Doing hard things

It is easy to say your want your kids to have opportunities to do stretch their character muscles and be challenged. That sounds good and wise. It is however, a whole other thing to actually facilitate them doing the hard thing. Sometimes we aren’t privy to the actual challenge until after it has occurred. Like today, Audrey climbed a tree, high. And when she went for the final dismount she fell. Scraped her whole belly badly. She did something hard and it didn’t work out super well. She is fine. But she will do it differently next time. She’ll find another way out of that tree that doesn’t net her being carried into the house in her brothers arms.

One of our kids stepped up, stepped into what we knew would be a challenging academic program this year. Last year as we decided on how to proceed, I wanted to say “let’s wait a year”. But she was ready. I knew she was. And I wasn’t being honest with myself if I said otherwise. She declared one day as we deliberated “Mom, I know it’s not going to be easy. I want to do it anyway.” It was a mute point from that moment forward. I wasn’t about to hold her back. Sometimes our fear prevents our kids from going, being, doing what they were made for. Finding a voice for that fear and calling it out so you can take a brave step forward is something I’m learning is paramount important while raising children.

Another child this year wanted to do something brave. He wanted to take on a memory challenge for our homeschool work through Classical Conversations where we participate in community each Monday. I read the requirements early this year and laughed. Who could do that? I brushed past the request to try for it. And I let months go by without encouraging him to work toward it. The year passed and he was tenacious on his desire to pursue it. Everything, I mean everything, in me wanted to say no. Not because I didn’t want to invest the hours of quizzing to help make sure he knew it. Honest truth? I wanted to say no because I could not handle the possibility of him failing. He would not accept my unspoken answer. The kind of answer mom’s give when they don’t want to say the actual word no so they instead don’t invest the time and heart into making a yes happen.

It came time I had to “proof” him so he could proceed with the process of being officially acknowledged for this feat. I halfheartedly picked up the notebook and proceeded to sit on my bed for two hours with him. Asking question upon question. When we finished the 7 subjects, he asked what was next. I said “Um, nothing. There is nothing left.” He had recited, near perfectly the information below:

The entire timeline of 160 events from creation to modern times;
Twenty-four (some very lengthy) more in depth sentences about history;
Twenty-four science questions and answers;
Multiplication tables through the fifteens plus squares and cubes, conversions, and math laws;
Continents, countries, capitals, and physical features from around the world.
Twenty-four definitions or lists from English grammar;
Latin noun cases and declensions,
The forty-four U.S. presidents.

About 400 pieces of information in all.

He looked at me. Quiet tears ran down my face and his own eyes welled up. I had almost held him back from this super difficult thing for only one reason.

I did not want to see him fail.

I could not bear the thought of him not making it. I felt physically ill at the prospect. And in my doubt and fear I nearly robbed him of this big win. He pursued something he wanted to accomplish with such passion and determination.

Ideally, I would like to say “lesson learned”. But I know better. This lesson? The one where you don’t fret one bit because you’ve raised children to be brave and take risks and given them chances to succeed OR fail? It isn’t ever mastered.

We always said we wanted to take our kids overseas when they were middle school age. Which felt like FOREVER. But now here we are and here they go. Off on a plane in July with their daddy to Africa, to one of the poorest nations in the world. To serve and love and get their hands dirty and hearts split open in a most beautiful way, one they wouldn’t likely ever experience here. One more opportunity to release, to be brave, to take a deep breath and remember, God is writing their story and the unfolding of each step is something to behold.

A normal day… (updated)

The announcement goes something like this: “Finn is covered. Head to toe covered. He is completely naked and covered with tiny shards of styrofoam. It’s everywhere. All over the bathroom walls, the counter, the floor. And Finn.”

I take a deep breath. I’m sitting on the couch trying to drink coffee, recovering from a full weekend and our very long Monday. There is some magical thing about a mama who sits down. She can be hustling around fixing breakfast, filling the crockpot with dinner, doing dishes leftover from last night, switching laundry loads, wiping up unidentifiable smashed food and she is near invisible in her work. But sit that mama down and no one misses it. My backside hasn’t been on the couch ten seconds before one, two, then three sweet things are fighting for my lap. Good thing it’s a soft and plentiful lap. Everyone snugs in and about then is when oldest boy comes in with the news about Finn.

And these are the things our everydays are made of. Kids practicing self defense moves on the barn roof. Digging for bones in the forest and coming back with near intact skeletons. Hard working almost teenage Rylee traipsing out to the barn in her pajamas every single morning with a big milk bucket and bed head. Someone forgot to let the turkey out and she’s talking loud from her pen reminding us to set her free for the day. The pigs are done with breakfast but they are ready for second breakfast if anyone cares to oblige. Coyotes are closing in every morning and the three big dogs are on constant watch, sure to bark away any rustle from the forest. A dog shows up locked in the pantry after someone shut him inside to “clean up” an entire box of spilled granola.

A two year old whose sparkling blue eyes are sure to dazzle is happy to climb trees or climb onto counters using drawer knobs as a ladder. She is just as pleased to act as “baby” and get to “nap” in a suitcase. Only the pretend nap turned real and she lays there in the middle of the noisy kitchen for an hour snoozing. She has a penchant for “beddies” (berries) and the berry crisp someone accidentally left here last night ended up being her bedtime snack since she found it (and a spoon) before anyone else did. She loves to snuggle cousins and creatures of every sort.

Blisters on my hands now just healed from an evening of food prep and endless slicing and dicing. The sacrifice of a weeknight evening for the sake of precious friends seemed painfully small but the only thing I could do to communicate love. Their loss of new life at 11 weeks pregnant was all too familiar to us and besides praying our hearts out, food seems the only other way to extend compassion.

There are stacks of great books to be read, one 7 year old sits reading to me this very minute. The library hold shelf bears our name and inquiring ones want to know when we can go pick up the waiting books. Older ones have been enlisted by youngers to place holds so even the littles have books waiting for them today.

As for me, only styrofoam awaits me at the moment I’m afraid. Lots and lots of styrofoam…

***Updated 9:56 AM*** While I scoped out the styrofoam mess I came downstairs to the sound of Dad’s drill on the front porch. This is what I found:

When I inquired about what was taking place, Finn was quick to explain “I caught a moth, I put it in a ziploc and Audrey helped me poke holes so it could breath. I’m going to drill it into the front door to make sure dad can see it when he gets home.” To which I took another deep breath and commended him for his use of eye protection then I explained that while that was very sweet, it would permanently ruin the door. We searched for a big piece of wood and screwed the ziploc into it instead. It is propped up by Dad’s parking spot waiting for his return. The front door is scratched but not badly so.

While it might be very entertaining for me to write these posts every day (as this is very normal) – it would surely overwhelm. But for posterity’s sake I’d sure like to try every now and then!

Broken pieces and forgiveness

It’s a perfectly normal rainy fall Thursday. Kids plugging away at school work. Mom realizing we’re nearly out of coffee which is a pretty big crisis. At least a dozen other staples are at a near gone level as well. My efforts to stretch out Costco trips has probably been taken a bit too far. I head for the door and promise a treat for the ones who have to stay home. I bring one son with me since he’s my best muscle help, loves loading and unloading and scouting for our list items. I run back in and ask a daughter to come too, she declines and says she wants to do math instead. When I get outside, the car is one resounding sob. A precious little book that had been carefully tucked away, one with stamped pages collected from geocaching with Dad, it had been found. By an unruly four year old brother. And every page scribbled and drawn on. Deemed a total loss. Pages were ripped out in frustration and the little books pages were strewn everywhere. “It was so SPECIAL!!” he’s weeping and I tell him I’m sorry and I know we can replace it or fix it or make it better. The brother says sorry but its a four-year-old sorry and it doesn’t heal or help. At all.

We depart despite the trauma and get out to the main road. I’ve answered a call from my mother and am catching up a bit with her when I hear a loud crash in my van. I look back. The back window is missing. I’m driving down a super steep hill. I pull safely to the side. I get out and look for clues. I’m completely baffled. And more than a little scared. The not knowing what is happening. It’s an awful feeling. I look inside the hole where my window used to be. There is a harmless looking grocery sack. Nothing else. I look closer without cutting myself. There is a rock much bigger than my fist in the bag. And other various beach treasures that had been collected somewhere and left in the van. A rock big enough to shatter my window into hundreds of little pieces.

He meets my gaze. He stammers and mumbles about not knowing what was in the bag. In his feeling-deeply moment, he probably didn’t, its true. He was overwhelmed with feeling and he tossed the bag back without a second thought. I look long at him. I don’t ask why. He’s just now calculating what he has done. And a new tide of emotion rushes in. Fear. Unchecked remorse. An unbearable sense of “why in the world did I do this?”. I watch him and I silently get my keys and get back in the van. I dial our treasured car repair man, I’m more than lip quivering at this point, I tell him what happened and ask him to help me. He gives me a number of a man who does just this and I call him before we even reach the house. Of course he can fix it he tell me, and my tears cover my phone. I find Audrey and hold her so tight it hurts. The bag of rocks flew over her seat. If she’d come when I invited her to, she would have been directly in its haphazard path. The “what if…” catches in my throat and I can’t breathe or speak or cry or move.

The road is covered with glass. I’m not the sort who can just leave it there. So I pick up a dustpan and broom and drive back to the street where it broke. He watches for cars, blazing over the hill at 40 mph and alerts me to their coming while I kneel on the asphalt and sweep one shard after another into a pan. He holds the bag as I dump load after load in. He is shaking. The rain begins. I give him my sweater and crouch on the road in a tee shirt quickly soaking. I consciously breathe in and out and I hear the truth ringing in my head, in my heart.

Jesus meets me right here. On the road. In damp jeans with my tattered heart. Picking up the mess of someone else’s wrong choice. It’s more than a whisper, it’s the clearest thing ever. This. This is what I do for you all the time. I pick up the pieces. I enter in to your mess, even if it is risky. And I love you there. I offer you forgiveness. Grace. And I never stop. You can’t outrun my unrelenting love for you. And you get to extend it. Right now. In this moment. With your own son.

He keeps saying softly, “I’m so sorry mom”. I finish sweeping and turn to him. I wrap him up in the rain. I hold him for a long time on the sidewalk. I speak life and forgiveness and love. In a season when I feel like I’m messing up a fair bit, every day, can’t get anything “just right”…I get the chance to do this. This one thing right. To respond the way God responds to my (daily) mess. To practice what it looks like to say:

Yep. You did quite a thing here. Epic poor choice. But here I am. My love for you won’t stop, won’t quit. I choose to love you in this moment. You are forgiven.

I can hardly get my body into the house when we return. My legs won’t stop shaking. My insides quiver. The kids sit quiet and make lunch for each other. I bring them to the computer, show them this video. We talk forgiveness. How God offers it. Freely. Unceasingly. In the purest, most genuine way. How this is what makes the way of Jesus a different path. A radical one. And I pray silent for another chance to show them. To forgive fully and to love well.

Update – Missions Mondays recipe

I found my recipe to share with you! If you want the full story, scroll down two posts to read the original Missions Monday post. Here is the way I make the meal packets:

1 cup brown short grain rice

1/2 cup brown lentils

3T chicken broth powder

1/4 tsp garlic powder

a pinch of salt

Store in glass jar or ziploc bag.

With each packet, these are the cooking instructions – for our family of 8 we make two at a time:

Put 1 Tablespoon olive oil in medium saucepan.

Dump in “meal mix” (whole bag), saute for a minute on low/medium heat

to warm and awaken the spices.

Add 3 1/2 cups water, bring to a boil,

cover, turn to low, simmer 45-50 minutes until most all water is absorbed.

Loving our kids well

The room is bright green now and it’s been so long since I lived in it, I can’t remember what the color used to be. I remember being royally annoyed at the pitter patter of feet above in the kitchen. There must have been no insulation between that floor and my ceiling. I remember sneaking out the ground floor window one night at 17, not to go anywhere, simply to say I’d done it. No one needed to know I only sat in the cold bark for a while right? I laid on my bed in that room for hours upon hours talking till sometimes 3 AM to a boy. It was eons before texting and email. It was the days of the face to face or at least the real talking over a phone, probably one with a cord. I have no clue what we spoke of all that time or how we got up the next day for school. But somewhere in the talking, in the time spent, love unfolded and twenty years later, here we are – still unfolding.

How we have an almost twelve year old, I don’t know but I knew this summer I wanted some face time with her before the hustle and bustle of fall took off. I shared with her some of my thoughts and worries from that age, told her why it was wonderful to be a girl and to get to grow up into a woman. How we have this incredible opportunity, to get to be givers of life through our attitude, heart, words and eventually our body. Something amazing happens when you get to be alone with just one child and with the only intention being time together. No grocery list or agenda. No phone on the table beeping or buzzing away. No other siblings to share the time with. No distraction, only purpose. As they nearly always do, they know. They sense that the time is set apart and they enter in in a different way.

Once I was back home, we were talking one night about how to facilitate depth of relationship with each of our children, how to be keyed in to every one and building something solid so that as they grow and the stakes are ever higher, the losses greater and the dreams bigger – they know we’re right here. We agreed there really is only one way to do that. Time. Shared time, set apart with the purpose of listening and loving. Our six are wildly different. Unique and one of a kind. So naturally, it wouldn’t look the same for each one. We decided to each take an hour a week and each rotate through the oldest five kids. Sounds small? Well maybe. But let me tell you it was hard to find a regular one hour spot to set aside weekly where the other of us would be home to be with kids.

Our third born, he’s a dreamer, an artist and the most easy going kid of our brood. His name means peaceful and while he may be all boy and energetic as the rest of them, it really does describe his demeanor. He’s very different from me. He’s not book-crazed. He is meticulous with his pencil but not with his room. So when I asked him tonight for his choice of a spot for our hour, he said McDonald’s. And I fought every urge to say “Gross, no!”. I simply said yes and off we went. He asked if he could splurge and have two $1 cheeseburgers, I said yes. Then he asked if we could sit outside by the (dumpy, old) play place. Again, I was like really, are you kidding me? but I said a smiling “sure!”. He told me where to sit so I could watch him slide. I left my phone in my purse and sipped my smoothie. He was over-the-moon happy to have my undivided attention while he played. No one else was out there, so I thought I’d see if I could fit in the tunnel.

Oh glory. If you haven’t squeezed yourself through the play tubes at McDonald’s for decades, it’s about time. He shrieked “I can’t believe you’re doing this mom! I can’t believe it!’. He led me around and told me the best way to go down the slide. Upside down and backwards. Alrighty then, of course I want to do that. He said he’d catch me if I was going to fall off the edge. So reassuring. Once I was safely down the slide, my eight year old darling of a boy literally jumped up and down squealing in glee. He then did three somersaults on the padded floor to further express his delight. I laughed out loud and climbed back up for another round. Why in the world not?

We headed for the library to get his books on hold and he grabbed my hand in the parking lot and said with great fervor, “I llllllllloooove you mom. So much.” Mission accomplished. Though it didn’t look like what I expected, it met his needs and filled his love cup right up. And that’s the whole point.

Building meaningful relationships with my kids doesn’t have to be complicated or involve ten steps or a how-to book or an agenda. It really only hinges on one thing. Am I going to show up? Like really show up…put the phone away, turn the mental to-do-listing off, pay attention, listen with the heart, engage completely in the time spent together. When we do that, the dividends are beyond measure.

Pressing on

She picks pieces of clover and sits while I talk. Her wordless tears had told me that all she wanted was to stand at the fence next to the goats. So I set her there and turn over a water bucket and sit down. As she chews grass I pour out my full, raw heart. Earlier today, when I looked at the calendar my heart started to panic. I’m not prone to panic. Or worry. But it feels like suddenly two thirds of summer is gone and I don’t know what happened. Well, I do. June happened – septic pump failure/back up, ruined floors, repairs and the week at a motel and so on. Life happened.

There are so many moving parts and so much love and much talking and bursting LIFE in this home. Every day. And the sum total of laundry and hungry tummies and shoes left everywhere, its staggering some days. But those are superficial, really. It’s the deeper things that I’m spilling out with quiet tears on the lawn next to the pasture at dusk. It’s a quiet prayer for peace. It’s a plea for wisdom for hard choices. It’s a tender request that says please take care of my heart.

New things are on the horizon for our homeschool plans and schedule for fall. And there are areas of life that aren’t working well and need a course correction. But new is hard. With a half a dozen kids in the mix, two of whom have required great lengths of attention this past year, it is easy to feel daunted. Even for me who usually feels courageous and optimistic.

I say it all out loud again, as she plays in the grass. She watches a bumble bee and reaches toward it as it escapes her chubby, too-slow fingers. She fingers the clover again and does what she does most of the time…

She smiles at me while holding my leg. Her life is simple and marvelous and her every need is met. She abides in love, she is covered with love from every angle. All the time. And my heart catches a bit just thinking about it. The sibling issues and family challenges, I could probably sum up a good deal of the root of them in that one thought. Not abiding in love for one another. And the sting that comes quickly is, I see my part in it. My weary heart that’s stood up under much heartache and struggle this past year. A heart that hasn’t always been able to abide in love the way I’d like. The mama sets the tone for the home, at least for the bulk of the days when most of our day together is spent with me at the helm.

No matter how far we get, we aren’t “there”. No matter how much we grow and change, we’re not done. Thank goodness. But in certain seasons, it can feel discouraging. I read this tonight on the front porch in the dark and said out loud “YES” as it resonates so deeply as to the bigger picture at hand:

Thank God for everything up to this point, but do not stop here. Press on into the deep things of God. Insist upon tasting the profounder mysteries of redemption. Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment. – A. W. Tozer “The Root of the Righteous”

I’ve struggled to welcome the God I love into this imperfect and sometimes chaotic place this year. I’ve wanted to come in an orderly fashion, quiet and early with perfectly brewed coffee and a warm blanket. The season hasn’t been very orderly and certainly not quiet. There has been much coffee but not sipped slowly during prayer, gulped instead before it was cold so that I could see straight enough to make breakfast.

God doesn’t want orderly. He just wants everything. He wants all of my heart. It’s okay if I come with hair that’s still in yesterdays’ pony tail, teeth that aren’t brushed and a to-do list twenty things long and a heart that feels defeated or not enough. He wants me to remember this truth in the darkest, longest day:

Not since Adam first stood up on the earth has God failed a single man or woman who trusted him. -A. W. Tozer “The Root of the Righteous”

He hasn’t. And I know this. So when I wonder how to move forward, when I ask what can give so I can gain a little bit of margin in my life, when I dare to hope for breatkthrough in the places I need it desperately and wonder how we’ll all fare at something new this year…He wants me to remember.

He has never failed me. He is always (more than) enough.

Learning grace

I notice a perfect lip-shaped imprint on my water glass. It is pink lip gloss, perhaps a color I would like but not when it wasn’t my lips that left it there. I catch her eye and noting the lip gloss, I ask for another glass. She apologizes profusely that she didn’t notice it and brings me a clean one.

My four year old tea-date and I order our drinks and tea accompaniments and we wait. The fifty-something year old server is the only one in the tea house and she is spread thin. I see beads of sweat on her forehead and I smile at her. “It’s so hard to get good help” she tells me as she whisks by.

My little lady and I talk about tea manners and how to hold our cup and talk all things girl together. A quite elderly lady walks slowly by, listening to the little girl banter across from my seat, she grins wide and whispers “I love this, this is too wonderful”. I nod in agreement and keep listening to the sweet face across the table. She won’t be four forever. I won’t be her whole world like this for long. I listen and I savor the minutes, the sweetness.

My coffee comes, fairly warm, and I try to wait for the hot cocoa to come so we can sip together. But ten minutes pass and there is no cocoa. I remind her that we did order it and she apologizes again that she forgot it. I observe her righting mistakes all over the place, trying to keep up with an impossible pace.

Audrey tells me what she loves most about having a big sister, how lucky boys are because they get to be married to pretty girls someday and have lots of kids with them and how fun that is – she determines tea dates are fun and “we should do this again” she tells me.

Our bill comes and it’s wrong. I gently note the errors and she goes back to rework it. She returns and I put cash inside and she thanks me for understanding and I reply with words that come without thinking…

I live under so much grace, how could I not extend it to you?

I’ve never said it before or read it in a book but its a truth that sinking deep into my heart, that I’m holding tight to and learning how to live out in new ways. She stops cold, wraps her perspiring self around me and hugs me, total stranger, so tight. Thank you, oh thank you, I’m going to remember that. I needed to hear that. She tells me she’s sorry, again, that she’s too sweaty to hug and I just keep smiling.

It is the absolute truth to me, the daily grace of a living, real God that loves so fully, so infinitely. I feel it covers over mistakes, hurts, misses and frustrated-mom-moments like today when someone shattered a snow globe in the kitchen and went running away instead of alerting me to the danger and then I had glass shards in my socks and…grace wasn’t a frontrunner just then.

I forget. Every day.

And every single day I get the chance, again, to pick up the mantle of grace and hold it over those around me. Knowing full well, I don’t deserve it, neither do any of us. That’s why it’s called grace.

Our homeschool year

This post is as much for me as it is to share, as I type it out one more time it helps me see the flow and get (more) excited for what is to come.

The new school year holds more for me as teacher-mom than ever before. I have 4 official students this year (though trust me, Phineas is definitely a learner, he is outside right now watching brother search for caterpillars and giggling every step of the way!). While I am fighting the temptation to hyperventilate while I finish up our schedule, I am honestly really excited for all that is to come.

Here is our synopsis for this 2012-2013 Strovas family school year:

History: Story of the World Vol. 2: The Middle Ages – This is our history ‘spine’ and we will do all sorts of fun and interesting activities and mapwork and reading in relation to where we are on the timeline. Each of the oldest three will create a history notebook to chart time and collect their work as we go.

Reading: Hard to list a curriculum here for the olders, I can’t keep enough books on hand for them to read. They will be offered a continual feast of quality books that challenge their reading and thinking. For Kyler and Audrey we are going through the PAL reading program from the Institute for Excellence in Writing which looks to be a great deal of fun and I am thrilled to get some focused fun/learning time with the two of them.

Geography: no specific curriculum, but plenty of it built into other subjects

Grammar: Daily Grams workbooks for Rylee and Caleb, First Language Lessons with Kyler at a leisurely pace…but at these ages my much more experienced friends assure me that reading excellent literature and observing good grammar is more important than crazy amounts of grammar drilling.

Bible: For Bible as a subject, we are excited to try something new and use the Picture Smart Bible materials. Each day the kids will listen and observe and follow along with me in creating a ‘picture’ of every book of the Bible. My dad would love it, he has a penchant for diagrams and really it’s like a beautifully written diagram of each book.

Science: We are using Answers in Genesis this year. Starting with The World of Animals in fall, then The Human Body in winter and in spring we will do The World of Plants. It is perfectly suited for varied ages and teaches Creation science in a wonderful way. The oldest three will keep a science notebook to catalog their studies in this area.

Writing/Copywork: There are abounding opportunities to practice writing, but specific writing practice will be given daily in correlation to history and literature studies. The oldest two are in a literature co-op this year where they will develop their writing skills a great deal I expect!

Math: Rylee and Caleb are using Teaching Textbooks (which we LOVE) this year while Kyler (and Audrey as she is interested) will dive into Right Start Mathematics (hands on, lots of games, I think it will be great) . All are well suited to the kids that are using them….at least as well as I can tell. Some of my students do not love math at all and no curriculum in the world could change that!

Spelling: Trying something new here in this department this year, Spelling Power looks promising and the only way to find out is to give it a try. Sequential Spelling didn’t work too well last year.

Art and Music study: With one focus a week, we will talk and observe and learn about either a famous artist or composer. But as often as possible (think daily!) we will go about our learning with a smattering of classical music, just because we can!

Finding order – with a houseful of kids

Yes, I realize that five kids between 18 months and 9 years of age is not a houseful to some, but it is to most. And I most certainly have felt a big pull to make some strides in the area of organization and planning our days to work better. When we moved this spring I thought I had this great chance to implement 52 grand ideas on ‘how-we-can-do-things-better’. Turned out we actually had this great chance to clean out, give away and somehow survive moving. That was about it. And it was plenty.

I emailed a few veteran mama friends towards the end of May. We were (barely) crawling to the finish line and may or may not have finished our grammar work before calling it ‘summer’. My email went something like this:

I have a lot of small people at my house. I love them. They are messy and loud and imperfect (darn it!). I am feeling pretty overwhelmed. I want to be able to manage my home better, spend more time doing fun stuff with my kids, train them to help more efficiently and effectively and to PUT THINGS AWAY AFTER GETTING THEM OUT.

So those may be the main bullet points but in reality my honest email was much longer and was a plea for some direction, inspiration and encouragement. This stage with young ones is just plain hard. No way around it only one way, through. I trudged forward and packed our years school materials away for summer and took a deep breath. There was so much I loved and I am ever so thankful to get to have them with me instead of sending them off every morning.

There were several approaches to getting organized but some basic principles, that I’d seen pay great dividends even when I merely dabbled in them, continued to surface as I searched for ideas and help. Themes like:

get up before your kids and get ready for your day before it gets away from you
assign chores to your children, stick with the same ones so they get in a groove and do them well – to learn a good work ethic, everyone needs to learn to help out
expect EXCELLENCE – show them what a good job looks like and challenge them to greatness
children thrive on structure and routine, it makes them feel safe
mom’s need to model discipline and self-control (and sitting on the couch/computer/facebook on a smart phone/etc need serious boundaries)
one can schedule and still cultivate free play, creativity and other lovely things (I did not know this, really!)

Early June I wrote a friend (who I knew was struggling in the same ways) and suggested we read and brainstorm how we could plan better and make our life at home with our kids run more smoothly. She said a quick yes. We read and made lists and bounced ideas off each other and our husbands and made more lists. Our goal was to, by summer’s end, have a workable schedule for our entire days during the (home)schooling year. We would meet up late August and spend a few hours (celebrating her birthday) and hashing out all the details to form our many lists and thoughts into a master family schedule.

Today was the big day. We woke with the sun and I drove a long ways while she took a ferry across the water to get to our meeting place. After a hearty breakfast we broke out the gelly roll pens, the mechanical pencils, the plethora of lists, big erasers and a lot of determination. We spent hours working and planning (and talking). I think I drank 4 cups of coffee and 6 glasses of ice water and 2 mugs of tea.

We interrupted each other a few dozen times and erased what we’d written more times than that. Though this part seemed hard, it was easy compared to the work ahead. We have patterns that need changing, habits that need breaking and it won’t be a piece of cake for sure. In a few weeks, I’ll be sure to post again and update on how the implementation all went down. I expect it to be more than rocky. But we will persevere and adjust when needed. For now, we’re soaking in these summer days and spending every extra minute at the fair and in the sun!

A boy and his dreams

Today the wide-eyed one who loves to wonder told me with with brazen confidence:

See that tree mama? What I’m gonna do is climb it to the top and jump out after I make some wings. I’m going to glide down (a brother interjected, “won’t you FALL?”) Oh no, I won’t fall I will GLIDE. It’s going to be great!

I smiled at the blue-eyed one. Much of life seems to bear down hard on this precious son. The way he feels and learns and sees and hears makes for
o-v-e-r-w-h-e-l-m-e-d him more often than I wish. Who am I to crush his dreams? Who am I to be the voice of reason and tell him he can’t and it won’t work and here are 10 reasons why that is a terrible idea?

How many times have I crushed him already? Not been tender enough when he was (slightly) injured for the millionth time and I could not muster one more ounce of compassion? This the one child that managed to break his foot simply leaning back on a kitchen chair because he could not sit still through dinner. How have I taken the fun out of something meant to be lighthearted when all he wanted was to dream big?

He’s hard at work behind me right now. The sweet grunts and groans of boy deep in his work. Believing big that he can do something great. Is it my job to tell him he can’t fly? He can’t change the world? Just because I feel so darn grumpy this morning? Or just because the world is a terrifying place where the most unimaginable things happen? Every. Single. Day?

He just finished the work. “I’m going out to fly mama!” Hope filled and an ear-to-ear grin. “I’m right behind you, hang on” I call to him.

I grab a camera and chase the one who I know will one day conquer great things, for all the small he has to learn to conquer everyday.

“Do you think its going to work? I’ll climb up and you hand me my wings so they don’t break, okay? (he pauses) Maybe I should come down a few branches and try lower first?”

He trusts me, implicitly, despite my daily failing him. He knows I’m in his corner. Despite the thousand times I’ve wondered why he didn’t get a better mother than me, somehow he loves this one that he has. He asks if I think this is the right height. I breathe relief. I didn’t want to say it. Thankful he figured it out on his own. He waits and shouts “READY!” and jumps.

My eyes well up behind the lens because its not every day I see this kind of sheer glee from him. I love it. I love his sparkle and his creativity and his determination. I love the way he cradles grasshoppers and moths in his hands. The way he knows the sounds of different birds in our yard. I literally relish every single second because I know it won’t last an hour, maybe not even five minutes but the taste of this moments, these moments with this boy….they are so sweet my heart hurts.

Where big brother goes, little brothers long to follow. This does not always pan out well here. But it did today. Little brother searched for his own cardboard, his own scissors and tape and formulated his own ‘wings’. The littlest brother was happy to swing in the hammock chair while the big boys proved their awesomeness. The tree proved a challenge so we moved the picnic table to the edge of the deck which was a perfect, still challenging but not quite so crazy, height.

Someday his jump will take him out of my nest and into the wide world. I will miss his good days and his bad. I will miss the way he tucks himself under my arm on the couch because someday he won’t fit there. I will not always be his leading lady so I am determined to find more days like this one and love them with all my heart.

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A Place for Little Feet

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