on high. And if we aren't listening, this particular angel will TAKE US OUT!!!
Since the Christmas pageant at church a week before Christmas, Mermaid Princess has taken to putting on her converted-from- fairy-to-angel wings, putting my embroidery hoop on her head, and making "pronouncements."
But by far, this has been my favorite exchange of this holiday season:
Mermaid Princess (floating in from the family room): "I have good tightings."
Flash doesn't look up from his coloring.
Mermaid Princess: I SAID, "I have good tightings!"
Flash determinedly does not look up.
MP (hands and wand on hips): Excuse me. You're the shepherd.
Flash: No, I'm not.
MP (stepping aggressively toward her shepherd): Yes, you are! And I'm the angel!
Flash (throwing his hands over his ears and trying to run for it): I'm not listening!
MP (full shepherd body tackle in the hallway): THE BABY JESUS IS HERE!
Flash (crawling out from under the angel): I'm not listening! I'm not listening!
MP (clinging to her shepherd's shirt): I'M THE ANGEL! I'M THE ANGEL WITH GOOD TIGHTINGS!
Mommy: Honey, I think you have a reluctant shepherd.
MP (getting up, helping her shepherd): Well, at least he fell to the ground when I showed up.
Somehow, I don't think this is quite the image Matthew and Luke were trying to convey.
Happy New Year - we hope you have a year full of "good tightings" - keep us posted!
December 27, 2007
Angels we have heard...
December 22, 2007
JackJack turns the big 0-2
JackJack has a fixation with The Little Einsteins,
and particularly with Rocket.
Our routine in the morning includes me reciting all the main characters in Little Einsteins and including him in the list. Here's Rocket, cleverly disguised as a birthday cake:
I did the rough construction here and Big E did the fine detail work. Not bad, eh?
JackJack blew out the candle, getting by with a little help from his friends.
He intently watched the distribution of the cake.
Oma secured him his very own piece.
"Yummy (gluten-free) rocket cake is so good, I need two forks!"Happy Birthday, sweet JackJack!
We love you and we KNOW you were handpicked just for us.
December 19, 2007
We wish you a
In truth, I have had days where I have frantically dug in the mulch outside of said proverbial window in a desperate attempt to locate said security. I'm sure Big E. has too, although blessedly, never on the same days.
In the end, as these experiences always seem to do (amazing, isn't it?), I can't remember when I've grown so much in a single year. Last January seems like another lifetime and perhaps another person ago. And these three are growing so quickly, it only adds to the sense of just how fast life is moving...
1. Discovering JackJack's food allergies and getting them under control.
2. Having Daddy working from home so he can run out when the snow only falls for 30 minutes.
3. Beginning to homeschool. I love my kids. And now, I really know my kids.
4. New friends. We (me especially) are blessed with so many new friends. Unbelievable.
5. Learning just how much God really does love me.
Daddy: "Who wants to jump on the trampoline?"
Mermaid Princess: "I'm a great artist, amn't I? And dancer. And speller. And singer."
Flash: "Mermaid Princess!!! Let's go be superheroes!"
JackJack: "I JackJack Einsteins. I cute. My turhn!"
Mommy: "Can you pick that up?" or wait, maybe it's "what should we have for dinner?" or no, maybe it's, "Let's make a list..."
I should go ask the kids.
peace, joy, contentment and love.
We are praying for a year full of His presence for each of you.
The Curly Redhead and family
Mermaid Princess
While her birthday isn't until just before Christmas, Mommy has learned that the focus cannot be switched TO Jesus' birthday until Mermaid Princess' birthday has been celebrated. So, somewhat early in the month, we had (and I'm sure you'll be shocked) a Princess Party for her 5th birthday.
All her friends brought princess dresses - we ended up with about 18 to choose from. I kid you not when I say that some of the princesses waltzed in and out in 5 or 6 outfits before the party was over...
Here she is on her throne.
The cake:
and one very happy birthday girl!
Jack strikes again... and again...
Someone has gotten tall enough to pull things off the counter. And so my very favorite form of discipline kicked in: natural consequences.
The hot chocolate was no longer hot, but it was sticky and JackJack does NOT like his clothes to be wet.
And so, our brief foray into the countertop reach, grasp and pull, has ended. If, perchance, it does happen again, I am strongly considering dumping a glass of water over his head just to reinforce the lesson.
Ah, but what's on his foot, you ask?
Yes, I stripped off his hot chocolate soaked clothes to find this:
Sing with me now! "I love Crayola! I love Crayola!" Because, my lab assistants experiments show that only Crayola's "washable markers" actually wash off.
And by the way, I think all three lab assistants were involved in this little experiment.
Peep peep
Okay, so this craft will have to be repeated nearer to Easter. See, we were reading about chicks in our Animals Animals book by Eric Carle and it seemed appropriate to make little chicks of our own (and I had all the materials in-house already!)
On a side note, we saw Eric Carle on Mr. Rogers this week reading Brown Bear and the kids were amazed to see that he was a real person. Mermaid Princess promptly wrote him a letter.
Anyway, the photo above is of our new duckling, just hatched in the nest...
And here is our baby swan...Flowers, ponies, kittens, rainbows, dragons...
All black.
But his favorite color is green.
(Also, as I look at these photos, I am realizing that we started this project to make baby chicks, and neither child ended up with one. This philosophy -- "rules are only guidelines"-- is from their father. I, myself, am a recovering rule follower.)
One moment in time
when mommy-ing is all that it's cracked up to be...
Does the bravery of holding a "snake" cancel out the sparkly pink crown?
First snowfall
Not enough to write home about, but not enough to mess up the roads, either... I love that it was the day after JackJack's birthday. And I love even more that my friends from Las Vegas who were only here 4 months got to see snow before going back home.
JackJack loved the snow...
For about 8 minutes.
Poor planning... with great results
I am a planner. Since you already know I fight perfectionist tendencies, this should perhaps not come as a surprise. I knew how old I wanted to be when I got married. Check. How many years before our first child. Check. Second child. Check. Third child. Check.
What I did not figure out... December birthdays make for a rough month.
(I also didn't plan on child number 3 having massive food allergies. That, however, is a story for another time.)
JackJack (or as he likes to insist, "Jack Jack Einsteins") turned two in early December. Two! I have got to stop calling him 'the baby'. He's a little boy...
This is his actual birthday. His full-out birthday party with aunts and uncles came a few days later. He got his very favorite, gluten-free chocolate chip cookies. A little sandy for my taste, but I think he ate 4.
We sang Happy Birthday to him about 15 times that day. Now, whenever he hears the tune, he lights up. Then, when he realizes it's not for him, he scowls and says, "MY turhn!"
What can I say? His nickname IS JackJack.
December 1, 2007
Jumpin' Jellybeans!
If there is a single "toy" in our house that I would chain myself to in order to prevent it from being sold or dismantled, it's the giant bouncing cage just outside the kitchen window.
On the trampoline, all the kids play together.
On the trampoline, Flash burns off stores of excess energy.
On the trampoline, the kids get Mommy to act their age.
On the trampoline, Big E. often gets a fresh perspective -- and a little exercise.
On the trampoline, neighborhood kids come to shake off a bad day.
Here's a slideshow of one day this past week when we took a break from school to get some fresh air and learn some new maneuvers on the trampoline.
Thanksgiving moments
I have two Thanksgiving moments from this year that I think I'd like to share. The first was a lunch time prayer that Mermaid Princess gave before lunch the day after Thanksgiving:
"Hi God! I wanted to ask you to take care of the kids in El Salvador who don't have very good homes and are living in the mud. Could you send them some new trees to build new homes with so they don't have to live in the mud? And could you send them some food and some new clothes? Actually, could you please take care of people who are needing homes and food everywhere and help us to know how to help them too? We are very thankful for all the food we have to eat and for being safe and warm and having lots of friends. I love you. Amen."
As the adult heads lifted up, there were tears in more than one eye. This caught me offguard, as we haven't talked about El Salvador in months AND we were all expecting the normal mealtime prayer - a poem in four rhyming lines.
My second moment was with Flash. We had talked, in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, about the two horrible winters the Pilgrims survived before being solidly established in this New World. I've been looking for the link that gave a detailed history of the first three Thanksgivings, but I can't find it right now. Suffice to say, for two consecutive winters, the Pilgrims had many days in which they had only 5 kernels of corn to eat as their rations.
So, two days after Thanksgiving, we had popcorn for snack. Flash took five pieces off his plate, pushed his plate to the middle of the table and said, "This is all the Pilgrims had for the whole day, right Mommy?"
"That's right, honey."
He studied the pieces, now arranged like the five dots on a die.
"They must have been hungry, Mommy."
"I think so, sweetheart."
Now, the storyteller in me would love to tell you he did something heroic here, which he didn't, other than generously sharing his popcorn with his siblings after eating some of his.
But I think I will be content that he is three, he understands our bounty, and he is learning to be grateful and empathetic. It's a good start!
November 20, 2007
Dum dum dee dummmm....
Mermaid Princess was adamant that she was getting married today. Fortunately for me, Flash was adamant he was not as he was apparently the only "man" around to marry.
I would be joyful that what she sees in our marriage, she wants for herself immediately, but... eeeeewwwwwwww.
(The long black gloves were a nice Miss Haversham-type touch, don't you think?)
Seriously cute. As long as no one's eloping.The pen is mightier...
I come from a family of readers. Big E. and I are both crazy readers. In fact, we are such avid readers that in our goals as parents, we had only three rock bottom things we knew we wanted to accomplish.
1. That the kids have a solid foundation in Christ - what they choose to do with it will, of course, be up to them, but we will have done the part God has asked us to do.
2. The kids are in heads up mode when choosing spouses - that we teach them that marriage is work, and to understand themselves well enough to understand what is important to them in a spouse. And that marriage doesn't make you complete - the right spouse, however, makes the journey a lot more fun.
3. And finally, that they love to read. Books have broadened my experiences, taught me new skills, honed my mind, sustained me, inspired me, provided rest, provided motivation... it is a tremendous gift, to love to read and to be able to do it without struggle. I am so thankful that I am married to a reader, and doubly thankful that it seems to be a generation of readers coming up alongside us!
These were taken today after we learned our new spelling words, Mermaid Princess read me a story, and we played a game. I sent them off to go have some well deserved goof off time, and came around the corner 15 minutes later to find them all in the family room doing this. Be still, my heart...
November 18, 2007
Froggy love
I just had to give a shout out to my sister, who made this adorable hat last winter for Flash. Flash has a frog blanket that sleeps with him EVERY night. It is so Velveteen Rabbit-ed that it has about 4 holes in each foot.
As a result, he loves all things frog. But particularly this hat.
If you can't resist, post a comment and see if she'll make one for you too!
November 17, 2007
Enslaved
Part of our homeschooling involves reading from the "Everday Children's Bible". We're supposed to read from it a little every day, but it never works that way at our house. Once I start, there is great clamoring until the week's worth of reading is done.
We recently reviewed the story of Joseph and the coat of many colors. This had led to a spate of ,
"Mom, if you pretend you are going to drive the car into the lake again, we are going to Sell You As A Slave." (This is uttered from the third row with great enunciation.)
Today, I just had to ask.
Mommy: "How much would you sell me for?"
MP(with great certainty): "Forty-six dollars."
Mommy (choking on laughter): "Really?"
MP (thinking it over): "Okay, maybe forty-six one hundred dollars."
I wonder what she would do with forty-six one hundred dollars?
November 7, 2007
Small gestures.
It's not the greatest photo in the world, but it means everything to me. This is the first captured memory of these two boys being nice to each other by their own volition in the almost two years since JackJack arrived.
JackJack was so sick for so long, and he wasn't one of those cute, snuggly sick kids. Nope. He was vicious. Bite. Kick. Scratch. Head butt. He was miserable and he wanted everyone around him to be miserable too.
Especially Flash.
Not the "Leave It To Beaver" atmosphere I was going for.
It says something about how plain mean JackJack was that he has been diagnosed as celiac since March, gluten-free and a joy to live with since April, and only now will Flash (my extremely laid-back and forgiving child) sit near him or take note of his accomplishments.
His comment after this popcorn sharing: "Daddy, JackJack is nice now! He doesn't bite me anymore."
Of course, the hot sauce might have had something to do with the end to the biting, but for now...
Yip yip yip yip yip yipppeeeeee!!!! These boys just might end up being best friends.
November 5, 2007
A Day of rest
The posts below are sweet, joyous, and include photos of the kids. If you aren't in the mood to hear (read?) my ruminations today, jump ahead. You won't hurt my feelings - I think the kids are pretty cute too!
See, as I posted the photos below, I realized that they are all from Sunday. And that months after working on keeping Sunday as a day of rest, I had one that really created a peace that has carried me all day.
Who would have thought that choosing to take a day of rest would have become such a struggle? I'm not talking about the old-fashioned, George Washington, have-to-sit-inside-all-day-reading-books-and-being-quiet day of rest... we just set out to have day with no errands, no chores, no email, minimal cooking, and lots of unplanned family time.
What we did NOT take into account...
My border collie personality that will herd tennis balls if that's all that's left to do.
Sundays were making me miserable. I was trapped in a house where I could see a million things that needed doing and unable to do any of them. By 5:00pm, I would be pacing the yard, hands behind my back, muttering under my breath. Around this time, Big E. would send me to my room for a breather -- for everyones sake.
Still, we've worked at it. For one thing, because we realized a few years ago that when we don't, the weeks just roll into one another and life slips by without purpose or evaluation. And for another, I wanted to establish a sacrosanct family time now before birthday parties and soccer games started appearing on Sundays. But mostly, because God included it in the Ten Commandments, up there with Do Not Kill and Do Not Commit Adultery. And we just felt that if He ranked it that high, we should probably do our best to have it at a high priority as well. We started in obedience. Actually, I continued mostly out of obedience, but I think the corner into joy has been turned.
We've hurt some people we love by refusing engagements. We've taken some flak from business associates who already think we coast easy with Big E. working from home.
But this Sunday, I noticed that the kids were content. We watched some football, we played some games, we went for a walk in the woods, we ENJOYED one another. I took my eyes off my house and shifted them to my family - how could I fill their hearts today? And I shifted them to my Father - have I thanked You enough for the blessings you have poured upon us?
And it worked! I rested, not in stillness, but in the lap of my Father and my family. Now that's a place to call home.
If I build it...
This is my Flash - given a choice, he'll take the option to build something anyday. His two grandfathers both love to build; Flash has it running through his veins and I'm looking forward to cultivating this talent. I have some home repairs I think he'll be ready to tackle in a year or two!
Building stuff is fun, but twenty times as fun when Daddy helps.
Of course, her favorite thing of all is seeing friends. Old friends, new friends... doesn't really matter as long as she has someone other than just us to play with!
(Thank goodness we have such a lovely neighborhood full of friends to go visit.)
The lower photo is the reason I was trying to get a picture of him. He looked at us and said, "Hish" (fish) and started drawing.
He then stepped back from the shape he had made and in a stunned voice said, "Happle!" (apple).
And then he went back and put the stem on it.
The child is still a month away from being two.
As my friend Kim (www.3peanuts.blogspot.com) told me after my first post, "Be careful. Soon everything will become 'blogworthy.'"
Too true.
October 31, 2007
Worse than a cold in the summer...
is for a kid to wake up on the morning of Halloween with a fever of 102.
On the positive side, all three kids got it together, so no one had to stay home while the others headed out to pick up the goods.
Instead, the big kids dressed up and then we watched the movie that inspired their costumes. They had a great time, but I know they are sick because at the end of the movie, they all asked to be put to bed immediately. Even JackJack. As I was saying prayers over him, he put his index finger on my mouth, looked into my eyes, and very firmly said, "Bed." (He'll be two in December).
"Violet" and "Dash" prepare to fight bad guys.
Dash/Flash lives in this alter ego at least some part of every day.
Violet and Dash with the pumpkins we painted twice because they got rained on and all the paint ran off. They didn't mind and I'll take two craft projects for the price of one anyday.
Mommy snuggling a very feverish (practically on fire!) JackJack. He had his suspicious face on until he saw the camera... then to Daddy's chagrin, he mustered up this half-grin and a hushed "cheeeessse" as the flash went off.
Is it awful to say that I am not at all unhappy with how the day turned out? There is hardly any candy in the house, we spent the evening as a family making wonderful memories, and the kids have enjoyed every moment of their costumes and acting out The Incredibles every chance they get.
And if you haven't seen the movie... well, it's a Chambers Top Five. Now, our top five is tough because I don' t really like movies while Big E. loves them and is very demanding. So for us both to find one we love... that's as high a recommendation as I know how to give! (For the record, The Princess Bride also makes the cut.)
Beachy keen
In defense, I'm going to say, I'm a mommy. I'm a MOPS coordinator. I'm an almost full-time business partner to my entrepreneurial husband. I like spending time with my friends. And I have to spend time with God or I'm a mess to live with.
It's been a busy month. But I'm back now.
So... want to see some cute pictures?
Here are some of my favorite shots from our trip to the beach at the beginning of the month. We will definitely pick this time of year to go again... it was fantastic.
Flash loved the water, but could we warm it up about 5 degrees?
So you see now why we call her "Mermaid Princess".
JackJack loved all of it, but nothing so much as being in Daddy's arms while Daddy stood thigh high in the ocean.
