sometimes,
you literally have to grab the bull by the horns
(just to get to the masking tape)
…and so begins school vacation week.
Tag Archives: kids
awakeness
my son is not tired.
he is not dragging his sick little self around the house
on the verge of falling asleep on his feet.
ask him and he’ll tell you.
i. am. not. tired.
but what we refuse to admit to,
even to ourselves,
often seeps, leaks or peeks out in other ways…
still, when i found that he’d crashed his big rig through
the front door of the fisher price house,
my mind immediately wondered
if he’d heard or seen
something
tragic.
but,
when i
asked, “did the truck
have an accident?” he answered,
“no mama, the truck was tired so he drove inside to take a nap”,
and i must have raised an eyebrow
because he repeated for me
“no. i. am. not. tired.”
inertia
moss don’t grow on a rolling stone (em, i mean ‘skein’).
and for the record, this particular skein of romney ridge ‘farm blend’ was pushed…
‘pushed’ taken from 118:13 in the psalms.furiousity
kids tell it like it is.
the younger they are
the more blunt & loud they tend to be
(ex: two year olds having nuclear tantrums at the grocery or the library).
my youngest is extremely verbal.
i think the combo of his personality and having 3 older siblings
has pushed him catch on to things extra quickly.
he wanted to keep playing trains today.
he wanted no interruptions.
i told him he had to leave the toys.
but only momentarily.
he was not pleased and he opened his mouth
to tell me in no uncertain terms how he felt.
‘i. hate. …’
(and my heart braced itself, because the end of that sentence is ‘…you!’)
somehow knowing their anger will pass and with it their great dislike
of whoever took them from whatever they wanted,
doesn’t always ease the sting.
well, i’m not exactly sure what happened next.
maybe he saw the ‘don’t you dare say that’ look in my eyes
(although, usually my kids just plow right through that without hesitation).
whatever the reason, he did freeze for just a second or two
stared my straight in the face and said,
as full on angry as he could,
‘…spoons!’
perhaps because i didn’t react as he expected
(my face frozen with the effort
of trying to keep my muscles from cracking
into a grin) he said it yet again.
it was even louder the second time around.
‘i. hate. spoons!’
it took every ounce of motherly control i had
not to laugh. every last ounce.
i was so proud of him for censoring himself,
i was so proud of me for keeping a straight face,
and someday when he’s bigger, i know we will laugh uproariously
about the thursday he hated spoons.
it may even become
one of those stories that nears
legend status at family gatherings
and is passed from one cousin to another,
handed down from one generation of mothers to the next,
because all of us mothers need to see the funniness in our kids
and the comical in ourselves.
therein lies daily sanity.
recipe for laughter
firmly secure camera to a stable tripod.
add a houseful of kids.
mix in my brand new shutter release switch.
wait a few minutes and then follow the giggles to the fun.
who knew that a camera accessory
could make my 4 kids and a neighbor so happy
for almost two hours on a dreary day?
and if you ask me, it’s educational to boot.
i mean they’re learning cause and effect, right?
not too shabby for a saturday afternoon.
{{wink, wink}}
‘secure’ taken from 11:18 in job.
not these pics
taking photos of all four of my kids
(hyped up on freshly fallen snow and Christmas sweets)
that all come out decent
is comparable to…
i’ve no idea what it’s comparable to.
it’s loud and bouncy and chatty and goofy and irritating and ‘just one more’
all rolled into one.
i thought for the sake of honesty
(and to try to brighten up this oddly warm, rainy and fog filled day in january),
i’d post some of the pics you won’t see us sending out to friends and relatives this year.
i’ve limited myself to posting one blooper of each child
but there were many, many more.
what was scarce were pics where they actually looked like themselves
on their best ‘smile because i said so’ behavior,
but i did get these four good ones:
even at their worst, which this is not, my kids have
personality to spare.
and i love them
for that.
‘honesty’ taken from 12:15 in 2nd kings.
(under) the surface
the first day
of the second week
of Christmas vacation
is an oddly exhilarating mixture of:
“i am a graceful ballerina inspired by the peaceful home life and loving family surrounding me, despite the fact that i look like a clumsy purple robot to you”
and
“please, oh please, could i just have 5 minutes alone? because even though i seem to have it together, the chaotic undertow of the ever changing social dynamic of my 4 kids is going to render me completely mad long before school starts again…”.
ha.
things are
just not always
what they appear,
and this week falls squarely under the category of ‘it is what it is’.
coming your way
congratulations wendy randolph!
the random number generator picked you,
and the sun is shining!
what more could an early weekday ask for?
for anyone else who really fell in love with the idea of having their own copy
(that’s always how i feel when i enter a contest and lose),
you can buy your own here.
i would if i were you.
smile.
tactile
textural adjective
:a characteristic quality; essence
:relating to a surface that is other than smooth
:the visual and especially tactile quality of a plane
:the characteristic structure of the interwoven or intertwined threads, strands,
or the like, that make up a textile fabric
okay. so,
i like to touch things.
cozy soft or heavily textured.
a flat surface turned 3 dimensional or silky smooth.
and all the better if my eyes feel like they can ‘touch’, too.
rough old tree bark, the surface of water at the hands of the wind;
these things really catch me and hold my attention.
what started as this: 
which made me think of this:
was ‘captured’ in the stitches of this:
grew firmly in my mind into this:
and with the help of classic elite and their mountaintop ‘crestone‘ became this:
‘tasa’ now available here as a free pdf download courtesy of classic elite yarns.
‘smooth’ taken from 3:5 in luke.
sing-a-long
she has just turned 5.
he is about to be 2.
as he lays down
for a diaper change,
he grabs the ball of yarn
she has been ‘knitting’ with.
(note: ‘knitting’ involves
wrapping yarn around
and around the needles
as if to make a
very short, wide pompom)
she looks at her ‘knitting’,
looks at him,
and begins to sing,
“oh, i love my cute little baby.
big sisters knit for their babies and brothers.
i am knitting the cutest little hat for his very, very cutest little head.”
a kodak moment if ever there was one.