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five finds friday. (an unusual candle holder & a great movie)
We start back to school in August. So it feels true when I ask – did I even have a summer? I mean, yes – sure. It was fantastic. But it was FULL. London and I both said the craziest thing this week. We said something insane like, “It’ll be good when school starts again. Life will maybe slow down a little.” Because when school starts, at least we’ll all be home more. funny On London’s actual birthday this week we spent the day shopping and eating out. That meant we saved her family birthday dinner for a different night this week. She also decided she would rather save her…
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He’s Thirteen.
I’ve been writing about this boy for his entire life. That time he brought me flowers in his grubby four year old hands. His obsession with soy lecithin and BHT that sent our entire family down a new food direction. The lessons he has always been teaching me. If I spend too much time reading back through old blog posts and looking at old videos and photos, I’m afraid my heart will implode and I’ll be a blubbering mess. From his first breath in this world to this very evening when I tucked him into his bed, his last night as a twelve year old boy, Bergen…
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Upon Turning 44
The sheets are gritty (even though it had only been a few days since their last wash). It’s the scum and the crud from little kid feet and I can make all the rules about socks in bed and showers before sleep and sleeping in your own bed where no one minds the sandy sheets but it all falls on deaf ears because my bed still possesses a gravitational pull and as much as it causes me discomfort now, it will cause me equal (or more) discomfort when the pull weakens and the kids cuddle less. I feel something rough against my toe. I retrieve it with said toe…
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Five Finds Friday (haircuts & surprises)
This week felt slow and fast. Camp took up all the driving times. The experiences were great for the kids. But I’m sort of glad they’re done. funny I couldn’t find the laundry detergent. It was a recent purchase so I knew it wasn’t empty. Yet. I looked around the laundry room. Questioned the house residents. And then. I found it. It was in the freezer. Obviously. All I had to do was think like a twelve year old boy. (I had asked him to put something in the chest freezer. The chest freezer is beside the washing machine. The laundry detergent usually sits…
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kayak adventure
On Monday my friend Hannah and I checked off an item that has been sitting patiently on my wish list for years. (It was my birthday gift from Hannah — more on birthday later.) Go kayaking at Lake Jocassee. At first we had to wait out a storm on the lake. (We passed the time nicely with good conversation, salt and vinegar chips and dried mango. Nope – I’d never tried dried mango before either.) The storm cost us some floating time, but it was a solid and satisfying experience despite the delay. And Lake Jocassee is just fantastic. Unbelievably clear lake water.…
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Eight Years of Otto Fox
The only Keigley baby who can claim the title “unexpected”. The true baby of the family. He still can’t pronounce the letter “r” and none of us are certain if he has ever actually slept in any variation of his own bed. Otto Fox Wilder McDonald. Named after Otto Frank and Laura Ingalls Wilder and his grandmother’s family and a wild animal. Today he turns eight. Eight years since I gave birth to my only child born in the state of South Carolina. Eight years since I held a fresh-to-this-painful-and-beautiful-world newborn who shares my last name and my whole heart and who cost me extra weight and…
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From One Gigantic Number to the Next: Happy Birthday Bergen Hawkeye
Today my oldest son turns twelve years old. Twelve years since I hugged his wee baby self in a hospital room in Virginia. His Monday night birth caused us to miss Riley’s third grade recorder recital. A recorder recital. With twenty third graders. Playing their plastic recorders. (And Bergen’s been bringing good gifts like that our way his entire life.) Ironically, the delivering doctor had a daughter in Riley’s third grade class as well. A third grade fellow recorder player. He, also, offered his sincere thanks to our freshly born son. The very next day after Bergen was born, he and I alone in a…
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Happy Birthday Mosely Elliot!
Today our home changes. Today, for the first time in the history of our family, there are TWO teenagers living under our roof. Two teenage girls. They are both taller than me. They are both better artists and better cooks than I am. They both wear my clothes and they both have captured my whole heart. Happy thirteenth birthday Mosely! Your brown eyes are expressive and lovely and you have been blessed with simply the most obedient hair on the planet. You love Ryder with a deep and abiding affection and care daily for his needs. I love your new style of Manga drawing that…
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birthdays and broken dryers
A lot of good went down this weekend at our home. The house has once again been redeemed from its brush with Reorganizing and Rearranging With Lacey and the rooms are in basically pretty good order and walking around at night in the dark is no longer a fear-inducing obstacle course. One of my friends with a pretty high tolerance for disorder stopped over during the height of the insanity and commented something like, “Wow. Even for you – this is crazy.” (Yeah, it wasn’t a compliment at all, of course.) School ran pretty smoothly and we are already half way to our first six week break. (Whoever suggested teaching…
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A Love Poem About Birthdays, But Mostly About London Scout
This month I attended a really spectacular workshop on teaching poetry. Incredibly valuable and really inspiring actually. As attendees and students, we were walked through how we could teach our students poetry and we practiced all the games/ideas/talking points to help lead the kids to positive and meaningful experiences with poetry. (I hope to take this new knowledge and do something good with it this year.) In one exercise we ended up writing our own poem based on a famous poem by one of two poets. I chose Carl Sandburg, because he’s my guy you know. I was influenced by the birthday of London – thirteen. Such a significant…
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Eleven. (Say it ain’t so.)
He is such an easy boy to love. Known for his entire first year of life as The Model Citizen, Bergen Hawkeye has been charming my heart for eleven solid years now. I’ve written about him tons and tons of times. The funny things he says and his kind manners and his all boy not-enough-fear adventures. I love being his momma. “For your birthday son, what would you like to do?” And he says, “Play Legos with my friends.” Done. And done. (Talk about your low key birthday parties.) Bergen is handsome. He’s smart. (A mom can say these things about her boy.) He knows more about space and robots…
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happy birthday mosely. today you turn twelve.
Mosely Elliot Claiborne. She’s turning twelve and we all know that sounds like a big age when your previous decade has been full of littles and single digits and learning how to ride bikes and read books and bake cookies. Twelve is a big deal. She gets to sit up front (and now London has competition for that privilege) and she is basically the same height that I am and practically the same shoe size and her brown eyes twinkle when she laughs and she wears her frustrations on her sleeve and across her expressive face and I am pleased and humbled and proud to call her my girl. She…
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the forty-secondth one.
Last week (maybe the week before – who is keeping track of the days anyway?) was my birthday. I decided if there was ever a year for me to take matters into my own hands for my birthday celebrating, this was the year. When the kids asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday my answer was immediate. “I want to go find that Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest and see some giant trees. And. I want all of your guys to go with me and be happy about it.” And so we did. And so they were. Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest is a spot I have held in my imagination…
