I was SO tired this morning when I woke up.  I went from bed to bed to wake the children for school… and I’m not kidding — NONE of them even stirred.  I lay back down and waited ten minutes, then did the rounds again.  More success this time.  Everyone made it to school, and early too.

When my husband got in the shower he said he was going to work from home today and that made me happy.  Plus, I had the early signs of a migraine coming on and it just felt good to think I wouldn’t be facing the day all alone.  When he came downstairs he announced something he needed to take care of at the office and within 45 seconds he was driving away.  It’s his job, after all, but I felt a little sad.

The little girls were adorable this morning, making toast for each other.  This week they’ve had lots of fun with dolls, rocking them, pushing them in strollers, cuddling them and so forth.  I love to see little girls practice being mommies.

The headache got worse and we picked up my 6 year old from kindergarten.  It was pouring rain by this time and I felt so thankful that my husband worked well after dark last night getting almost all of the dirt moved from the street to the backyard.   The rain made the day feel a little dreary so when my little guy begged for a movie I got the tv out and let him watch one of the original Star Wars movies.  I decided a rainy day called for some chocolate chip cookies and mixed up the dough.  We paused the movie to pick up three more of the children from school.

I never lay down during the day, but today I had to.  I rested for 20 good minutes and then my little one joined me and I had to get up.  My oldest was supposed to go on a retreat tonight, but the deal was that all make-up work for school be completed first.  It wasn’t.  I had to say no.  I hated it, he hated it, but I had to do it.  It’s not fun being the bad guy, but he knew the requirements and I’m not doing him any favors by lifting them at the last minute.  Still, it stinks.

I worried it would ruin the rest of the night but he rallied well, thanks in part to a cool t-shirt his dad picked up for him today.  I went through an almost laughable stack of loose papers to make sense of  his homework.  We baked the rest of the cookies and soon he had a smile on his face.

I did no housekeeping today.  Just functioning took all my energy.  I’m not complaining.  I’m writing because I need to remember this day.

I started dinner late because of the homework issue.  So while I had ribs cooking in the oven, the hungry kids peeled carrots to chomp on and raided the storage room for Top Ramen, which they eat raw!  Gross!  I sat on a chair in the family room and turned my head in time to see my four year old jumping up and down on her Top Ramen to crunch it before opening it.  My two year old climbed up next to me with equal parts runny nose and dirt on her face to throw her body across me and give me countless kisses.  When she wants to talk to me she gets right in my face so our noses are touching.  It took a little more courage to have that conversation tonight given the state of her face, but she’s adorable and I love it.  I had just seen pictures of someone’s newborn baby and had that sad feeling in my heart (and my eyes) that my baby is so huge.

My carpet is littered with game cards from six or seven different games.  For some reason my kids don’t play games, but they get all the pieces out and play other things with the games.  It makes for interesting messes.  My seven year old and I took 2 hours and went through every piece recently, but it’s right back to the previous state of disarray.  I’m thinking we don’t need games.  I walked through the empty kitchen and found a cup of water in the middle of the floor with 5 rocks in it.  Hmmm.  There’s a baby doll on the kitchen counter face down in some peanut butter.  My floors have a nice layer of dirt on them but I’m not going to mop until our dirt has all been moved to its permanent location.

The children are having a wonderful time running outside in the gathering darkness and I’m happy to hear their screams and yells through the open windows.  My oldest and his Dad are watching snowboard competitions online as they do work and homework in the office.   I’m feeling a little vulnerable tonight but it’s opened my heart to the realities of how terribly blessed I am.  I look around at the mess and for once, I have the sense to be happy about it.  There’s a lot of life being lived here and I get to be a part of it.  I get to be the one they talk to about soccer practice and who said what.  I get to be the one that holds them when they scrape their knee or just need a shirt to wipe their nose on.  I get to be their mother.  And I get to be a wife to such a good man.  And we get to live at the end of the street with a big yard for them to run in and right now we get to sleep with our windows open.  I get to smell my lilacs in a vase each time I walk through the kitchen.  But mostly it’s just about people.  We get to love each other, and there’s so much we get to learn together.

Today life was messy, life was loud, life was rainy, life was real.  Life is good, and what a precious gift God has given me to be here for it!

Gratefully,
Jennifer

I can’t count the number of moms I’ve spoken to recently who have mentioned that life is “really getting to them” lately.  For those of us with children in school, it’s the month of last minute projects, concerts, recitals, tryouts, registration, programs, testing, finals, games, practices, etc.  So much of the entire year is decided in May.  Most of your summer plans must be finalized by now, and most of what your children will be involved in come September must also be taken care of.  It’s a crazy month.

Personally, I feel like I’ve been swinging back and forth between desperate and joyful, experiencing everything in between.  I’ve been reminded of the saying “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”  I think a lot of us are doing that right now.  All the ups and downs combined with the exhaustion of this month has made me look more carefully at myself, made me realize that I need to toughen up.  It’s going to work out, so I need to be steadier.

I’ve had occasion to re-read the stories of some of my ancestors in the past two weeks.  Sarah Adelaide gave up her family for her religion.  Mary walked across the plains pregnant, with a two year old.  Elizabeth crossed the plains as a girl, wearing out her shoes along the way but she didn’t stop walking.  They wrapped her bloody feet in rags and they finished the journey.  They buried children, buried husbands, and kept going.  Many of them were poor, and yet in their own extremities they found ways to lift the burdens of others.  I read their stories, feel the greatness of their spirits, and wonder what they would tell me about feeling overwhelmed by things as trivial as soccer games, dirty bathrooms or homework assignments!

This morning I read a quote by Jerry Falwell, Sr.  It says, “You do not measure a man’s greatness by his talent or wealth, as the world does, but rather by what it takes to discourage him.”

Isn’t that a great thought?  I want to be someone who closes the door firmly on discouragement and keeps going.  It’s one thing to be strong when you’re rested and quite another to be strong when you’re weary.  What does it take to discourage me?  An honest assessment tells me I have distance to travel to get there, but that is a kind of greatness we can all achieve.  Few of us will be renowned for our talents or our wealth, but we CAN be undaunted.  We CAN press forward courageously and optimistically, no matter what.

As I’ve been studying my large stack of books which deal largely with human behavior, a thought has been parading through my mind for weeks.  It is this:  “We don’t feel our way to better behavior.  We behave our way to better feelings.”  In today’s world where so many of us quit doing or never start because of our feelings, it is important to understand that we’ll get much farther in life if we act the way we need to act and in so doing improve the way we feel instead of giving up because it doesn’t feel right that day.

I want to be courageous, undaunted.  I will refuse to be discouraged by small things.  I can do this.

Care to join me?
Jennifer

I walked around the corner last week to find my youngest on the floor, trying to “tape” herself and put her sister’s soccer socks on.  She kept at it until she’d pulled them up her legs and had her feet in big sister’s cleats.  Then she found an old jersey and donned it as a soccer “dress” of sorts.  Her big sisters got a kick out of the display and tied the shirt so she wouldn’t trip, then put her hair in a pony tail.

Then she was outside for the game, talking nonstop about what she was doing and pausing occasionally to ask questions like “Is that cool?”  We laughed and shook our heads as she carried on.   Really, it still surprises me sometimes that she is my 8th and yet is so totally different from all the others, a brand all her own.  In some ways I feel like my experience really helps with her and in others I’m at a total loss.  She is so unique.

She wants so badly to be big, to be doing all the things the big kids do.  {She’s pretty good at painting her own fingernails already, as she can find nail polish hidden anywhere.  Scary!}  She wants to be like them, and she thought that putting on all the stuff would make her big and fast and strong like they are.

I sat there, laughing and loving her and then it hit me that in some ways I’m just like her.  I’m trying so hard to do things, but still have much to learn and much growing to do before I’ll be the girl I mean to be.  Sometimes I feel like I’m all outfitted like a mom, but still fumble and trip as I try to actually do it.

She wants to grow up and play soccer, go to school, make cupcakes, be a Mom.

I want to grow up too, and be the Mom I intended to be, the Mom my kids deserve, the Mom that God gave me the potential to be.    Like her, I have yet to grow into the shoes I want to fill, but with faith and prayer and time it just might happen.

Aren’t I lucky I have them to help me do it?

Happy Mother’s Day tomorrow to all of you who love and care for children in any way.  May we all spend the day feeling grateful for noble and inspiring women who push us to be better, and may we place emphasis on those things in our lives which are of lasting value and importance.

Jennifer

This morning I happened to go to the basement for a random reason.  What greeted me was a large puddle of water on the middle of the floor.  The location could only mean a plumbing problem two stories above, instantly making me wonder what kind of damage we might have.   A quick check of the main floor revealed nothing, so we started poking around in the basement ceiling.

It revealed a mistake made by subcontractors when building the home.   While installing the ducting on the air return for the furnace, several nails went right into our hot water pipe.  They’ve been there for five years, leaking tiny amounts of water into the ducting and wood, and for some reason today the holes got bigger than the nails and we had a problem.  What a bummer that a thoughtless mistake wasn’t caught long ago!

The good news:

I went to the basement before 8 a.m., before I got in the shower and made it worse.  On a normal day I’m not down there until dinnertime when I need an ingredient from the storage room for our meal.  My husband was working from home today, saving us the cost and hassle of calling a plumber.  We turned off the water, drained the pipes into buckets, cut the pipe and went to buy a new piece.  We opened up the ducting to dry it out, put a little bleach water on the wood that appears to be rotting, and now we just wait and see if it has to be replaced.  The actual cost so far is around $20.

The bad news:

If the wood doesn’t dry out properly it will cost a lot more than that.  Having the water off meant no laundry, no shower, time spent working in the basement instead of doing other things.

Really it’s not a big deal, not a big deal at all.  But sometimes it’s tempting to feel like everything is going wrong, especially when you start stacking recent setbacks on top of one another.  Not necessarily life changing things, but little things that weigh on you, interrupt your ability to accomplish necessary things, and significantly add to your stress.  I was tempted to feel totally overwhelmed by this today, not just because of what happened but because of what didn’t happen as a result of it.  Life has a way of getting us when we have the least amount of time for it.  I’m noticing that I’ve had to give myself a lot of pep talks lately, and today they increased.

Still, as I’m trying to live joyfully this year, I do feel like I’m getting better at taking things in stride.  At least I am on the surface.  The stomach ache I’ve had for several weeks might indicate that I’m not as successful as I think.  Nevertheless, it’s progress.  I’m working at it.

So today we had an unwelcome surprise.  But it happened on the right day, we found it at the right time, and so far it’s cost as little as it could possibly cost.  Let’s hope it stays that way.

And I’m thankful for running water that isn’t running into my basement.

I raided my dwindling supply of posterboard (I stash a bunch of it at the beginning of the school year so we never have to go to the store late at night for the surprise poster assignment) and made myself a calendar for May.

Try as I might to minimize it, this month always runs us dry, and often before the month has ended.   I don’t want my kids to think that because you’re sick of it, you get to quit.  I want them to finish the school year well.  I want to finish the year well (although that goal often morphs as the month goes on into something that resembles surviving it more than conquering it).

So instead of wasting space with names, I chose a marker for each family member and made a color-coded calendar.  At a glace I can see who needs to be where every day.  I didn’t include the long lists of items that need to be finished, or errands, or piano and violin practice.  It doesn’t include the time it takes to tape ankles before games and practices, or driving time or pick-up times.   My personal lists are elsewhere.  This is just the basics.

I’m liking the size of it.  It may be my new scheduling strategy.

I also went through each student’s online gradebooks at their respective schools and made lists of every missing assignment and whatever upcoming assignments were posted.  I know we’re going to get slammed with some projects that I haven’t heard about yet, but I can at least be aware of what has already been assigned and we can at least tackle any missing work.   On the back of the calendar I’ve listed those assignments, also by color, titling them “rescue missions.”

Because most of them were sick before spring break, there are a few of those that weren’t attended to well.  My handsome son who missed a week of school for his ankle has a long list of missing work.  I requested assignments from his teachers that week, but only 3 responded and so we’re doing lots of rescuing there.

I’ll be honest.  The calendar by itself doesn’t look too bad.  The list of schoolwork looks doable.  Putting them together is tricky.  Take tonight, for example.  We’re going to spend 5 hours driving to, waiting for, watching and driving home from a soccer game.  It will be fun, but it’s tough to get much done under those circumstances.  We will have another late bedtime for the younger ones.  Add to that the laundry, haircuts, clean rooms, meal prep, reading time, and I quickly feel like this:

I am trying to avoid eating poorly during an on-the-run month.  With little time for cooking, many of our meals look like this:

Some of the kids don’t love it but they all eat it, and that’s a good thing.

As the month flies by I’m also noticing a lot of areas in which we’re falling short.  Some of the children have developed behavior patterns that need to be corrected.  I’m keeping a list of them so that the minute school is out we can begin Behavior Modification 101, or in layman’s terms, do what you’re asked to do when you’re asked to do it.  Should be fun!

How is your May going?

Hopeful Homemaker

Seriously, it was the biggest cast I’ve ever seen on the lower leg.  EVERYONE commented on how enormous it was.  At school he had people stop him to ask about it, and I heard a lady at church exclaim, “THAT for just an ankle?”

All that padding!

And the ankle emerges at last…

And there is the incision.  It’s longer than they said it would be.  The pre-operative markings are still there.  The x-rays look good, but he’ll be in a boot and on crutches a while longer.  They removed the stitches but one of them broke and will just have to work it’s way out.   The ankle is still quite swollen, which they said is common.  He has no feeling around the area, which should return with time.   So this phase is finished and we’ll press forward.  Four more weeks until more x-rays and then we’ll find out when he can start walking again.

I had NO idea when this first happened how long the process would be.   Poor guy.  He is sick, sick, sick of crutches, but grateful he can take normal showers again, fit his leg through normal clothes, and so forth.  There is always something good to find, right?

These little people were fabulous while we waited.  There were no chairs in the cast room so we just stood there against the cabinets and watched.

And life goes on.  I hope I make it to June.

HH

I went to work in the kitchen and sent my girls outside to create the party scene.

A little while later I peeked out the window to see what they had come up with and smiled with delight.  It wasn’t just the supplies they’d chose to use that made me happy, but the feeling of love and teamwork they displayed.  I felt like I was watching a scene from Little Women or something.  They were a group of sisters totally consumed with making something pretty as a gesture of love for someone they care about.

I think that most mothers feel like they have more than enough bickering among their children and I would certainly fall in that category.  When afternoons like this one come along I thrill at the way they treat one another.  The “payoff” moments are fleeting, but they do come and it’s an added blessing when you’re there to witness them.

My two year old is an absolute riot.  I wish I had a running audio recording of her from morning till night.  The things that come out of her mouth are beyond hilarious.   During this little decorating event she was walking around saying “Someday when I am a mom I will make pupcakes for Sister Ingalls’ birthday!  I will.  I will make pupcakes when I am a big mom someday.”  The picture below was taken in the middle of such a recital.

The birthday party was a success.  I’ll share pictures of it this week.  I also need to remember what happened before the party.  I am so grateful for these daughters, for the way they nurture one another, for their creative vision and talents, for their desire to help make special memories for others.  I am such a fortunate mom!

Hopeful Homemaker

The surgery went well.   We have a picture of his foot cut open to the joint as proof that this really happened.   The discharge orders are much more restrictive than I anticipated…. he can only get up to use the bathroom for several days and can’t even sit up for meals until the end of the week.  He’s confined to the house for 7-9 days.

At the moment he’s sleeping peacefully, thanks to pain medication and the lingering traces of anesthetic.  I hope this week goes well.  Keeping him off the ankle proved to be increasingly difficult leading up to the surgery and the stakes are even higher now.  If he puts any weight on it the screw will snap and the surgery will be a failure.  I wonder how we’ll keep him from going crazy so he doesn’t make all of us crazy….

I confess I’d convinced myself that the screw would be pretty small.  This x-ray kind of makes me cringe.

I feel so bad for him.  It’s definitely not fun.
At least it will heal (if he’s responsible).  That’s the good news.  And I’m a fan of good news.

Jennifer

You see, the sun is shining and I love it.  I walk around the corner of my house and can hardly believe how fortunate I am to enjoy so many flowers in my own yard.  It makes me smile with joy.

I spent an hour or more this morning visiting with an old friend who lives far away.  OH, it is wonderful to just sit and talk with people I love.  I find myself treasuring these experiences more and more.

Today is the first day this week that I haven’t spent considerable time in a doctor’s office.  We’ve been in medical offices every consecutive business day since last Friday, and I’m thrilled to have a reprieve (for 3 days, barring any emergencies)!  What a ride this broken ankle has been in just one week.  We’ve gone from a doctor to another doctor to a surgeon to another surgeon.  We’ve had two sets of x-rays and a CT scan.  We’ve gone back and forth between crutches and wheelchair.  Yesterday morning found us in the office of the ankle specialist who will perform surgery next Monday.  They cut off his cast and put him back in a boot, so we’ve gone from boot to cast to boot again.  After the surgery he’ll go back to a cast, then back to a boot.  Crazy stuff, this broken ankle business.

Our evenings have been full of activity.  Wednesday night found us at BYU for the Hope of America performance which our 5th grader was involved in.  When did this kid get so big and handsome?

Last night I had eight children at two soccer games.  I spent the evening trying to watch both games and keep track of five children running around (the one in a wheelchair was easy to spot, especially because pushing yourself through tall grass in a wheelchair is slow work).  My four year old needed to use the restroom so I took her and the two year old with me on the walk across the park to use their facilities, thinking the others would be fine.  I returned to find a crowd gathered around my seven year old, who sliced her foot open in my absence.  She was sobbing, there was blood all over her foot, and I couldn’t help but marvel at what a spectacle we were as people started asking me if the boy in the wheelchair was mine as well.  I took a deep breath and wondered silently if we’re just weird or if our drama is simply a matter of odds.  The more people in your care, the more life there is to be lived, I suppose.  It seems we’re doing a lot of living right now.  Tears pricked at my eyes, not so much because of the cut or anything specific.  I just felt worn out.

I suppose I’m learning.  I felt that feeling of stress, tension, embarrassment at all the attention, and then I let it go.  It was time to smile and enjoy what we were doing.  I turned and surveyed this beautiful view and concluded that all will be well.  I am so fortunate to be alive and experiencing so very much.

On our way home I bought some steri strips and we doctored the gash ourselves.  Because I couldn’t bear to sit in another doctor’s office.

You know, I really wouldn’t mind a boring week or two.  Do you think it’s possible?

Smiling,
Jennifer

We traded the boot for a cast, and the crutches are now taking second place behind a wheelchair…

and it took him just a few minutes to master this:

He makes me laugh.