Flashier Flashbacks

Flash's third year in review:This was such a sweet moment. We were staying at a rental home. Flash woke up in an unfamiliar bed and started screaming and wouldn't calm down until his best friend was brought to his side. Once she grabbed his hand, they both broke into these huge grins.

Pool courtesy of Granny & Grandpa. Amphibious car courtesy of Flash.

Prepping for a daring tricycle ride.

Two boys chilling in the hammock.

Busy at his single favorite activity - building stuff.

Sitting in the pilot's seat!

All Christmas-y and cute.

Starting to leave those toddler days behind.

'Flash' backs

The photos below are of year two in our sweet boy's life. It has been good for me to go back through these photos and revel in how wonderful it is to have him in our lives.

Waiter! Another warm milk, please.

Babies with books in a basket.

Now that's a face worth a million kisses.

Started climbing here... haven't stopped since.

Learning the chords.

19 months old and already a big brother.

Flash with his very best friend (in their frog hats.)

Flash turns four

I've never been good at birthdays. I don't really enjoy my own birthday. Big E. isn't big on birthdays. So, I've struggled with the celebration of my kids' birthdays. It seemed like a funnish obligation, but not a tidal fount of joy.

Thanks to a book I've been reading with the incredible women who have journeyed with me in bible study, I've turned a 180.

Now I get that this is a chance to celebrate the unbelievable gift of their lives, the treasure Big E. and I have been sent to steward for as much time as God has allotted them to us. I pray these children will be with me for my lifetime, but I'm keenly aware that the number of their days and the course of their journey is determined by Him, no matter how much control over that I'd like to have. Each day is a gift (though that can be hard to remember at 5:15pm). And each birthday is a chance to give thanks for our multitude of blessings, to remember that moment when I first saw each child, and a tidal fount of joy for how far we've come together already.

That said, over the next few days, I'll be posting photos of the journey we've had with Flash.

My best description of him?
A tender heart, a steady temperament and spirit that flashes at injustice.

Here's the first year.

What? No accessories?

This is what you get when you let the two year-old get dressed by himself.

I personally love the white socks with the blacks Tevas.

Signage

These might not be as cute to friends and family as they are to me, but I truly don't want these precious memories to get away from us.

One of the serendipitous things of the year has been putting three small wooden chairs in our family room. They have been turned into everything - rockets, trains, caves, trapeze platforms...
and in this instance, "Nate's house".

This is from the day the chairs were turned into race cars. Mermaid Princess' car was not complete without pedals. Note to self: evidently, there's a good chance she's left-footed.

Hmph... tried to fix this in my photo editor, but in case you can't read it, this is from the day MP made a clubhouse (out of the chairs) and then posted this sign on it.
"Bosys Welcum"

Is it just me, or does that seem straight out of A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh?

But not the rest of the week

Flash tickled my funny bone this morning with his own special rendition of a church classic...

I've got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus down in my heart,
Down in my heart, down in my heart.
I've got the love of Jesus, love of Jesus down in my heart,
Down in my heart Tuesday.

(Photo by Melissa at www.blessedwithtwoboys.blogspot.com You'll see on her site - she takes the best pictures!)

It's one of the tougher parts of parenthood to wildly clap and applaud and be generally encouraging when what you WANT to do is laugh until tears squeeze out the corners of your eyes. Thank goodness Flash repeated it to his father so we could enjoy the joke together.

And - for the official record - I am NOT one to talk. Big E. now pauses when I start to sing a song just to catch the strange rewording I will do - if it's not a song I've committed to memory, you can guarantee it will have a new meaning by the time I'm done with it. I have never yet gotten the words to a song right if I have not practiced it at least 60 times.

(And THAT takes us back to that border collie thing. A song that catches my fancy will be played over, verse by verse, well, let's just say, often enough to drive any normal person close to the edge of madness. I tend to save this for solo drives to the grocery store.)

Signs of spring

Well, we received the Chambers family "Official Declaration of Spring" this week.

That's right, it's the first sunburn of the season. (I'm not sure what the inside out shirt is all about, but since we were planting trees, it seemed just as well.)

So, for our freckle-faced, red-headed family, we now begin the official weather check (over 70 and sunny= sunscreen). I've learned that if I don't do this as part of our getting dressed routine, some one inevitably sneaks out before I can get to them.

Poor kids - they've inherited rough genes. I've had several allergic reactions to sunburns in my life as well as probably about 40 moles removed for being pre-cancerous... so even though I STILL find it hard to believe that sun rays are that dangerous, I certainly don't want any of them to share that fate.

SPF 50, anyone?

On men and dogs, Correction

So Big E. said to me, "Okay, I read that article you linked to and I don't get it. What did that have to do with me?"

A faint sweat broke on my brow and I sprinted to my computer and checked the link.

Wrong link.

I've fixed the link. Five minutes ago, Big E. read the properly intended article. And laughed so hard his head hit the keyboard.

Here's the link, now triple-checked. Enjoy!
(It's fixed down below, as well.)

Horrid virus hits cruise ship... all survive.

It all started one morning when I took a quick call from a friend instead of starting our homeschool lessons like I should have. I got off the phone to find that my crew had constructed a "boat" in the hallway.

Quite a nice rig, where everyone has their own stateroom. But does she have "yar"?*

Not a good sign, when the captain (and super hero) on the boat comes down with a sudden illness, rendering him unable to eat anything but carrots spiced with uncooked beans.

Even the generally sea-worthy first mate, Duck Duck, had to take to her quarters.

Fortunately, there was a doctor on board.

Further inspection gave us a good indication of just where the tummy ailments were originating from.

But when the chef is this cute, I say order room service with personal delivery and risk the consequences!

* Yar is from the play, The Philadelphia Story. Nope, I'm not telling you what it means. Rent the movie version made with Katherine Hepburn and have the exquisite pleasure of finding out for yourself.
(Or just google it. All of the knowledge, none of the deliciousness.)
(Is that a word, 'deliciousness?' Well if 'google' counts, I'm going with it.)

On men and dogs.... sort of

I don't have time to post on my own family, but this article does a great job explaining some things about my husband that I've always wondered. My favorite kind of article - funny(!!!), informative, personal and true.

And just for gratuitous fun, there are some pictures of our good friends' new dog below. For the record, if we ever get a dog, it will be a Golden Retriever, particularly since it shares Big E.'s personality. If it was dependent on my personality, we'd be getting a border collie or a malamute or some other work-obsessed dog, and one of us is enough for this family.

Some other day, I'll post on how finding out my dog personality changed my life. Here are some of the quotes from the two dogs whose personalities are most like mine:

Border Collie: If not given work to do, the Border Collie will become badly behaved.
They are the leaders and motivators of the dog world.

Malamute: The malamute is built to work well within a team, and its friendliness makes it unsuitable for a watchdog, but brave enough to pull 110% of the load.

I'm not so sure about the 110% of the load comment, but the bad behavior and unsuitable watchdog stuff is dead on! Want to see your dog personality? Click here. (You do NOT have to sign up with the website to take the test!) And please let me know what you are in the comments below!

Presenting: Lucy, Duchess of Heffalump. Adorable.

Just plain cute.

Mermaid Princess as a Space Shuttle commander. Note the microphone on the headset - her idea, her execution. Now if only Flash would agree to be the pilot!

Flash on his "pirate ship".

Great shot of the kids with some of their favorite friends.

This is the reason I feel my cup is running over every morning (okay - MOST mornings).
Who wouldn't want to wake up to these cute faces?

It's a very, VERY busy week here at the Chambers house so posts will be minimal if at all. The camera will still be snapping shots, however, so don't stay away for long!

The Redheaded League*

The big kids got traced by their teachers at church and I loved the tracings so much, I put them up in our Supper Club. Mermaid Princess and Flash insisted that the drawings be holding hands.

I forget who it was that saw the tracings and asked me what had happened to MP's ears... they aren't ears, she was wearing pigtails that day and this was her translation. Still, she would be a cute elephant.

I love that the most noticeable trait in Flash's figure is the shock of red hair. Growing up, my hair was blonde, and it has help in its current shade of red (yours might too if people constantly asked where your kids' red hair came from).

So, my identity is in no way connected to being a redhead - I don't think that my temper is related to my hair color, or my energy, or my stubbornness. But Flash clearly knows that being a redhead is part of who he is - and rightly so, as that's how God made him.

Today, a red-headed gentleman stopped to let our family cross a busy street. He rolled down his window and yelled, "I never could resist redheads." MP and Flash grinned ear to ear and waved to him. I think they are beginning to realize it's like a kind of club...
one that they were born into while I had to be adopted.

*The Redheaded League is a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Not Sir Conan Doyle's best effort, but still worth the read.

Mermaid Princess, author

A carrot was lain (laying) on the ground.

A carrot was "lain" on the ground.

A rabbit jumped up out of his hole and "cot" the carrot.

The rabbit was "cot" in a trap by Princess and JackJack and Flash and Mommy and Daddy.

The carrot was used to make carrot cake for dessert after they ate the rabbit.

The End.

This doesn't hold a candle to her morning retelling of her dreams the previous night (which roughly coincide with her favorite show, Fetch), butI am enjoying watching her develop the ability to tell a complete story and her excitement at writing her stories down. Or generally, she draws and then dictates the story to me.

She is a joy to be around and I still can't believe my good fortune that God chose me to be her mother.

Easter

I seriously adore Easter. More than any day of the year, it signals hope and second chances and fresh starts to me. We even turn off the lights on Friday at 3, not to be restored until Easter morning (it helps that daylight savings has been moved back).

This year, we draped our mantel with a black sheet and I covered a hula hoop in brown fabric to represent the stone in front of Jesus' tomb. We hid the Easter baskets in there as well as some strips of linen and some gifts for each child, each representing a new start or a second chance.

I would have loved every moment of this except... well, here, see for yourself:
Can you guess? That's right. I had the flu. Freezing cold, can't get warm, achy, nauseated, roiling tummy, headache, cough, sore throat, scared-to-eat flu. Recovery eluded me for TEN days. In our married life, I cannot remember being this sick ever (except for the end of JackJack's pregnancy, but that is a different kind of story.)

Big E. babied me for two days, but then business truly demanded his attention... the kids have never watched so much TV in their lives. But I survived, they survived and while we are all a little worse for wear, soon this will be distant memory.

I was desperate to avoid having to get an IV for dehydration and so pulled out a trick my first pediatrician taught me - when a kid gets dehydrated during a flu, give them an eye dropper full of Pedialyte every ten minutes. As the hours ticked by without me keeping anything down, I had visions of arriving at the hospital for an IV with 3 kids in tow, and so I self-applied. Kids were baffled ("Why are you taking so much medicine, Mom?"), but it worked.

Phew! I'm all better, kids are great, Big E is thriving (despite the all-nighter he's looking at tonight), I'm caught back up, and looking ahead. Below are some additional Easter photos. Check in tomorrow for a look at Mermaid Princess' first literary effort!