Scenes from Today

We came home from running a few errands. Guess what? It is Florida. It is July. It it hot. We stayed outside for a little while because, much to the kids' delight, a new family moved in across the street. They breed Golden Retrievers, and had four huge, beautiful dogs running around. The kids gathered sticks and threw them for the dogs. While I chatted with our new neighbor for a few minutes, Jonathan got my keys and let himself inside the house. I walked in and he had this ice pack on his head. It made me smile, because it was dorky, but also because it was a clever way to cool down fast.

I spent the entire morning cleaning our house. I basically got everything tidied, and did a little dusting and sweeping. I asked the kids to please help and they said okay (but continued to watch cartoons). I walked in the bathroom later and saw that Anna had filled the sink with soapy water and put all her bath toys in there. I think this was a good contribution to cleaning day. I would have never thought to bathe the bath toys. :)

We have a treadmill. I have said 10 times today alone, GET OFF THE TREADMILL! (We keep the electronic key hidden and up high, so there is nothing terribly dangerous about it, other than that the kids can't seem to refrain from climbing on it. I was in the other room getting ready to leave for an appointment. My Dad had come over to babysit, and I heard him say, Anna, get off the treadmill, you are going to get hurt. Then a crash,and screaming! Whadayaknow? She got hurt. I comforted her and she was totally calm when I left, but when I came back I noticed her lip was a little swollen, and I pulled it down, and she has quite a boo-boo! Poor baby. But seriously, maybe she learned to listen? I'm thinking, no. But the reason she was making this face, was that I told her she had a fat lip. She said, "I do NOT have a fat lip!" She was so insulted! I explained to her what I meant. But she still pouted and frowned.

I usually don't post bathtub pics, but I thought these of Jon in the bathtub were too cute. Only my Jonathan could give himself a bubble beard and then look so totally serious about it. When he was younger, Dave would always give him a bubble beard and call him Captain Bubblebeard. It was so cute.

So just a few events from our non-eventful day. The kids have grown up so much this summer. I can't believe we are approaching 5 and 7. Anna has learned to pick our bedroom lock. She is quite proud of herself. Jonathan figured that out years ago.

This week they are going to a local VBS. They are having fun and Dave and I get date nights. Everybody wins.

Jonathan's 1st Class at the Studio

We took Jonathan to an art lesson this morning... The first thing he said to me when we picked him up was, "Can I come back here, please?" They let him choose his color of mat and they put it in a special bag for him. He wants to come back every week and eventually cover his whole wall with his artwork.

He explained the whole class to us: the teacher had them practice drawing different kinds of shapes; then they used those shapes to draw the rabbit and other parts of the picture; then they outlined some of the lines with black marker, and erased away some of the of other lines; then they used color to fill it in. He was really interested in the idea of putting simple shapes together to draw.

He loves to spend lots of time creating and doing projects (this was the same child that refused to particpate in art projects and preschool and Sunday school) and whenever I looked in on him during the class he was totally focused and intent on his work. I love helping the kids find activities that bring them both focus and joy. For Jonathan, it has been swimming, horseback, and art. Anna, gymnastics. It makes me so happy to see their faces when they are intent on learning something new, and the satisfaction they feel when they learn that they can do it.

Jonathan has always had this focused energy about him... even when he was a baby. I wonder how he will use it throughout his life. He is calm and methodical when he is playing or creating or learning. I can't wait to see all the exciting things that lay ahead for him. He is such a gift to us everyday. Even when he acts skunky. :)

Anna and Me

Anna and me. She is 4 and SO sweet. I love her voice, I love the way she says what's on her mind and I love the way she carries herself. She makes me so proud. Whenever I watch her from a distance, like through the window at gymnastics, inwardly I cheer, and think, Yeah, that's MY girl! I guess most parents feel this pride in their children. I think she is a marvel.

People tell me all the time that we look alike... and I really don't see it all that much. But I guess maybe in this picture I can see it, a little. Mostly I think she just looks like herself.

I always wondered what my kids would look like when they were in utero, and when I saw them for the first time, it was like, oh of course, it's you. I could never imagine what they would look like, no matter how hard I tried, but then they came along, and their faces both make perfect sense.

Friday

The kids were listening to Anna's pink Hello Kitty cd player. They were having one of their dance parties. I am pretty sure one of these parties is going to lead to an emergency room visit one day. But they are fun. I find myself saying, Turn that music down! And then I shudder at myself for sounding like such a mom.

They came and got me and said, Mama! Mama! We found another God song!

I went down the hall and heard John Mayer's "Your Body is a Wonderland."

Um, no, that is not exactly a God song. One pair of candy lips, and your bubble gum tongue... Never let your hit head the bed without my head behind it... I love the shape you take when crawling towards the pillowcase...

I remember the first time I heard that song. It made me blush. I told them that definitely wasn't a God song and to turn it. Because Jonathan started picking up on the words and giggling about them. I don't think he got it, but I didn't want to answer his questions. I already had to field a question this week from him that would have been much better answered by his Daddy.

Later, Jonathan came running in because Katy Perry's "California Gurls" was playing.

Anna came running after him, shrieking, "But that's my favorite song, bubba!!!"

I said, "What's the problem? That's a fun song to dance to."

Jonathan says, "But Mama! That's the song with the bad video! The one that was totally inappropriate!"



Oops. I guess he caught me there. I had stormed out of the mall food court two weeks prior to today and filed an official complaint with mall management because of that very same song. But the song, without the video, seems pretty benign. And it is so catchy! (And the way she misspells girls, now that is just clever! How else can you get away with ripping the title of the song off from The Beach Boys?)



Later I overheard the kids fighting. Jonathan was letting the dogs up on the couch. Anna was trying to get them off the couch, using the "They aren't allowed up here!" defense. Jonathan countered with, "Anna. They are our guests. Mama says guests are allowed to do whatever they want and we have to be nice to them."

Two sets of feet running towards me, breathlessly talking over each other, trying to get me to hear their side first.
**Hey, guys? We live in a 1200 square foot house and you are both LOUD. I can ALWAYS hear what you are saying.**

As far as Biscuit and Mutton being guests, that is true. And I do tell them when we have guests we have to let them do whatever they want. Well, that's not exactly my policy, but I sided with Jonathan. Because really, I am weary of settling these endless arguments between them. Rarely is there ever a clear cut answer about who is right, and I never feel like I am doing the right thing anyways. Judge Jamie has no idea what she is doing half the time. As long as I act like their leader, they buy it.

How many more days until school starts?

These pretzels...

ARE MAKING ME THIRSTY!!!

Last night, I let the kids both sneak out of their room when they were supposed to be going to sleep and climb into bed with me. I let them stay up late and watch Seinfeld episodes with me and we shared some late night nachos from Taco Bell. (Yes, we actually indulged in a Fourth Meal.) It was not an ordinary evening, and it felt sort of rebellious... even though I am the one in charge.

I let them fall asleep with me, and did not make them re-brush their teeth after eating the nachos (GASP!). I let them watch a grownup show, and you know how we normally roll... no cable TV, PBS shows only (unless we are at someone else's house, and then Nick or Disney are usually fine). I let them eat in my bed.

It was a lot of fun. I think we made a memory, as we often do in life when schedules/routines/rules are relaxed for a bit. And the best part?

Today I get to hear the kids walking around, throwing out their own dramatic variations on the phrase, "These pretzels are making me thirsty!" (Season 3, The Alternate Side)

Expiration Date

I think switching to organic milk has actually made time accelerate. Let me explain:

I've always had this little moment when I open the fridge to get the milk out, pour it in my coffee or over my cereal, and I see the expiration date, and it throws me ahead a few weeks in time. In a few weeks, or less, this milk will be bad, I realize... And that is only if it is unopened. If I've already opened it, what do I have, 5 days? I wonder, what will have transpired between now and then? Will I still be shuffling through my everyday life, half-drowsy and unaware of the beauty of it all, bothered and weighed down by momentary troubles? Or will some major event have occurred to jolt me fully awake, leaving me completely changed and wishing I could go back to the state I lived in before?

I often think of a scene in Friends when one of Phoebe's clients died on the massage table... She says that her client woke up, thought to herself, Oh, I'll take a nice walk, get a massage,... And Phoebe says, "Little does she know, God said, Uh-huh, yeah, but that's IT!"
Boom! You make plans for your whole day, your week, your month, your year, but really it is all a big guess. Something can change, and then...That's all you get. We walk through life with safeguards in place. We go to the doctor for preventative care, wear our seat belts, and say our prayers. But the truth is we don't know how long we or our loved ones will be here.

A friend of the family had a tragedy occur. I don't know all the details, but his young son had an accident, suffered major head trauma, and has been fighting for his life. From what I gather, it was just an ordinary day, and then, out of the blue, something extraordinary happened, and their lives have been changed. They had an agenda for the day and then everything changed. What I've noticed is that during this tragedy, this little boy's daddy has expressed nothing but faith in the goodness of God and in God's ability to heal his child. He has asked for prayer, and he has believed that prayer will change things. Before this minute in time, when things went so awry, he probably had lots of things on his mind... possibly money, jobs, household management, finances, church and family obligations, the laundry, the bills, the grass to mow, who knows. But now his world has become very small, and his focus on what matters has become very narrow. All of the extraneous has been taken away, and all that matters to him is all that has ever really mattered to him. His children, his wife, his family, God. So far, his son has shown positive signs of improvement. And I pray that this path will continue, that God will heal this sweet little boy and restore him to his family just as he was.
How has this tragedy affected me? Well, I've been praying a whole lot more than usual. Honest, sincere, wrung out prayer, prayer from my gut, from the bottom of my heart. And I've been paying more attention to my kids. I've been savoring the words that they say, marvelling at the ways they move, at Anna dancing around to her My Little Pony CD, at Jonathan racing across the pool, swimming underwater, as fast as he can, legs and arms thrashing, kicking, kicking, like a shark is chasing him, but really he is just doing it for the pure joy of the fact that he can. I've been grabbing them and hugging them and smelling the top of their heads, breathing in deep as I can. I've been trying to hold on, trying to slow down, trying to remember that I don't know how long I will be here, or they will be here, and that each day, no matter how weighed down with obligations, irritations, and frustrations, is an absolute gift. A gift not to be unwrapped hurriedly, given a momentary glance, and tossed aside in a pile with all the others. You can't open each day, assuming that there will be thousands more to come, and you don't truly need to appreciate this particular one. It may be the only one you have, or it may be the only one you have with a certain loved one. If you have something to say, you should say it. If you need to forgive someone, you should go ahead and do it.

So, I opened my fridge this morning. The expiration date on my milk is August 5, 2010. It is organic, so I have more time than I used to before the milk would go bad. When I bought this milk, I had almost a full month before its expiration date. Instead of thinking ahead a week, I am thinking ahead a whole month now. August 5th. Flash forward, what will be happening August 5th? Well, Jonathan will be getting ready to start 1st grade. Anna, pre-K. New clothes will have been bought, new shoes, new school supplies. My Mom will be safely back from Wisconsin. This is what I hope for. All the time, I feel this lack of satisfaction with my life, this nagging worry that I'm not enough, that my life isn't enough. And then I realize, faced with the thought that something could change, really, what I want, is for everything to stay exactly the same. I don't want a major change of course. I want my days to unfold, from now until August 5th, just as normal and unremarkable as possible. Because, really, each day is extraordinary in its everyday-ness. Every day that I get to live this life that God has given me, with this family I have, right here in this house, is a gift and a miracle. And I hope I remember to be grateful for it.

Anna's Room, Part 2

We got her bed back together. She loves her new bedding. She thinks her bed is bigger now. She kept telling her Daddy when he was putting it back together, "My new bed is so big!" It is the same bed. :)

The shelves now have colorful bins in them. This was Anna's first attempt at organizing her toys, which would have worked, were there not SO many more toys to be stored.

Anna's Room

OK. So here is the before (ABOVE)

And this was the after, with the new paint, floor, and baseboards. But no furniture back in yet. I'm still looking for those pics...

Try to imagine a color somewhere between the blue and the green in these two pics, and that would be an accurate representation of the actual color of the walls. It is aqua... Anna picked it out. She wants everything in her entire room to be aqua. She doesn't quite get the idea of accent colors, or contrast...

Underneath the blue carpet... speckled terrazo!

Jonathan and Anna hanging out in her room before the floor was put down. (By Dave, sorry about the passive voice. I know you very actively put the floor down!)

Some Words From a Day

Here are some words that my kids said, on just a normal summer day. These kids are something else. Not only are they beautiful and talented, they are so fun to know. I am glad I get to be their Mom. I need to pay attention and take note more often of what they say!

Anna: This is the yummiest place in the whole wide world!
Jonathan: (scoffing in disgust) It's not WIDE, Anna, it is ENTIRE. That is correct.

Later, Jonathan was misbehaving and I was getting pretty frustrated with him. I walked into the kitchen and Anna turned to him and whispered (loudly):
Bubba! You better stop it or you're gonna get FIRED!

Driving down the road, with the two of them in the backseat:

Jonathan: Mama, why doesn't save rhyme with have???
and then:
Jonathan: Urine is a scientific pee.

then Anna chimes in, out of the blue:

Anna: Bubba, if you want to marry me, I'll let you have a dog in my house! Puhlease???
Jonathan: No! I am just going to live in my own house and I can have a dog there.
Mama, when I grow up can I have a dog like the President's dog? A Portuguese water dog?

Then, an abrupt change in the conversation:
Jonathan: Hey Anna! You know that stuff that Anna Donna (his name for Nona Donna) gets out of my ears? That's earwigs!
Anna: Bubba, that is NOT earwigs! That is earWAX! (rolling her eyes)

We got into the house, and Anna announced that she wanted to marry me when she grew up.
Jonathan's response:
You can't marry Mama. For THREE reasons.
One is that you can't live with your mom when you're a grownup.
Two is that you're a girl and she's a girl. You're both girls.
Three is that she is already married. To David.