kids

Five in a Row

/ amylynw / 1 Comment

There has been the sound of dice rolling the past couple days.  Yesterday I played Yahtzee with Nadine & Elijah for almost two hours!  The sky was brilliant, the breeze was so relaxing, and we wiled away the hours in comfy chairs on the front porch.  I definitely don’t do this often enough.

 I got to thinking about my life and how it’s a little bit like Yahtzee.  Let me introduce you to my players.

We have the littlest girl, who is working on being 1, but is thankfully still only 8 months old.  She is such a cute little squeeze.  She smiles at every. single. person.  I love that she sees past every prejudice we ourselves create  towards people.  She doesn’t see the clothes, scars, dirt, or other things that so often make us look the other way in pride.  Her eyes find their eyes and she gives the most undiluted smile.  This week she has mastered signing: “More please,”

and “all done!”

  

Her other favorite thing to do with her hands is flap them as fast as she can.  Especially to make the cheerios bounce off her tray!  She’s our little one.

  

Next we sometimes roll a three.  This little munchkin has a ton of spunk and ever-growing independence.  She considers a purple striped shirt to match just perfectly with pink striped pants.  Shoes are measured by speed.  They are either fast, or they’re not.  For some reason she has been into wetting her pants every day.  When I talked to her about it, the reasoning seems to be that if she wets her pants, she will get to change outfits.  I gave her permission to change outfits, but NOT to wet her pants.  Then I caught her singing, in her sweet Elsie way, “I will obey Mommy and I will obey Mommy, and I won’t wet my pants!”

Lately when we roll a five, it is very exciting!  Jack is into small glass jars in which he collects rocks, bugs, water, or anything else that catches his eye.  Yesterday he figured out that if he stirred water with a marker, the water would turn color, so we had many colored jars lined up on the front porch.  He has also been very sweet with extra hugs and more tenderness than I’ve ever seen before in my little whirlwind of boy.  The other day when Matthew and I were kissing in the dining room he walked past and said, “I KNEW that they got married!”  Then today he asked me to please tie his rollerblades. “Mom, if you tie my rollerblades then I’ll give you a kiss!”  That was a good trade, and off he went with no shirt, orange shorts, his rollerblades, eyepatch, and gun holster around his waist.  When  Elsie saw him she said, “Jack, you’re bigger!”  He replied, “Nah, God’s bigger, Elsie.”  I love five!

In Yahtzee you have the chance to roll a large straight.  Five in a row.  Well, the second born in my large straight is Elijah.  He is starting to love to read.  I love watching him read to Jack.  He is so good at remembering things.  He also really prays for people.

Two boys and three girls equals: full house!  My big girl who ironically I have always called my baby girl, is practically as tall as I am.  She is stretching me to new heights as she grows up even more.  Four more years until she is a teenager, and yet we can certainly categorize her as “pre-teen”.  She’s a beauty!   She also loves school and friends.  She is my ever-ready runner when I need an egg or a cup of milk or a tablespoon of vinegar from a neighbor!  I remember oh so clearly being her age, and running up the hill at Nyankunde to borrow a roll of TP or a can of Blue Band.  (If you’re unsure of Blue Band, let’s just say it was a wanna-be margarine that if you got a lucky can, wasn’t a neon green color!)  Oh baby girl, how did you grow up so fast?

I certainly have a full house with all these beautiful children blessing each nook and cranny with their treasures, noises, and messes.  They are so unique, each one.  Yet they are all equally loved, equally precious, equally amazing.  I just scored YAHTZEE!

Brothers that Sparkle

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Today the quiet upstairs while I did school with the older two kiddos translated into two words: blue glitter.  One new rule we’ve been impletmenting this school year is “room check”.  Done right before lunch, before they’re allowed to eat lunch, their beds must be made and the floor picked up to “decent” status.  Thorough cleanings are done on the weekends.  This has worked well for oh, four days.  Today I forgot to check their rooms before lunch.  I did have this passing thought during the morning: Why does Elsie have so much blue glitter in her hair?  But it literally didn’t get any farther than that.  Around lunchtime, as I went upstairs to fetch Betty from her bed,  my eyes caught sight of an ocean of blue glitter flooding the boys’ bedroom floor.  That explains the sparkly hair… and the quiet, I thought.  Let’s just say that the boys’ room got its thorough cleaning a day early!  Elsie also experienced getting her hair vacuumed, which she thought was a riot, and which actually worked to remove the glitter.

Oh, life.  Life with boys and life with littles is always an adventure.  Sometimes it invovles glitter.  Sometimes mud.  Sometimes putting on every pair of pajamas to become ninjas.

Elsie asked me the other day, “Mom, why do we have brothers?”

Well, if we didn’t, then… there would be a LOT less laundry, a lot less messiness, a lot less feats of bravery, a lot less, um, glitter to vacuum up… maybe.

Tonight I climbed into Jack’s top bunk and asked him to tell me about his “collection”.  He has a whole shelf, neatly organized with things special to him.  He’s got his robot guy, his box made out of legos, containing his stopwatch, jackknife, flashlight and one of 3 purses.  He has  a glass jar for “broken stuff”, a plastic jar full of water with a rock in it and a lid on top, a special car, his wicker basket for “extra special shiny things”, and his sword neatly tucked away behind it all.  I’m sure I forgot a few things.  It was funny, because after he went through everything, he looked at me, giggled, and said, “You’re in my bed, Mommy!”  He gets so tickled when I climb up there.

Tonight we rearranged some of the downstairs rooms to make them more functional for school.  I still have a whole lot of organizing to do before it’s done.  When I’m finished, I will take pictures.  Hey, at least I have one less container of blue glitter to worry about!

Do It Now

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Often my ideas are huge and unattainable. Like, I want to paint beautiful mosaics on Betty’s bedroom wall, even though I own no artistic ability to do so. Or, I want to create the perfect backyard getaway, when in reality the constant flow of dirt and water equals mud, and the small stones that used to all be contained in one small two-foot square, are now covering practically every square inch of the backyard. I see myself moving entire gargantuan pieces of furniture upstairs alone, or maybe strapping a couch that I find along the side of the road to the roof of our van, but I know it’s not possible. I envision a lot. Then I often get frustrated at myself for not doing whatever is needed to make that vision become reality. So, I’ve been implementing two new techniques. The first one is to not get bogged down with what I can’t do when all around me are a hundred and three things I can do. The second one is actually not that new. I’m sure it’s as old as Eve. It’s called the “do it now” method. Here’s the gist: I walk past a pair of grimy socks on the living room floor. I either walk past them another ten times, or Do It Now and pick them up on my way to the laundry room. Here’s another example. I wake up and leave my bed crumpled all day, or I take thirty-eight seconds and smooth the duvet and fluff my pillows. I know this is complicated, so here’s one more go at it: I can either think of a really cool idea to do with my kids, or I can by gum do it!

Last Friday I decided to by gum do it.

It took some planning, but not tons of time. The hardest part was sneaking stuff out to the car without spilling the beans that I was up to something. It began when I gathered the kids together and gave them a clue: “In the front seat of something blue, within an envelope lies a clue!”

The kids raced to the car and found an envelope with another clue, which then led them on a series of clues until they found themselves in the van, on their way to Grandma’s house for lunch! After lunch, we got back in the van and headed to their other Grandma’s house. No one was home, but another clue awaited them, and they trekked over to their favorite local jaunt/nature preserve to look for more clues and to find both Grandma and Jacob who were missing! We had a blast at Briar Bush, and made our way back to the house, where a treasure map led the way to the “treasure”, which was a box full of odds and ends that tickled their individual fancies.  It was a lot of fun!

We were able to squeeze it all in before the abundant amounts of rain began to fall over the weekend. That night Matt, Jacob, and Granddaddy took the kids running in the rain. Our kids’ love tanks are filled to the brim when anything that involves out of the ordinary, coupled with getting wet and muddy on purpose, is on the agenda.

The next day we enjoyed visiting with our cousins. The rain was falling in sheets again around suppertime, so the men grilled with umbrellas and raincoats!

I think she’s beautiful even when her tears match the rain.

We celebrated Abby’s 5th birthday with love, a wild game of sardines, and chocolate cupcakes that made even the heaviest rain-cloud-shod day seem like a day of perpetual sunshine.  Wow.  Those things were amazing.

When we left the cousins’ house Irene had decided to come in earnest and I had a small melt-down driving home. I don’t do well driving in strong rain/wind/snow. Once my windshield wipers have to be on that third little notch, I become unglued. Anyway, thankfully we made it home safely. Then began a long night for me where I got up often, breathed prayers over my kids, glared at the tree that kept brushing the side of the house, prayed some more, and saw two circuit boxes blow outside my window in a spray of electric fireworks. It was pretty wild. The whole craziness of the night compounded itself when somehow 3 out of 5 kids landed in our not-built-for-five double bed. I ended up on Jack’s top bunk and finally willed myself to sleep around 4:30am. I was pretty bleary-eyed the next morning. Thankfully our electricity was only off for about an hour during the night, so we were able to enjoy hot beverages and crepes while the wind blew crazy tunes and the rain filled our little fish pond.

While most of the area had to cancel their first day of school, we were hitting the books on Monday morning. This is our first year of homeschooling without the aid of cyber-school. We have two 3rd graders, one in Kindergarten, one in pre-school, and one in la-la land during it all. As Nadine would say, “It’s been SUCH a blast, and even though we’ve only done two days of school, I just LOVE it.” Me too, sweet girl!

So, we started with a hurricane, and are settling into a routine that is new for us. I’m excited to see how everything smooths out, and when we are into our rhythm I’ll be so glad to share our school day with you!  I’ll also be sharing some more of those Do It Now success stories as I experiment with this extraordinary technique that makes piles of junk diminish, dishes get clean, and some not-so-ordinary things happen!

August Don’t Rush

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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.

First Annual Kids’ Day

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Last weekend we had a blast, celebrating our kids!
 

Kid’s Day Began with made-from-scratch monkey bread.  Then, after a morning nap it was off to Hibernia Park for a picnic lunch!

There was much creek-walking and rock-throwing.

 

There was pudding and jello-eating without spoons (that’s more fun, right?)  No matter that I forgot them.

  

Then I was determined to get a family picture.  We haven’t had one since the day after Betty was born!

Getting ourselves together, balancing the camera on a rock, then running back to everyone without falling in the water… is a bit tricky.

It was worth it, though!  Not bad, considering we’re all smiling at a rock.


Then we were off to the sprinkler park with pizza.  I’m not sure what’s more hot, the man or the pizza!  Definitely the man.

 

I have learned that Betty loves swings.

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Then our last hurrah of the day: Going to the theatre to watch Cars 2.  The kids screamed with excitement!

The day was a success.  I’m excited to do it again next year!  Thanks to my friend Ruthie, whose family started this tradition and gave us such a fabulous idea!