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my son will not appreciate this one day.
For a while Otto has been able to write his own name. It’s a pretty simple one – what with all those circles and sticks. It’s always been pretty adorable to me to see him concentrate so seriously and push his pencil forcefully across the paper. (Or the wall. Goodness. Six children. First one to ever put pen to wall is the last one.) And he can also spell it out loud for you. But he’s been slipping a little lately when he signs his name on the page. And – I’ll tell you what – he does not care for being corrected or for being informed of the word…
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A Day in the Life: Part Two
I warned you last time. This will probably be anti-climatic. Cliffhangers are not my strong suit. So. Here I go anyway. The day was glorious. The sky was beautiful. Snacks were tasty. School work was being done and complaining was at an all-time low. I was considering crafting a make-shift tent from our picnic blankets and sowing our apple seeds for future meals and fashioning new clothes for the kids out of leaves and bark and never returning home again. It was that divine. Jump Off Rock is a public park. People were coming and going. That was no big deal. But around 1:25 an elderly man accompanied by his…
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A Day in the Life: Part One
The forecast for the entire week was glorious. Warm afternoons. Cool mornings. The type of day designed by the creator of days to be spent out of doors. No climate controlled, temperature regulated kind of day. (Not that those days even exist when you live in a one hundred and eleven year old farm house.) I looked at the week’s forecast and I knew three things. 1. These days are an unadulterated gift. Cold weather is coming. 2. Cold weather is particularly disheartening at our home where last winter we could see our breath in our kitchen on a regular basis. 3. I need to stockpile good days of warmth…
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long enough .
And I would sit here by this gravel path all morning with my Hawkeye. I would watch the sun grow high and the sun fall low with my boy, And it would still not be long enough.
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How To Enjoy A Corn Maze
1. Bring along a lot of your pals. And the children of those pals. 2. Approach the barn area so indecisively and scattered looking that an employee intercepts your gang and asks why you look so out of place. 3. Underestimate the vastness of the many acre corn maze before you and allow children free range to run as they please. 4. Realize the corn maze is larger and more complex than at first was recognized and try to run to catch up with your wayward crew. 5. Leave behind the one mom with the stroller to push through the rough dirt paths. 6. Toss the weakest link on your…
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Man Trip 2012
It happens once a year. Or something like that. Man Trip. The last one involved Great Wolf Lodge and a giant tub of cheese balls. Kevin and our friend Tyler and Bergen and Tyler’s son Baylor get together for a little dude time. This year’s man trip didn’t have such a grand destination. In fact, the front yard was about as far as they ventured. But the front yard is plenty far enough when you add a campfire, some hot dogs, s’mores and camouflage. Oh – and when you allow the two younger boy siblings to have their first inaugural Man Trip experience.
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Where have you been all week and why are you posting on a Saturday?
Why, thank you for asking. The answers are . . . Goodness – I don’t know exactly. At a couple of birthday parties. Visiting a pumpkin patch/corn maze on a field trip. Recovering from a funk some medicine had me under. Trips to the grocery store and the library and small group. Craft night. At home teaching kids about ovoviviparous snakes and Robinson Crusoe. Hanging up clothes on the line and building a quiet place in the woods with my favorite seldom-quiet people. And I guess because I actually can. It’s late Friday evening. I wrapped up season 2 of Parenthood and it seems irresponsible to begin season 3 at…
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Would You Rather?
We drove to a wedding in the mountains this weekend. On the drive across the curvy roads through the gorgeous trees of blazing color, we all played a little car game to pass the time. It’s called “Would you rather?” and it’s simple. One person asks the rest of the players which of two bizarre or both awful options they would prefer. The questions were hysterically funny and I wish I could remember more of them but on curvy mountain roads I am incapable of recording moments in any other fashion besides my not-to-be-trusted memory. By far, the title of Creator of the Oddest Questions belonged to little Willow. (Who…
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morning reminders.
I was lying in bed this morning. Avoiding crawling out of its three-blanketed warmth. (I think three blankets is too many. Too heavy. Kevin thinks otherwise. London commented on the thickness of our bed covers and I told her how Daddy likes lots of covers. She grinned and replied, “But I bet his bed mate doesn’t.” She was right.) Instead of getting up and conquering the morning, I just kept lying there – letting the morning conquer me. I pretended to be pseudo-accomplishing things – like checking my e-mail on my phone. Then I scrolled through the photos stored on my phone. All 1,375 of them. I stumbled across…
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the days.
These are good days. They are. But they are just such busy days that I collapse into bed and find it difficult to find the balance of time management. Cooler weather is blowing around our house. (And through our house. You know.) The thermostat is reading in the low 60’s already and that seems all too early for that low low number indoors. I stole almost a full hour this afternoon and crept out to our hammock and soaked up the sun in the breezy afternoon and spent a little time reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Circle of Quiet. Goodness – I like that woman. She feels …. kindred. Today the kids…
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left without . . .
On any given day I have ten or more ideas for a blog post. I keep a steady stream of maybe posts already written in my drafts section. But usually I just plain run out of time to work my way through all those ideas and false starts and half-completed sentences. Life just wears me down and fills me up and spreads me thin. Some days it’s the baking. Some days it’s the chaos and the mess that keeps me from writing and processing and attempting to craft pretty words out of ordinary living. But today – oh today – it’s just been the details. The sit-down discussions. The wearying task of…
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the baking machine.
Goodness – I was a cooking machine today. I mean, every day I’m sort of a food-producing/preparing/cleaning/serving kind of machine anyway. It’s the price you pay for living with seven other humans – six of whom call you “momma” and assume a portion of your life is fashioned to be the Food Prep Guru. But today – today I felt like baking. I just went crazy. I clicked on all those pinterest tags I’ve been saving and went to town. (Not literally. Well – kind of. I did have to go to town first in order to purchase supplies. But once I returned home that’s when I really went to…
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broken.
The sound of breaking glass is not unfamiliar in this house. It no longer alarms me. Earlier this week my little Willow carried broken green remnants in to me in the kitchen. She was holding what used to be a hand made mug crafted by my aunt in Hawaii thirty-seven years ago. It was a pair. Now its partner will forever be alone. Yesterday Berg called to me from the bedroom. “Mommy? Can you come see this?” And in his hands he held the curtains from the kitchen door. Curtains that are meant to be on the kitchen door – not in his hands. The hook itself was damaged and…
