them down into a waiting basket.

Other times, she is not so helpful...like when she empties out all my pots and pans, and all the cookie sheets under my oven.  Or when she goes in the basement and starts dumping out all the board games with the tiny pieces and mixing them together...or when she climbs up on my coffee table without my knowledge, grabs a box of tissues, carries them into the corner, and pulls every  one out, leaving a huge pile of them on the rug.  Oh well...you have to start somewhere...

She has grown more adamant (or addicted) to M&Ms than ever.  She now called them "emmies" and points right at the cabinet where they are kept.  She knows how to beg for her "emmies" in a way that is quite hard to ignore.  Perhaps I could use this to my advantage and start some early potty training??

Out with the old...

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife,
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweet manners, purer laws.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

~ Alfred Tennyson

My pastor used a portion of this poem yesterday in his message to speak to us about our annual tendency to want a fresh start, with the arrival of a new year.  He said, "God has placed within us a stubborn desire - for fresh starts and better results - meant to draw us to Him.  We instinctively long for better because goodness is older than sin!"

I was reminded of another "best" of 2013...the chance to see Claire Jones in concert in one of the most gorgeous churches in Pittsburgh.  A thoroughly heavenly experience...to me, a sneak peek at the glory that will be someday... (see video above for some of her music)

Perspective - a View from on High

Airborne!

It's all a matter of perspective.  Even the most difficult time in life, or the most difficult obstacle can seem like a mere blip on the radar when you put it in the context of an entire lifetime.  I was standing at the kitchen sink this morning with these thoughts running through my mind as I washed all the dirty breakfast dishes.  Pausing to look out the window for a minute, I happened to see a small airplane, jetting across the pastel morning sky.

Do you remember the first time you flew in an airplane? I know I was very young my first few times but the first time I was really aware of it...it was an amazing experience.  Up until then, my view of the world was so...well...flat!  I'd never experienced anything like the perspective you gain when you are 30,000 feet up in the sky looking down on the world.  To me, nothing can better enlighten a person as to the vastness of the planet we live on.  (OK well maybe space travel, but that's not in the cards for me anytime soon!)


When you are down here on the ground, it's very easy to get so wrapped up in the day-to-day grind.  It's easy to get emotional, worried, distracted, consumed by everything that's going on around you.  From time to time, it's a good practice to get out of that linear kind of living and put things in perspective from on-high.  So much of what we fret and fritter away our days thinking about is really so insignificant.  So many of the things we think are so difficult now, will be but a passing thought in the future.  To me, this stage of parenting young children can be SO consuming and SO difficult...and it seems like it will just never end.  But then I stop to see how much Carter has grown up in 6 years and I realize, this is all but a whisper in the grand scheme of life.

When you are on top of a mountain, or up in an airplane, you can see so much further away than when you are standing on the ground at sea level.  Your whole perspective changes.  God has this same kind of "far-out, future vision" for our lives.  He can see the future...even beyond our short lives.  His perspective is so much higher, wider, deeper, and more real than anything we will ever experience as humans.  It's easy to get wrapped up in what's happening today, and then frustrated when He doesn't answer our prayers in the way we think best.  But we are looking at life from sea-level view and He is looking down from on high.

When I stop to consider the vast universe we live in and how very small I am compared to the planet we live on, the solar system we spin through, the galaxy we occupy and the expanse of space so much greater than the human mind can even grasp....again, it causes me to pause and put things in perspective.  It causes me to be grateful for this chance to live and love and teach and be taught.  It helps me to remember that there is often so much more at stake than what meets the eye.

When I am trying to prepare dinner for the family and the smoke alarm is going off every 3 minutes because smoke keeps pouring out of the oven, and the baby is crying and climbing on the chairs and falling off and Reese is sick on the couch with a fever and crying for more Wheat Thins and Sienna finds a sheet of stickers and starts sticking them on the floor...the refrigerator...herself.....

When things seem to be spinning out of control and I'm in need of a reality check, I pray God will give me a brief glimpse of the situation from on high.

Game, Set, TOUCHDOWN!

 The kids were in a picture-taking mood today...don't ask my why.  I guess the cold weather and being cooped up in the house for days has finally gotten to their heads.  Sienna cooperated for most of the pictures...the key was to give her a remote control to hold in her hand. My kids are weird, what can I say.   See it in every picture??  The superhero-trio was very amusing to me.

After dinner tonight Carter and Reese were playing some kind of sport that was a cross between basketball and football...oh and tennis I guess too...it went something like this.

Reese...screeching across the room carrying a full-size basketball....  Carter in hot pursuit.

C: Reese, run as fast as you can before I tackle you and if you make it to the end you get a touchdown.
R: TOUCHDOWN
C: OK now it's my turn, you try to tackle me.
Both running across the room and into the kitchen
C: TOUCHDOWN!!!  OK Reese, now it's match point, if I get one more touchdown I win.

Welcome 2014!

 My "Christmas" photos were a little late this year.  Due to all the craziness with our schedule, gloomy days with poor lighting, people being sick, not getting our tree till right before Christmas...the odds were not in my favor.   This being the last day of Derrick's vacation though, I knew it was my best shot...and the sun even came out.  The kids even WANTED to get their pictures taken.  Seriously, when does that EVER happen???  Well, Sienna had other plans.  She was fine with getting all dolled up but as soon as the camera came out, all she wanted to do was run away.  She squirmed and wriggled and made goofy faces whenever I did try to get a picture.  I was sweating and frustrated and ready to throw my camera out the window by the end.  I guess my days of group photos are over.  Oh well...