gifts in the midst of stress: poop on the deck

Its been a crazy month followed by an insane week of moving.  I’m loosing everything, down to one sippy cup, and my brain is not much better.  Still, I have seen the Lord at work in so many ways, encouraging me and giving me a thankful heart.  I feel like it wouldn’t be fair not to mention it.   Wendy has been a big encouragement to me.  Even though caring for her often interferes with my productivity, she makes me so excited to be alive and a mother.

Our Wendy is a pistol.  A fire cracker.  A spit fire.   I find myself marveling that someone so small can be such a determined force of will. 

Since moving into our new home, (it has a back door that goes out onto the back porch and has steps to the yard), she has been declaring “Out, Out Out!”   “GO”  and “Wok (walk)” and “Yea-ya, Yea-ya(Alaythia)!”   Then she brings me her shoes, puts them in my hands and sits down on my feet so that I will put them on her and take her outside to play with Alaythia.   When I do not comply with her wishes great screams and tantrums commence! 

Yesterday, after cleaning our old apartment all day, we walked in through the back yard, but dragged Wendy straight inside, much to her dismay.  I jumped in the shower with her to rinse off the cleaning solutions and dust before dinner and then wrapped her in her towel and sent her through the bathroom door to find Dada, who I had just spoken to about something else.  When I got dressed and met Jonathan coming up from the basement, I asked him where Wendy was, but he hadn’t seen her.  We had a short  moment of panic and then found her with her thunder-thighs and glory rolls all naked to the neighborhood, happily eating rocks out of a planter on the back porch.  (It turns out she doesn’t need my help to go “OUT” anymore.)  She looked up at us and grinned, then turned to look out over the yard, showing us her back side, and threw up her arms to roar triumphantly at the sky.  

As I grabbed her hand to lead her inside, I noticed she had left a pile of droppings on the deck and a puddle on the door jam.  All I could think about was how much I liked her—even more because she had just pooped on the floor and cared not one bit about it!  Thinking of her yelling out her victory kept me smiling all day.  So splendidly alive, this girl of ours!

Twaks

Me, pointing to the batman sweatshirt on the floor, where Charlie dropped it after coming in the door and taking it off: "Charlie, what is this?"
Charlie, in a cheerful, instructional voice: "Oh! That is the twak(track) of me takin off my fweat showt. Dat's how you can twak wew I was. I was heew, Mama, whened I taked it off."

When you can't win for loosing…

So it all began when Charlie begged, with big blue adorable eyes,  to take a living room blanket to bed with him.  Then he wet his bed.  Then I washed that dark blue chenille blanket in a load of darks.  After which the entire load looked like a chenille blanket.  (Worst laundry fail to date.) I carried that disaster of a blanket through the living room to let it dry on the balcony. 

Then I laid Wendy down on the floor to change her dirty diaper.  While doing so, I looked up and realized the blanket had left a trail of fuzzballs across the carpet. Knowing that Wendy loves me some good fuzzball, I slapped a clean diaper on her and went to pick up the fuzz before she could eat it.  And in the excitement, I momentarily forgot she learned to crawl the day before yesterday.  I had just decided the case called for reinforcements and turned to get the vacuum out AGAIN, when I noticed her dumping the poop out of her poopy diaper, which I had left across the room.  Thank goodness I got to her just before she started chewing on it! 

Lessons learned?  Avoid precious, pleading blue eyes, NEVER wash chenille, throw diapers away immediately, and above all don't forget it when your baby learns to crawl!

confessions of a J during finals week….

It is finals week and though he has been in the house most of the day, I have seen Jonathan for a total of maybe 20 minutes if you exaggerate it.  The day after he takes his last evening exam, we are leaving early in the morning on a 12+ hour road trip with two small, ACTIVE, children.  Christmas is upon us and there are MANY things to be made.  I don’t really know why (except that by the grace of God, the Holy Spirit must be prompting me) I’ve been dealing with this finals week differently.

Normally a week with this much activity, responsibility, uncertainty and potential for disaster would have me making plans upon contingency plans and lists of my lists in an effort to stave off any negative impact on my family.   Though this approach may sometimes result in being prepared for everything, it always guarantees one very stressed out and grumpy Mama.  I’ve been noticing, in the little bit of growing up I’ve done these past few months, that Mama’s mood quickly becomes everyone's mood.  So, in an effort to love my children and husband better, I have let the house go.   I am moving through each task in front of me without stressing about the cloud of other urgent, pestering tasks remaining undone.  I have no set of lists except the overall objectives of:

• getting Charlie outside for HARD playing once a day,
• making sure I have timely snacks and meals to provide my offspring (and to hand through the door to my muttering husband, hunched over yet another outline of notes he is studying)
• being aware of and then using any moment my hands are free to work on the projects I’m making for Christmas. 
• getting us all packed and travel-food supplied for our trip while the children are awake (as long as I can make it fun)  so that I can work on Christmas-ing while they are asleep.

The super bonus is that I’ve found I haven’t been inadvertently showing Charlie he doesn’t matter and is an inconvenience to me like I usually end up doing in high-stress  times.   We’ve actually had fun together instead of resenting the fact that we can’t have Dad!  This was our chaotic but delightful scene while we made pizza for dinner last night:

Many, many thanks to Gail, our Sunday school teacher, for teaching us this joyful song!

a-Babka-at-the-end-of-the-stick-kind-of-night

Ever since Wendy came into my life there are lots of days that end like this. (Truth be known, there were probably more days like this before any children came into my life than there are now, but I was more relaxed back then and had leisure to wait until the mood hit me to spend hours cleaning up.)Now, it drives me crazy.  I learned with Charlie’s infancy that the only thing more depressing to me than seeing this mess at the end of the day, is waking up to it the next morning and having to deal with it while dealing with an infant. 

I hope you realize I pose no moral judgment on the untidy.   If you can live in chaos without it gnawing at your insides like itchy wool at your neck, then fantastic.  I cannot.  Somehow having children has turned me into a crazy woman for neat. I now equate “peace” “rest” and “relax” with “tidy and clean.” At the end of the day, when I’m tired of wrangling 2 year old cowboys and pampering 6 month old princesses, I wish this weren’t true. But it is. 

So the other night I decided to bribe myself into doing the dishes with Chocolate Cinnamon Babka. 

“What?!??” you say?  “Do more work to convince yourself to do more work?”   Yes, it is true.  I am that much of a sucker for chocolate,butter and white flour. 

Here’s how it went down:

made Babka dough (a whole cup of butter, folks!)  (and also some whole wheat roll dough because it’s easy and I was baking already and we needed it for the next day.)mixed up some divine chocolate-cinnamon-butter spread and soaped up the dishes while the dough rose shaped it and rinsed dishes while it rose some more…finished the dishes in time to watch a show while the bread bakedTHEN I ate me some Babka from a sparkling clean kitchen (and breakfast was already made for the next morning too!) SO worth it!

::Tonight::

(…in the style of Soule Mama…)

Tonight I am…

::finding it appropriate that I fed Wendy her first sweet potatoes out of my favorite china teacup because all our ramekins are full of watercolor paint!  (…and of course she loved them.  How could she not with such beautiful presentation!)

::recovering from a long rainy day inside with a two-year-old boy and a teething infant.

::putting rain boots in size 11-12 on my shopping list…how could I not have those for this muddy Fall season?

::amazed by the quantity and quality of crafters who have  unique voices/blogs on the internet

::deciding that I need to set a time limit and also a timer when I decide to log into Pinterest, ahem!

::wishing I spent more of my time tonight knitting  (…someone please tell me how to browse the internet and knit at the same time and I will be happy happy happy!)

::thinking there is not enough Aquaphor in the world to fix the state my hands are in

::wondering how in the world we got that many hand-wash only dishes  dirty anyways  (oh yeah, all the painting, and making of granola, scones, bread, stew, and spagehtti we’ve done over the last three days!)

::thankful for a husband who encourages me to voice my opinion even when it differs from his—and all the growing up I’ve done in this area since I met him

::loving this silent house where everyone is asleep but me, and all the lights are off except the dimmed ones above the bed that he left on for me.

::going to bed!

…Are you ready to get out yet?

“No, Mama,  I still have to kwub it!”I do declare I may have just discovered the best way EVER to entertain a toddler and get my shower cleaned at the same time—with no effort to me at all!

(The scary looking orange goop is homemade  finger paint for the bath (courtesy of Christine).  It’s made by mixing together 1 cup of clear colored, tear-free baby shampoo or dish soap, 3 tablespoons of cornstarch and food coloring.  You can even divide it out into lots of different colors if you have the enthusiasm.  Turns out it is a great scrubbing agent as well!)

Can I hear a huzzah for child labor!?!