Moe

Moe's first little walk in the park!

Fourth

The bright spot of today was returning to the kids' favorite playground to celebrate the first rain and appointment free morning in over a week!

The photos would have benefited from a polarizing filter, but I didn't have time to mess around with that because, quite honestly, this is my favorite playground too and I had playing to do.

Below is one of the best images from the morning.  I think it captures the joy perfectly. =)

Happy Independence Day, readers.  I hope you find yourselves examining what you are dependent upon and whether you want to keep that dependency in your life.  As for me, I've spent much time this summer examining things upon which I depend and whether those dependencies are valid or healthy.  Often they are neither.  So, cheers to each step toward greater independence.  May we all seek what we are looking for, and may that seeking lead us to greater trust, joy, hope, and most of all to the love that is God.  Eyes on the light.  Eyes on the light.

Four Year Old Photographer

These are from Friday but I'm just putting them up now.  Enjoy our picnic through Jonah's eyes:

4:44 Again

Here's a happy image from yesterday,  to remind me that the hellish end does not equal the entire story. 

There is more than the pain.  It is easy to lose sight of that sometimes.

My girl fights for her special time and I love her for it. 

Esteregstor

Making eggs yesterday!  Nora was the most supreme and enthusiastic egg destroyer I've ever seen.   Saddest egg casualty was my sweet brown egg with a lion and lamb on it. 

Nora's favorite ways to break eggs:
Crack them against the oven door
Grip them with a two handed death grip and stab her thumbs into them with baby strength
Stealth egg murder.  For example,  when an egg thinks it is safe hiding in a mug of dye and she attacks the murk with a spoon until she hears the Crack!
Overloading a mug with five eggs and try to smash them in.
Climbing on the dining room table and stealing one out of a basket and cracking it against the table

Not Sleeping

Nora's bedtime ramblings (imagine these interspersed with kicking her heels against her mattress and banging a toy on the bars of her crib:

"Jonah eat it.  He's an idiot.  No, he's not.   Blitzkrieg Bop.  Let's say prayers, guys.  Spacekrieg bop.  Let's just say prayers, guys.  I dropped my guy, can you get him?  Those kids are quiet.  They not allowed to quiet. .... I farted.  You gonna eat it?  Pleeee-oh pleee-oh pleee-oh.  Brush your eye!  Cheer up!  Cheer up!  What are you doing?  Can we play with you?  Nope!  Okay!  Smelly.  Yeah.  Look at my butt!  Look at my butt!  I'm a crazy butt!"

Now she just yawned. I think she's done.

Bakery

Decorating cookies with my loves.  Can you guess which two rows are mine? 

In other news, I'm allergic to my own house or something. 

Oh, and our roof is leaking.  Fun times all around. 

But in six minutes, cookies. So it's not all bad.  It's never all bad.

"Everything is better when we stick together"

"Ugh mommy can you get in the way of the sun!"

She overestimated me. 

In My Element

The reality of being on Christmas break did not set in until this morning when no alarms went off, unless you count children.  Then I got to indulge in finishing Carter Beats the Devil -- between staying up stupid late to read, reading this morning over breakfast, and reading after lunch while the kids were sleeping.  Holy heck that is a fine book indeed!  I can't decide if I like that better than Kavalier and Clay.  This one wraps up more cleanly and enjoyably, but I like the very real painfulness of K and C because it feels authentic and like you can't breathe right for the last fifty or hundred pages of it.  There are more haunting images in K and C, but... well, I liked them both a lot and want to recommend them to people, but it takes the right kind of person to appreciate them, so I will be judicious with those recommendations.  Now what to read next?!?!?? 

Oh, and I left breakfast and reading because, in the process of cutting an apple this morning, I had three good ideas at once and had to write them all down or I'd lose them.  Caught two of the three, which is pretty good.  

And we ran errands and bought food to share with guests today!  And then two families with two kids each came over and played all afternoon!  We had a lovely tea party with fancy tea cups and saucers.  And it was so great to say, "Hey, just stay for dinner!  It's no problem!" and throw something good and healthy together and eat at the table and use the festive paper plates I bought and didn't use yesterday. 

Speaking of yesterday... I might have to murder this cat if she doesn't stop sneezing on me and lying on the keyboard... anyway, yesterday, we hosted three couples for dinner and busted out the good dishes.  .  I made breads (Jones was very excited and kept asking for more "home made bread" very clearly).  We averted a meat disaster successfully.  They liked dessert.  There was so much laughter and banter and goodness.  I liked watching the empty bottles collect on the table and the people sit back and stretch their full bellies.  

It was lovely to have the house filled with company two days in a row, to feed everyone and bring tea around, to hold other people's kids and smell new babies.  And more visiting tomorrow morning, which will probably bleed into feeding everyone lunch, which is beautiful.  

And tomorrow morning I'll probably make that baked oatmeal, but tweak up that recipe and ooooh whip up a caramelized pear sauce to top it off.  Yes!  With that good Greek yogurt from Mustard Seed.  Who am I kidding?  I fully enjoy prepping all this food and then I eat three bites and feel like I'm going to explode.  Ya'll are going to have to come over and get fat or this is all going to to go waste.  

My brain is so unrestrained and undisciplined today.  I'm just allowing it to roam in all it's hyperactivity.  Probably also part of why I feel so in my element-- because I'm up to my elbows in fifteen different ideas and actions at any given moment today.  

AND today was bright happy sun and warmth outside (relative warmth for Clevecember), so we went out and chalked before lunch!  

And after everyone left and the dishes and children were clean, Emilia and I drew and I made my best Elsa yet and Emilia made her best Anna (with crazy hair because she was jumping on her bed, in case you can't tell)

A night scene where fairies and princesses played on the stars and snowflakes, my happy Christmas message, part of a table setting, which doesn't capture the beauty of the whole table, but I mainly just want to remember that using the wrapping paper as a table runner was a fine idea.

And this is just one day.  The first day.  And there are many more days of break to come, so more naps, more creativity, wrapping presents!!!!!! and visiting and fifteen kinds of other good times.  There is so much writing and studying I want to do, too.  Oh my peas, life is full of joys.

Mother of a Three Year Old Boy

As I washed my face, I saw the bruise on the side of my nose where he plowed into me last night and knocked my glasses into my eyes.

Then, after brushing and flossing and the whole routine, I eyed my bite splint warily because earlier today, I retrieved it from the floor behind the toilet.  Because Jonah likes playing in the sink and knocking stuff all over the place.  So I rinsed it off again and popped in in my mouth.

Beast mode

I gotta take a moment to celebrate myself and sing myself so pardon me in advance.

But dude some days I rock!  I pulled off what will be an incredible sneak and wrote some good riddles. I took care of people's emotional needs and logistical needs in a lot of ways today.  I wrote a pretty good rubric and self-evaluation guide. I taught nearly two full extra periods for no dollars just because reasons.  I came home and made five dozen Christmas cookies and five cookies shaped like snakes with stars for eyes, and now I'm gonna go mulch my perennials.  And I had a vague creative idea that won't win a damn thing but it's an idea I believe in and want to keep up long after Christmas.  I hope it is still good as the details flesh out.

Fueled by love (and one cup of coffee.  But maybe we'll make that two). This is how it's done!  And tonight I look forward to grading but probably quitting early on that so I can continue studying a very good, consoling book.  Beat that! 

Oh man, and seven hours later the day is still great.  We got the swing up on the porch and out of the weather, then Nora and I spent a good time out on the swing singing and cheering at, get this, looking out the "window," as Nori called it.  She essentially meant looking over the railing and it was worth cheering about.  So we turned on the magical porch lights lights, watched the dark start to creep in.  The air was electric today.  And alive.

And mulching awakened that obsessive gardener in me.  I have to write more about this later.  Too many electric sparks in my brain bzzzeet! bzzzeeeet!  bzzzzaow!

Then Jonah was full of funny lines today at dinner.

"Are we herbivores or omnivores?"

"Omnivores."

"YES! I'm a DINOSAUR!"

And so on.  Then we went to his Christmas pageant, which was pretty dang cute.  He was a lamb.  Jonah looks like a cool, confident kid when he's in the context of a bunch of three and four year olds.  He's so self-possessed.  And Nora was owning the audience.  

And I got bedding, so you know, the excitement of linens.  Aw yeah.

And then errands and phone calls and music and yoga in the livingroom, and it's near midnight and I'm still ON FIRE to write and do and open windows and and and.  I don't know what to wear tomorrow, so I probably should just stay awake.  

And my awesome door idea is probably not going to happen after all because I don't have any glue-gun ammo left and I'm not thinking I'm going to prioritize going to the store for that tomorrow.  But it's a cool idea and it involved, in part, gutting a CD player.  Maybe next year.  Ack.

Okayokayokayokayokayokayokay.

(EDIT:  The rubric was not as good as I had hoped; a borrowed glue gun allowed me to create some version of my original plan.  I will save the part that involved a gutted CD player for next year.)

Check, Check, Check

I can't think of any event I've been to where the sound system broke or cut out and the event got worse.  There may have been one or two, but mostly when the sound system cuts out, everything gets more real and more better.  er. er. er.

Ways in which the k-3 concert got better:

Each time it skipped and spazzed, 75 some odd kids were giggling, covering their mouths, and gasping, bug-eyed in merriment and surprise.

Once the teacher finally gave up and decided to forge ahead a'capella, everyone applauded.

After that, the kids sang louder and better and we could hear more individual voices.  It felt more like a real Christmas concert that way.

Everything's better unplugged.  Oh, and man I love reading the last names in the program.  Delicious Polishy goodness.

And that is my review of the children's concert tonight.

Love

Nora is currently playing a game in which the bananas are madly in love with each other and keep standing up and saying "I love you" and giving each other kisses. It's one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Literacy

Kindergarten.  Week two.  She is putting her early literacy skills to work by making signs to keep her siblings out of their room.  I think I'm proud?

Fairy Names

In an effort to direct attention away from the fact that Jonah kept killing fairies by saying he did not believe in them, I asked the kids what my fairy name would be.  Their answers were immediate and in rapid succession:

"GLASSES!"

"CRACKER!"

"HOWITZER!"

Yeah, Howitzer.

Then, after a thoughtful pause, and some discussion, they settled on "Peppermint Rose" and I would be a garden fairy.  

I'll take that.

Sleep

Bedtime Stories

"I'm going to tell you guys a story, but not a scary one.  It doesn't have any scary monsters or guys with guns or triangles."
-Jones

Field Trip

Nothing beats nature walks with the kids.