Nadine

A Growth-full Week

/ amylynw / Leave a comment

It’s been the inevitable low after the high.  A great weekend, followed by some real-life hard times.  What better way to break up the monotony than taking a field trip to a local farm/veterinary clinic?  So, yesterday we headed out to some friends’ farm for some animal fun.

Nadine was in her glory, feeding the baby goats and petting the horses.  Betty wasn’t as sure about the goats at first, but soon warmed up to them.  She also got licked many time by one of the dogs until she giggled.  It was so adorable.

 

 

Jack was super brave to ride the horse bare-back in his crocs.  He’s brave in other ways too.  The other day I was watching him from the bathroom window.  He was outside, tying a karate belt to a tree branch.  Next, he climbed the tree and tied the other end to a higher branch.  Then he jumped down and grabbed hold of the loop he just made.  After a quick tug to make sure it was tight, he confidently hoisted himself about four off the ground and started to pull himself up by the rope.  All of a sudden, one end came untied and he fell flat on his back with a thud.  I expected tears, but he lay there for a second before brushing himself off and standing up.  I came outside to make sure he was okay, and before I could ask him, he said, “Mom!  Guess what?  I just made a trap and it works!”  Pause.  “I tested it.”  Oh, my.

I know the Lord has great plans for that boy.  When he’s not being tough, he is super sweet.  He’s been diligently working on his letters and numbers.  I found that counting to a hundred while pulling out a measuring tape is right up his alley.

Betty has been changing so much this month!  She still gives us “the look” with wrinkled nose, furrowed eyebrows and a loud squawking sound to accompany it.  We are working on our manners and today she learned how to give high fives.  Her favorite thing outside is to collect rocks, put them into something and give a high five after each rock.  She’s sporting seven teeth, with more popping through very soon.  She loves to talk with her hands and tell stories with much inflection.  Perhaps a linguist?

There is something satisfying about watching boys whack things with sticks.  Their language isn’t with words, but rather with loud noises and a mutual understanding of sounds and war-like cries.

They are very different than girls.


Girls are pretty and sweet.  Even with a drooly mouth, this one still looks beautiful.

So, even though I’ve been challenged to my core this week on wife-hood and mother-hood, I’m so thankful for the rewards each day.  Hugs, forgiveness, love, smiles, and little glimpses of growth in hearts and minds.

Monday Crunchies

/ amylynw / 3 Comments

Monday.  The day when it feels like every cracker crumb is stuck to the bottom of my slippers as I crunch across my kitchen floor.  The day when school sneaks up and says, “Boo!”and scares me every time.  The day when the contents of my fridge force my creativity to expand to un-natural proportions just to think of something with which to feed my tribe.  The day when an extra cup of tea is in tall order.  I honestly don’t dislike Mondays, mostly because there is nothing too drastically different about them than every other day in the week.  I still cook, clean, change diapers, do laundry, make three meals, sweep dust bunnies, wipe mysterious stickies off the floor, play referee, and plop into bed exhausted.  True, Monday follows our one and only guaranteed family day, which is always a bit of a letdown.  I guess that is why my kitchen floor feels more crunchy than usual and school seems a bit harder than other days.  Today Betty also seemed to turn a corner in her tiny growing-up life.  She has a snotty nose and a sore throat, but there was more to her wee little crying fits than just all that.  They definitely left me swirling a little bit.  I’m bracing myself for a new year, new Betty.


Is there anything cuter than a heart on the bum?  Perhaps, maybe, that heart sneaking away up the stairs in a flash…

I had a lot of girl time this weekend while Matthew took the boys rock-climbing among other things.  It is rare that I catch all three playing so sweetly together.  Nadine was pushing the littles in the clothes basket, which was just as exciting as any boardwalk ride, let me tell you!

 

Betty weighed in a whopping eighteen pounds at  her one-year check-up.  She loves to walk, assisted.   Some of her new tricks include blowing kisses and giving away real-life, sloppy wet smooches on your cheeks.  She climbs the stairs in a jiffy and then lays on her belly at the top and squawks for help to get back down again.


On Saturday when she was starting to get feverish, Nadine rocked her right to sleep while humming “Silent Night”.  It was precious.


Speaking of sleep, this is my favorite part of Monday and every day. Sneaking into the kids’ bedrooms and watching the way sleep transforms their darling faces.  Betty snores and is always in a different position.  Sometimes on her tummy, sometimes her back, sometimes with her feet straight up in  the air on the side of her pack n’ play.  Elijah generally is sprawled out across his bed and can’t be woken up for anything.  Just like his daddy.  Jack is usually curled up into a tight ball, sometimes his entire body underneath the covers.  Just like his mama.  Nadine is almost never asleep before I go to bed, but when the rarity occurs, she is on her back, straight and tall, or half way under her covers and half-way on top of them.  She’s somewhat haphazard when she sleeps.  There is frequently something funny about how Elsie has fallen asleep.  She doesn’t have any one special thing which she likes to sleep with every night.  She almost always is asleep on her back, like a statue, sometimes hands folded across her chest.  The other night, unbeknownst to me, she fell asleep holding a balloon she had received that day.  It is pretty tricky taking pictures in a dark bedroom, but the flash didn’t even make her flinch.


This Monday Matthew got his third out of four infusions.  He’s feeling so much better than three weeks ago, and next week we’ll see where he is in a bit more detail.  When he got home from work, I was sitting on the dirty kitchen floor with Betty on my lap, banging spoons onto a metal bowl.  He knew about my challenges of Monday.  Then he handed me pure gold:  my favoritest tea ever and German chocolate.  Now there is a sweet way to end a Monday.

December Rain and Some Sparkle

/ amylynw / Leave a comment

It’s raining outside.  I’m fine with that.  We got our farm run in today, returns done, bananas bought, and everyone is finally asleep.  I say finally, because usually they do well going to bed, but tonight the boys decided to be silly and put on almost every pair of pajamas they owned.  I know they miss their daddy, and things get a little hairy around here when we miss our daddy.

As said yesterday, there was something special planned for our date last night.  Someone’s wish came true.  Nadine has been hoping to get her ears pierced for a long time.  On our date, we did just that.  Her excitement was through the roof!  She looks so grown up and stylish with her new bit of sparkle.

It’s been a challenging week with Matthew gone in Philadelphia.  Despite the fact that I’ve been getting a lot accomplished, it’s been crazy.  Today alone, I had something extremely painful land on the bridge of my nose and now I have a nice cheery red mark and a bruise.  Then Jack fell head-long onto the sidewalk while racing at an insane speed on a toddler car.  I’ll give you a little tidbit of his conversation with Matthew on the phone:  “Daddy,” he said through tears, “I fell and hit my head and my brain is bleeding!”  I could hear a very concerned voice on the other end ask if I was there.  Jack handed the phone over to me and I reassured Matthew that it was just a bump, and that his skull was infact still intact and there was just some skin bleeding.  Jack is such a strong little guy, that when he gets hurt for real, he doesn’t really know what to do with himself.  He rested for a bit, enjoyed the undivided attention from mommy, and the last brownie, then perked up just fine.  He was pretty thrilled too that his hair covers the bump just right, because he doesn’t want anyone to see it.

Some moments today I felt a little overwhelmed, a little crazed.  I overheard Elsie say, “I’m freaking out!”  Yeah.  That’s about how I felt at some moments today.  Not sure where she heard that, though.  I’m trying to hold down this energetic fort, but at the end of the day, I feel a ton exhausted.  There is always someone needing me, that sometimes I go outside and sit in our van for two minutes.  Today I tried that trick.  Ten seconds later, a little happy face peered in the window at me and said very loudly, “The door is locked!” while she tried to open the car.  I smiled back and did nothing.  A minute later I went back inside feeling better.  I find that works better than locking myself in the bathroom, because in the bathroom I can still hear everyone, and inevitably someone always has to desperately pee at the same exact time I am desperately trying to have a time out.  All you moms out there, I understand.  I understand that even though you’re constantly surrounded by chaos and voices and little people, you can still feel lonely.  I understand that sometimes you talk to yourself, because it’s as close as you can get to an adult conversation.  I understand that two minutes of seclusion can be more priceless than a clean home.  I understand the vicious cycle of laundry, and the feeling of victory at folding the last shirt, only to realize that the bin you thought was empty, has magically re-filled with dirty clothes yet again.  I have first-hand experience with the dust bunny mystery.  It’s no mystery!  They hop out of the dust pan and back into the corners the moment my back is turned.

Yeah, this week has been challenging.  I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that Christmas is in two days.  Speaking of wrapping, I haven’t even started.  But, unlike my three-year-old, I’m not freaking out.  I’m enjoying the sound of rain in December.

The Bay Island Experience

/ amylynw / Leave a comment

 

In all of our almost ten years of marriage, Matthew and I have moved fourteen times.  
A few of those times, it was “just” moving a bunch of suitcases from one place to another as we switched apartments, while the rest of our belongings were in storage.  I love reflecting back on each move, and how God miraculously provided for us at just the right time.  Before Elijah was born, we lived with Matt’s parents.  I was on bed rest, so his mom was helping me out with Nadine while I lived in their attic and kept busy trying to keep a little baby cooking as long as possible.  When Elijah decided to come two months early, he spent five weeks in the NICU.  That’s another story.  A month after he came home, we moved to Honduras to live for five months.  It was a huge highlight of our married life.


We lived in one room here, one room there, moving with the missionaries we were visiting, until we reached the island of Roatan, just off the Honduran coast.  When we arrived, Matthew was literally puking his guts out from sea-sickness.  The short ferry-ride to the island had done him in completely.  While he threw up over the side of the deck, I was stuck below with both kids.  No children were allowed on deck, and instead of having the support of my husband, I sat next to some wacko guy who told me stories about his fire-breathing tricks.  It was a very tumultuous beginning.

 


When we moved into our own apartment, it was one room, with a small divider that separated the kitchen from the bedroom area.  We rigged a curtain around Nadine’s bed, and Elijah started off in a suitcase before moving to a pack n’ play.

It was the magic pack n’ play, that literally fit in every space we ever needed it to fit.  The legs fall off every time we put it up, but we still use it all the time at Grandma’s house.

That apartment had two burners in the kitchen, and a sink.  That was it.  I learned how to make homemade tortillas, and shrimp that could make your mouth dance.  Lobster was like chicken, and we ate it every week.  I made no-bake cookies a lot, and I really started to miss having an oven.  Almost every day we would buy “pan dulce” (sweet bread) from a lady who came to know we would buy her delightful  bread whenever she came knocking.  We spent our days studying Spanish, swimming in the Caribbean, and praying about what we should do next with our lives.  A very definite close in chapter was going on back home, and we were headed off to California that summer.  So, in those few months, we read a lot, prayed a lot, and walked a lot!  We had two sweet babies who were 13 months apart, and whom everyone thought were twins.  
We walked to get our groceries, walked to check our email, walked to visit our friends.  It was beautiful there.  At night, when the kids were asleep, we would lock up the apartment, and walk down the pier of the motel and sit on the end, listening to the ocean below us and looking at the stars above us.

Then, one day, a family that was living in the one big apartment of the motel, moved back to the States.  Matt asked the owner if we could live there instead.  It was worked out, and we quickly packed up our bags and carried them up the stairs to the HUGE apartment.  My favorite feature?  The oven.  I also loved the winding stairs that brought you up to the living room, and the windows that were everywhere so you could see the ocean.  The bedroom was window-less, but housed a California King-sized bed in which I got lost every single night.  The living room and bedroom were basically connected, but the kitchen was not seen from the bed room.  The bathroom got so hot around mid-day that you had to dance while you peed so your feet wouldn’t burn!  But I loved it there.  I loved the crazy deck with completely unsafe measurements between the slats.  I loved how you could watch a storm coming from miles away, and how I could hang my laundry to dry in the salty breeze.


Thankfully neither of my children ever fell from that deck.  We would drag mattresses outside and play, while the ocean breezes kissed our faces.  I would make pizza twice a week, just because I could.  We also bought cheap chocolate cake mix and would sometimes make a whole cake in the oven and eat it for supper after the kids were asleep.  The other huge blessing about that apartment was that our friends before us had rigged a satelite dish onto the roof where we could connect our laptop to the internet.  No longer did we have to walk to the Yacht Club to check our email.

 I felt like we lived the life of kings.

It was so much fun when my parents came to visit us for a week.  We weren’t too homesick for anything American, but we did miss our family.  Then something changed in our schedule that made us think it would be better to come home two weeks earlier than planned.  We decided to only let my parents in on it, and to surprise everyone else.  The day before we flew back to Pennsylvania was full of craziness.  Nadine had a special little blanket that she called “Dee Dee”.  For some odd reason, she decided to throw Dee Dee into the ocean.  I was holding Elijah on the deck, so I yelled for Matt to go get it!  I knew the next day of flying would be disastrous without it.  So, he jumped in, clothes and all, to fetch Dee Dee from the sea.  Since there were no dryers, we used a friend’s hair dryer to get it as dry as possible.  Nadine loves to hear the story of Dee Dee in the sea.


Tonight  I’m awed by the countless blessings God gave us, specifically during our short time in Roatan.  I never knew how much I needed that time.  After living a whirlwind two years of marriage, with two babies born during that time, and not living on our own for at least eight months, it was God’s perfect timing to give us some undivided family time to seek Him together.  As I look back, I’m reminded in a fresh way about how God just loves to bless us with details.  Like cake mixes and ovens and Dee Dee’s.

The Three-Minute Tour

/ amylynw / Leave a comment


It took me a year to walk to this place.  That is, it has taken me a year to actually do it.  It really only takes about three minutes to get there.  So, today, for the third time in one week, we headed over to the baseball field that is on the next block.  This time we pulled the wagon.  Yes, it is as dirty as it looks.  The girls obviously didn’t mind!  Betty was chomping at the bit with her two little teeth.


After discovering this place which has fences to scale and a big field in which to run, the kids beg every day to go to “the park”.  About one minute after we got there, Jack discovered his hidden (or not so hidden) Ninja self.  After all, it is what he wants to be when he grows up.


Not to be outdone by her big brother, Elsie scaled right up the fence.  She was so proud of herself when she succeeded in going up AND down without any help.
 Here is another face of accomplishment.  Jack hopped on Elijah’s big bike and took off with a grin.  He zoomed around the field like he’s been riding big bikes his whole life, promptly pushed it up to the top of the highest hill he could find and raced down without a flinch.


Then he discovered that riding with one hand is pretty cool too.


I think I see his manhood seeping out of this picture.  He so proudly showed me the hair on his legs the other day, and thought they looked like a man’s.  He’s still a little boy, though.  I don’t know too many men who would walk around with used bubble wands attached to their belt-loops like it’s the coolest thing in the world.


Elsie is a little runner.  She runs back and forth tirelessly, with just her shadow to spur her on towards faster speeds. 
That and her fancy shoes:


Then there’s my not-so-little girl who is wearing my shoes now and borrows my jacket because the ones from last year go up a few inches from her wrist.  


Elijah and Nadine love to play kickball, soccer, or whatever they think of at the moment.


Elsie is so close to mastering the two-wheeler.  She had me in fits of laughter with all her giggling and accidental slamming on of her brakes.  It is a really good workout to push a three-year old on a teeny bike that requires a constant squat while running.

Then there’s this little munchkin who just goes with the flow.  If the flow happens to hit the decrepit swings for a few minutes, then she’s all smiles.  She doesn’t care how nasty the chains look, or even if they hold her up.  She is consumed with smiles and the new feeling of her tummy tickling inside her as the air whooshes by her face like a big breath.  
 
Every single day the kids remind me to make time for fun.  Hold all calls until the book is finished.  Turn up the music and dance.  They don’t care if they have matching shoes, matching clothes, or a beat-up soccer ball.  They do care about feeling loved.  They want us to notice how cool they are with their imaginations.  Like when playgrounds become castles and bubble wands become keys.  They want us to see them in action, laugh at their silliness, and cheer their accomplishments.  So leave the clothes pile stacked high and grab the dirty wagon.  Don’t wait a day, a month, a year… remember, it might only take three minutes to get there.

August Don’t Rush

/ amylynw / 1 Comment

Something about it being August makes me want to soak up every last ounce of summer fun. We’ve had plenty of slow-moving mornings and late night adventures.  We’ve had blueberry picking adventures and ice-cream suppers.

The other night after I finished reading the creation story to Elsie I asked her, “What did you learn today? What did God make?” After thinking a few seconds she replied heartily, “Waffles!” Then, to go on and show you what a conversation with her is like, she proceeded to say, “God made my legs!” Then, pointing to her knees she said, “There’s something in my legs.” “What?” “Stars!” I said, “No, silly. Bones!” She proceeded to go on, “I don’t like to eat bones. Bones are for dogs. I like white dogs. I don’t like big dogs. Big dogs lick me on my foots and my hand.” Then, she is reminded to look at her hands. “I need to get my nails off. Mom, can I go to Heidi’s house to get my nails off?” You see, Aunt Heidi always paints her nails. That, my friends, is just a smidgen of what a conversation with Elsie is like.

As we were driving last week Nadine very confidently said, “I have a GPS in my head and it’s telling me that it might rain today.” Elijah, just as confidently said, “That’s a thermometer.”

  

 Summer is full of hoses and swimming pools and ice-cold cokes.  It’s the sweat on your body and the drippy wet circle left under your cup after it’s been sitting on the table for one minute.  It’s the smell of tomato vines and basil leaves and the sound of children splashing.
 
 For me, this summer begins the start of running minimalist-style.  My shoe-maker styled my old sneaks the way he styled his, and it’s training me to run on my fore-foot, not my heel.  Fun!  So far my foot injury has been non-existent and I can feel other muscles that have never been used in running before, getting a good work-out.  I’m up to two miles without stopping, but haven’t reached the “I love running” stage yet.  
 Oh, August, please don’t rush past me like the rest of your summer friends have.

>Bunny Love

/ amylynw / Leave a comment

>

Last time Matthew was mowing he almost mowed over a little nest of baby bunnies!  Every day since, the kids have been taking the bunnies out of their hole and loving them thoroughly.  They are growing so fast!  I feel like this is the best case scenario as far as pets go!  Let their mommy feed them (which I thought she wouldn’t once we started handling them, but so far they seem to be thriving). 
There are three of them, after the fourth one died of fright last week.  
 I succumbed to their cuteness and nestled one for awhile with Nadine this morning.  I believe this one is Philly.

>One-hundred Snowflakes

/ amylynw / 1 Comment

>

Tonight Nadine and I sat in front of the fire, cutting out 100 teeny tiny snowflakes for her 100th day of school project.  It’s actually only been her 3rd day of school, but on Friday it will be 100!  That is, we’ve been homeschooling up until this past Monday.  I’ve not been feeling right about my homeschooling skills and so Matthew and I went to the local elementary school and took a tour.  It is a brand new building and we were very impressed with all of the teachers and faculty, etc.  So, we registered Nadine and Elijah and on Monday off they went!  The first day, the bus missed the memo that we were going to drive them in to school so we could meet their teachers.  Jack was the only one who cried.  The second day, the bus came and Nadine was SO excited that she tripped over herself, twisted her ankle, was crying and couldn’t move for a minute.  So, the bus waited for about 30 seconds and then off it went, as Elijah was about to race outside to tell it to wait!   We piled in the car and I drove them to school, both of them crying that they had missed the bus.  Once we got there, everything was fine, and Nadine’s ankle was fine too.  Today, the third day, we were standing outside and ready 10 minutes early, stomping our feet in the snow, feeling more than ready with the 2-hour snow delay.  It finally pulled up and there was MUCH excitement and I took some pictures of their momentous achievement.
Nadine is into big words right now.  The other day she said, “I’m so flabbergasted that flabbergasted is a word!”  So funny!
Elijah likes to always think of large, hypothetical situations.  Like, “What if the bus driver is so tired and fell asleep on his way here?”  Or, “What if on my next birthday I turned ten!”  Or many other what-if-such-and-such-happened questions.  
Jack is a constant whirlwind!  He is excited to be five and go to school, but for now he’s three, almost four!  He picks his clothes carefully; to be sure his pants have belt-loops so he can hook his carabiner to them, and his own set of keys.  He loves keys.  Having just him and Elsie at home reminds me so much of when Nadine & Elijah were that age, playing together.  
Elsie is going to be two next month.  She is strong-willed, strong-bodied, and has a strong appetite.  She loves to read books now and settles down on your lap for as long as you’ll give her!  She has favorited a pink blanket and loves to hug, hold, and have near her, soft things.  She is quite fearless when it comes to going outside without a hat, gloves or socks on a 32-degree day, just so she can quickly sneak in a slide down the sliding board.  She isn’t so fearless when it comes to an ambulance siren or other disturbing noises. 
Matthew’s work continues to be steady.  The beginning of the week is always harder since he works double-duty and the kids usually don’t see him.  Sometimes we drop by Starbucks to surprise and kiss the best barista we know!  When he is home in the morning, we are pretty sure there will be chocolate-chip pancakes for breakfast! 
I’ve been exercising with friends from church, four days a week, and a few of us have a little program we’re doing together.  It’s been a really good discipline to weigh in each week, and encourage eachother to push hard and watch what we eat.  The accountability has been the key to success.  I’m hoping to run the Broad Street Run again in May with a bunch of people! =)
 One night I crawled into bed to find a tissue on my pillow.  There was this note written on the tissue, “Dear Dad and Mom, I love you so much.  I have a vare bad cofe.  Love, Nadine” (Trans: “a very bad cough”) I love little notes on my pillow.  Sometimes I wake up to find a note on my window sill in the kitchen.  I usually don’t notice it until later in the day when I’m more wide awake…and when I need it most!  A little boost from Matthew that reminds me to keep on keeping on… even when it seems like I’ve picked up that same toy car twenty times that day, or had to wash an extra load of laundry because someone decided to make a mess of themselves, or even when the crumbs that I swept up after breakfast seemed to mutate themselves at lunch.  At the end of the day, there might not be a note on my pillow, but I know that everything done for Him will count for eternity.  
 Jack telling me something very dramatic.