When I have said my evening prayer,
And my clothes are folded on the chair,
And mother switches off the light,
I’ll still be three years old tonight.
But, from the very break of day,
Before the children rise and play,
Before the greenness turns to gold,
Tomorrow, I’ll be four years old.
Four kisses when I wake,
Four candles on my cake.
Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
Asher got mad at me last night. It seems he was hungry and wanted a snack. I began to warm up some leftovers for me and the boys to eat for dinner, as we were going to have to leave home very soon to make it to Lucas’s piano lesson. Apparently I didn’t act soon enough because he started to melt down.
Asher asked, “Are you going to feed me a snack?”
“No. I’m feeding you dinner. It’s chicken meat,” I said confidently, knowing that he devours the stuff.
“I don’t want dinner! I want a snaaaaack!”
A moment of quiet passed. I put the food on the table and walked into the living room with a sinking feeling.
He was standing on the window seat ripping down the snowflakes we had made and hung together. He stood with a crumpled mess at his feet. He knew just exactly how to hurt me. He knew I loved them.
I will absolutely grant you that it’s silly to cry over ripped paper snowflakes, but that is exactly what I did. Sometimes parenting is really hard. Sometimes children do rotten, hurtful things. And as much as I’d like to say I am above being insulted or hurt by their capricious natures, I am not, even though I try to be. There’s no point in taking something like this personally.
But that’s an interesting dilemma in my mind. I personally infuse so very much of me into my parenting. How much more personal can a 24/7 job be? Is it possible to operate so very intimately, so personally, only when things are okay, and then just blithely duck and weave when the “snow” starts flying? Maybe. But maybe not all the time.
Objectively I know that Asher is on the cusp of being 4, or in the prophetic words of the subtitle of my favorite parenting book series, “Wild and Wonderful.” He is feisty and willful and he wants what he WANTS! He is in control of very little in his life, and he is developmentally compelled to try to control it all.
I think seeing mama’s tears flowing because of something he did was a powerful moment for him (arguably both good and bad). He sobbed and remembered some of the right things to say.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I’ll never do dat again! We should forgive ourselves.”
Yes, I suppose we should.
Inspired by SouleMama {this moment} – A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.
We don’t have any real snow. Today’s high is expected to be 61 degrees F. We enjoy these warmish winters in California, our afternoons without a jacket. We also long for some honest-to-goodness, stay-home-from-school snowman-making days. Alas, we have to pretend.
I deliberately left some snowflake Christmas ornaments out this year, even though the rest of Christmas is all packed away. They help remind me that the season is beautiful, even amid the mud. Perhaps Mr. Bentley, the snowflake king, inspired me a bit.
I pulled out last year’s paper snowflakes. Lucas was into them last year and helped me make some. He’s got other things on his mind this year, though, (like creating creatures and writing about them).
Asher, on the other hand, thought I was a miracle worker when I cut new snowflakes the other evening and let him carefully unfold them. He was amazed and it was such a joy to see his rosy-cheeked face light up when the snowflake was revealed! Yesterday, after school, we taped the paper flakes up on our windows. Asher helped and thought it looked “AWESOME”!
“Mama, we could make a whole lotta snowflakes!”
“Yes, we can, baby!”
Paper snowflakes look nice silhouetted against an evening sky. (I sometimes cut snowflakes using paper doilies. They make for very lacy edges.
See? You can still have fun with skills learned in primary school: After the kiddos went to bed last night, I busted out some instructions for making five-pointed snowflakes I found on How About Orange. Jessica’s folding instructions are superb and while Ian and I watched Henry Rollins doing stand-up, I cut about five of these star-shaped snowflakes in various sizes.
Here are my five-pointed snowflakes at dawn. Asher was pleased to help stick them to the windows. I think they’re beautiful, if I do say so myself. I don’t know if my dear Mr. Bentley would approve, since this shape of ice crystal is not found in nature, but I think they’re lovely nonetheless. I expect to bust these out again next Christmas, perhaps with some gold foil paper. My thanks to Jessica Jones for the pattern.
Finally, I’m really enjoying this snowflake mobile that our friend Dakini gave us this year. It’s sweet, intricate, and lovely hanging in our kitchen—but mighty hard to photograph!
New year, new energy. That’s my goal. Although it pains me to realize/know/say/type it, the truth is that I’ve been neglecting my physical well-being for months now. And although I absolutely hate being or living a cliché, the truth is that it now, January, seems time to do something about it. I seem forever able to (kind of) balance either work and fitness, or work and family, or family and fitness, but never all three at once. I’m hoping that Asher’s downhill slide into age 4 will sort of tip the scale a bit in the direction of more free time for mama. So, today marks the start of my (our) new diet and exercise plan. Woo hoo!
There. I said it out loud. Maybe that will help. I am glad to have Ian striving by my side in this.
We are excited about getting baby chicks next month and are making arrangements to be there when the shipments arrive at our local feed store. There are a couple of Thursdays in February when the store is supposed to have eight breeds arriving. Newly hatched chicks are shipped right away—for the first three days after hatching they don’t need food or water, so they can be safely shipped and will arrive alive! (This is just amazing to me.)
Once we have them, we’ll have to keep our chicks in our garage for the first eight weeks or so, in a cozy, clean box with a heat source. We are hoping to get all different varieties so that we can know them as individuals and be able to tell them all apart. It will be so fun to hold fluffy chicks and feed them by hand! This is sure to make them very friendly.
The five hens we have are doing great, though their egg production has slowed because of the shorter days of winter. We had a ton of rain in December and it turned our happy hens into sodden, bedraggled hens and our chicken run into a muddy mess. The girls seem to be doing fine regardless of the rainstorms, yet these drier days of January are a relief, I think.
Fireball is quite adventuresome. She led the others right up to our backdoor and peered inside at us, as if to say, “Hey, lady! Let us in!”
Midnight, in the back there, is molting, so she’s looking scruffier than usual, especially on her breast. In November, Snowdrift molted and it was somewhat distressing for us newby chicken farmers to see her looking so scraggly and pathetic, with all those pretty pure-white feathers scattered about. Snowdrift’s new feathers have since grown in and she’s now especially lovely (but shy).
I was surprised that Sunrise was willing to get so close to me. Usually she’s pretty skittish. She gives us green eggs, which is pretty cool if you ask me.
We’re hoping to get Australorp, Plymouth Rock, Buff Orpington, Wyandotte, Sussex, and Welsummer (a hen that lays dark brown eggs) chicks. All of these except the Welsummer are considered to be excellent layers with a high yield and friendly, calm birds. Now isn’t this a whole new kind of geeky?
This is a stuff post. The holidays have a way of flooding our home with new stuff, and that’s quite exciting no matter how old you are. This is by no means an exhaustive list of the wonderful gifts we received this Christmas.
I’ll start with some backstory. Last fall, the boys and I hit on the perfect remedy for Transition Blues, that awkward and cantankerous time between school or preschool and home. Companions change, place changes, even some rules change and all that uncomfortable adjustment must be made. Transitions tend to be hard on Lucas, especially, so when I started making After-School Smoothies of Love immediately on our arrival at home in the afternoon, things improved—for all of us! We had several smooth, sweet weeks’ worth of healthy, yummy afternoon drinks until the unthinkable happened—my blender gave up the ghost.
We were bereft. Until now. Thanks to my mama and daddy and their gift of this gorgeous lady, my magical smoothie tradition is back ON!
My mama also gave me this handmade wool sweater, which is soft and almost too warm to wear inside, but perfect outside. (That quilt in the photo is the wedding quilt she made for Ian and me in 1995.)
I also received this amazing scarf, knitted by some friends’ daughter, Snow, who is 10—almost 11—years old. Frankly, her knitting is amazing. Waldorf kids rock!
And speaking of competent Waldorf kids and handwork, this is the handwork basket that Ian and I gave to Lucas for Christmas. It contains two rainbow yarns handspun by our friends at Syrendell (already balled) and a new wood crochet hook. I also added a couple of store-bought yarns and a bit of yarn from my own stash. Since Christmas, Lucas has added in his knitting needles that he made in first grade at school. Now he can go to this basket whenever he’s feeling creative.
Grandma VoVo gave our boys these customized shelf organizers to hold their notebooks and papers. They were filled with notebooks, folders, pens, pencils, erasers and all that good stuff. Open-ended gifts like this are so nice!
Finally, since I began this stuff post with a sexy red kitchen gadget, I’ll end with another. Ian’s dad and Mimi gave us this awesome Sodastream gizmo that carbonates your tap water and makes soda or flavored water, too. We go through a lot of bubbly water around here, and we are loving this thing!
We are grateful for all these goodies and many, many more!
A new year! Can you believe it? I admit to feeling a little insular lately, an unusual state (for me) of being somewhat introverted. I can sense a lot of questions circulating inside of me and so I’ve not had many words to share. I feel there is some fertile ground ready and waiting, and I’m not sure what seeds to sow there. I’ve been walking in circles restlessly, and yet trying to take advantage of small moments of quiet to hear … I don’t know what. Hopefully something important and moving.
I guess this is all OK. It is the quiet, dark time of the year, the time of hibernation and lying fallow in the cold. Resting is not my strength, frankly. I am in between creative projects. I have impulses to jump in several directions at once, which has me kind of teetering. Whatever. I’m just trying to give myself some time to figure things out. Who knows, maybe I’ll be given the gift of some understanding or revelation on the Epiphany, just a couple of days from now. Wouldn’t that be nice?
And so, since I don’t have much to say, I’ll take a moment to brag about some of the Christmas projects we did last month.
Poplar cutting boards for friends and family. We made a cat, two owls, a tropical fish, an apple, and a leaf. I love them.
I learned to use the scroll saw and cut out these pine wood trees for some friends. I hope they might find a place on their winter nature table. I used the same acrylic wash to paint them, and used a beeswax polish to seal and shine them up. I’m looking forward to making some of these for our home, too.
Ian made some marvelous wood stilts for Lucas for Christmas. They are hard to use at first, but Lucas has already practiced with them enough to have gotten the hang of it.
And now that the rush and business of Christmas is done, it’s time to start thinking about Asher’s upcoming birthday.
I’d just like to pop in and say Happy New Year! It’s been a lovely winter break around here these last several days, even though I’ve been working quite a bit this week—more than in most years, actually. I’m glad to have the work, and yet still yearn for the downtime, especially while everyone is at home.
There has been lovely block play,
some reading of How to Train Your Dragon, and quite a bit of cozy “Avatar: The Last Airbender” viewing.
Ian tackled some home renovation projects, including fixing a gate and finishing the Hearth Project (which was started and abandoned half finished more than eight years ago). Here is the beautiful result:
Lucas has practiced on his new skateboard from uncle Jon.
And Asher has worn his new chaps and vest (a precious family heirloom of our friends, loaned to us while they fit) in a most creative way.
So, that’s pretty normal right, for the last days of a year: continuing on, finishing, fixing, solving, resting, mulling, embracing new challenges, learning new skills, reinventing old stuff to be new again?
Relax. Review. Renovate. Remember. Reinvent.
Well, it’s normal around here.
Wishing you all the best in the New Year!
