Enjoying Family

We had a family day last week and very much enjoyed having a day with Drew home.  We opted to not join my family for breakfast and instead enjoyed a rather lazy morning with just us.  Its been a rather long couple of weeks, with temperaments being similar to the weather, which has jumped from sun to rain to snow.  Not just the kids, but I'm afraid mine as well.

This holiday Monday though, was sunshine and warmth both in weather and in moods.  In my experience February is not a warm month and in order to make a walk pleasant, it demands extra thick coats, hats and scarves.  Drew quite obviously decided to do the lets-just-go-outside-and-check method, which in this case was more accurate.  Basically me and the girls were completely overdressed and the boys quite comfortable.

Maddie's attempt to practice her new found walking skills ended up with a face plant, the weight of her snowsuit pulling her down. It happened in rather slow motion with me being even slower to react, then to Drew's horror I burst out laughing.  Thankfully the weight of the snowsuit also provided a rather padded fall and she safely enjoyed the rest of the view from the stroller.

Maddie has now entered the toddler years as she's decided that crawling is a thing of the past and walking is really the only thing to do.  It has made life jump from busy to hectic.  As now on library days I can be found scurrying after her, rather overwhelmed.  She tends to not only pull everything off shelves but has a fascination with every single extension cord in sight....and tries to break for the exist as soon as my attention is on one of the other two.

The older two have been back and forth between being best friends and enemies.  This day they were best friends.  The bond between brother and sister is growing, at home they bicker and drive each other completely nuts, when we're out they look after each other, protective, to the onlooker it would seem that they are in perfect harmony with on another.  This day I enjoyed it, pushing aside all the recent memories of fighting and yelling. 

Last week started with this day being so wonderful, only for the rest of the week to end in a downward spiral.  Being at home with little ones, the good days and the bad days roll together.  The days that one decides that sleeping is just not necessary anymore and another decides that potty training one day is awesome and the next day has no use for it.  When I look at these pictures I'm reminded how easy it is to find contentment on the good days and how much harder on the bad, when sleep deprivation is very real.

Motherhood to me is a constant balancing act.  With one day being on top of everything and the next feeling as though I am drowning in undone tasks, in which all the things that I was on top of the day before have simply resurfaced.  Nothing in the home remains, with every load of laundry complete there is another waiting.  Drawers that are so carefully organized only take one set of little hands rifling for a certain shirt to reintroduce the original chaos.  Kitchens lose their clean shine after every meal.

The hard thing of being at home is never getting a job complete.  Its easy to get lost in the daily routines, when the days of the week blend together, to lose focus.

And then a day like this happens.  As we sat at the top of a hill and overlooked the trains below, the excitement of a little boy who declared to the world that "he's going to drive one of THOSE someday". The joy in the not-so-little ones as they raced us down a path and found more excitement in the gravel under their feet and not so much in the buildings around them.  Their joy in the squirrel that dashed past them after they waved at the homeless man across the street, seeing him as he is, a man to be waved at, not ignored.  

In my arrogance I think that I'm teaching my children, and yet in reality there are days that they teach me so much more.  They teach me to find the beauty in the world around me and not to rush through life.  They teach me to forgive and to forget and what it means to love.  They act with a child-like faith, and it is beautiful.

When the days get long and my patience is wearing thin, I'm slowly learning to ignore the mess around me and read the story, build the tower, crank the music and just dance.  To stop and let them remind me what is important.

a week full of randoms

Jacob was playing pretend hairdresser the other day on Kaylin with pretend scissors.  I was in a rather blissful happy place in which the kids were not fighting, Maddie was stacking blocks and I was enjoying coffee and a book.  A rather rare sight these days.

Later, I found chunks of real hair thrown behind the couch after I saw Kaylin walking around with a box on her head.  Inconspicuous child that she is. Drew's wondering how I didn't see that coming.  Really?  I figured when I leaned over and asked if they were fake scissors that meant that my 3 year old had fake scissors...why would a 3 years old trade the fake ones in for real ones?  sigh...

And then, I took this picture, which at the time I thought was a cute bonding moment between older brother and younger sister.  When I downloaded the pictures I realized that he was in fact, attacking her shirt with scissors.  It has become apparent that all scissors, and tools that open into scissors, need to be under lock and key.

This one has started taking her shaky steps. Which I just can't get enough of and I kinda hope those shaky beginning steps hang around for awhile.  Although, when I take out the camera and draw attention to the fact that she is walking she frantically grasps the air for something - anything to hold onto.  When she doesn't think about it, she walks all over the house.  Funny girl.

Last week we headed to a Paul Brandt concert with friends.  It was super fun-adult-only-time, worth every penny and I wore plaid, brown boots and skinny jeans.  My girlfriend assured me it wasn't too country but just-enough-country.  I did in fact have to call my other girlfriend asking what she was going to wear.......can you tell I don't get out much?

Kaylin's been belting out the lines of the song Alabama "I'm in a hurry and to get things done" every time she sense that I am going to urge them to hurry.  I was left wondering after the concert how and when Drew and I became country fans.  Considering that it wasn't THAT long ago, before kids and marriage, that we would drive around listening to hip hop and rap.  But then, maybe it really WAS that long ago.  Time is flying, my baby is walking, my oldest is heading off to kindergarten in September and my middle one has turned a tupperware container into a skateboard.

Back to Paul Brandt - it was awesome to attend a concert where the twitter feeds were being monitored closely and at the sign of any slightly inappropriate twitter the screen was shut off.  He talked of faith openly and has given us music that is appropriate for little ears and gives me a break from classical and kids music.

With that our valentines day was a bit of a whirl wind, we did make finger paint (post for next time), but our baking/chocolate/heart making extravaganza is going to take place on a different day. One day we will actually celebrate a holiday on the right day:)

And I leave you with a rather crazy-hyper picture of a rather crazy-hyper little girl.  Who needs a haircut that I better tend to before Jacob takes it upon himself......

Fighting for your Marriage

Before Drew and I were married I went shopping for a wedding band for him.  I found the perfect one, made of titanium.  Titanium is not a metal that can be re-sized so I asked about the warranty on the ring.  The salesman looked me up and down and said "5 years, you can bring the ring back and have it exchanged any time for a larger size during those years."  I was puzzled and said "but its a wedding band".  He replied with a raised eyebrow "yaaaa, surely you won't need it longer than that".

I didn't buy the ring, I walked out and bought one from a store that had a bit of a more of a long-term view of marriage.  But it showed me that marriage is constantly being attacked even before it starts.  This sales person took one look at me, young and inexperienced and assumed that my marriage would fall apart before the 5 year mark.

It hasn't, but I do see marriage struggles all around me.  And it is very real.  We do live in a world where divorce rates are high and successful marriages are low.  Its a reality and one that I believe we need to be aware of.  Drew and I are in a fight for our marriage. There are times when we feel like we are winning and times when we feel like we are losing.  Its a constant battle that we are faced with, one in which we are constantly being reminded to serve the LORD first, then each-other.  We've started doing our devotions before the kids wake up, sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn't.  For those of you with new babies keep in mind that our youngest is now one, this, well, wouldn't have been so successful a year ago:)  What did strike me last week, while Drew and I were reading the Bible and the kids started stumbling down the stairs is that this is important, even with interruptions.  It starts our day in the right mind frame and the kids are seeing us starting the morning in study and in prayer, with each-other.  Reality is last week it only happened 4 mornings out of 7, the week before only 3 mornings.  With little ones up through the night, an early alarm clock and little early risers it can be difficult.  And yet, I don't look at the mornings that we weren't able to as failures, its simply a season that we are in and something that we are striving for.

Often we find ourselves desperate for uninterrupted conversation.  Saturday night we decided to fill the kids plates and set them up in the basement with a dinner camp-out,  in front of a Franklin movie.  They were beside themselves with excitement as we're a rather strict eat dinner-at-the-table type of family.  But sometimes its fun to break the normal routine, and this is one way that it really does get easier as they get older.  A year ago we wouldn't have been able to do this, but suddenly we find ourselves with two rather independent older kids who are quite capable of eating dinner and not spilling.  We fed Maddie earlier and she played happily in her exersaucer.  And us...

well, we sat at a quiet dinner table, lit with some candles, sipped wine AND were able to have an entire meal and conversation with no extra cost and only two minor interruptions.  See, money and time don't allow us the luxury of alone vacations and dinner out is saved for special occasions.  Our evenings quickly fill up, Drew doesn't have a 9-5 job and as a deacon is often gone at night.  Between the two of us its common to have only a few nights in a week that we're home together. And we're content with this,  but it does mean being a bit creative at times to make sure we still do get time together.  Sometimes its in making dinner a bit later, after the kids are in bed, or a cup of coffee after dinner when the kids are sent outside or to the playroom to play.  I believe that it is these moments that help us get through the difficult ones, those moments that are caught here and there during these years of raising little ones.  Moments that are used to chat, or to pray, for patience and understanding and the ability to prioritize our time together.  And an exciting dinner in front of the tv for the kids becomes a time to connect for Mom and Dad, and it was wonderful.

And the sun is shining and the kids are done playing outside and are, at the moment, ringing my back door bell.  Maddie is napping.   See - it really DOES get easier as they get older:)