Category: life & everyday

Week In Review  2

I still find it hard to take pictures– not because I don’t like to, but because it reminds me that someone is missing.  But, reality is that while I’m having my little pity party, life goes on and it’s easy to miss out on the little moments that make life scrumptious.  
So, here is our week, Instagram style:

 Kate drew this about a year ago.  It’s our family, as flamingos.  I proudly framed it because I love so many things about it.  Kate is so artistic and one of the things that she and Uncle A love to do together is watercolor.  Andrew is always so kind to let her use the “good paint” and they sit together for hours sketching and drawing. I love that she made our whole family– even disguised as flamingos (the “baby”at the far left is Annie, then Peter, me, Eliza, Kate, and William).  đź™‚

 We lined up the fingernail polish and painted away a few days ago.  I finally gave in to Kate’s request of being able to paint everyone’s toes herself (again, my artistic girl).  Currently, I am sporting blue on one foot, pink on the other, green on my fingernails.  It is taking everything in me not to take it all off.

 One of my friends said that she was surprised I allowed these sorts of shenanigans in my house. I told her I was feeling generous. 🙂  I was getting ready to strip the beds and wash the sheets, so I let them pile everything up and jump off.  Eliza landed and laughed, by the way.  And that’s William’s head covered by a sheet.  They decided that diving off blindly was more fun.

 We are still working on our Jesse Tree.  It will take until Easter, I guess.  Sigh.

 Oh that belly!  I may be guilty of buttoning the buttons on her sweater to show off that little pooch.  I love it so.

 I’m cheating a little, because this was a few weeks ago when we were a few hours into our road trip to South Dakota to see Peter’s family.  We had a few hitchhikers (my mom for 3 hours and my brother for 6), so William and I passed the time in the way back of the car.   We were next to the snacks, which made our less-than-stellar leg room worth it.

And lastly, I’m missing this sweet baby– my first (and only!) nephew.  We loved meeting him while we were in South Dakota.  He was doted on quite a bit by my baby-loving kids (well, and me).  He took it all in stride, though.  Eliza still tells me daily, “Jacob come to my house?”.  The 30 hours between our house and his is just too long!! We miss you, Little Man!

And that’s that.  Great little moments to remember.  Let’s see if I can make this a weekly assignment to myself . . .  just don’t hold me to it.  đź™‚  Happy Weekend!

Notes.  3

I’ve been noticing all these notes around the house lately.  It makes me so happy when I see how the kids are developing their ability to communicate.  

 Kate lost her first tooth.  In order to keep William from spilling the beans about the Tooth Fairy, I told him that he would get to act as her Tooth Fairy.  He worked so hard on a letter to her and I swallowed hard at his suggested amount for her first tooth.  I think we’ll stick to a quarter after this.

 “To Santa.  Here is my Christmas List for next Christmas.  I want a puppy!”

  “To William.  I am sorry for cutting your shirt.  Love Kate.  P.S. You are my best friend.  Love Kate”  Yes, a shirt somehow was cut in the process.  I still haven’t gotten to the bottom of this.

 William disappeared into his room and made a library for Kate.  She had been wanting to borrow some of his books and he wasn’t too sure about that.  We talked and he took off with the idea.  He even made her a library card that she had to sign.

 This one is on my closet door.  We’ve come up with a formula for Kate when she needs to apologize for something she’s done.  First, she says what she’s done.  Then she says she is sorry.  Last, she asks for forgiveness.  It’s helped her to know what is expected of her.  In this instance, she was particularly sincere, as demonstrated by all the hearts.

 This one?  The kids were on some secret mission.  I was glad to comply as it gave me quite a few minutes of peace and quiet.  It’s serious business when there are seven exclamation points!

 William came home with the sweetest Christmas card for us (and gave me permission to post it). It says, “I wouldn’t want to be in another family. Dad, thank you for your job.  Mom, thank you for your awesome ideas.  Eliza, thanks for being the youngest. P.S. Don’t pick your nose. Annie, I hope you are having a great time in Heaven.  Kate, thank you for your hugs even though I don’t like them.  From William”

  This is the best.  I love being married to William’s Dad.

A Saga Named Hank  2

I’m going to just suck up my pride and share this story.  Please don’t tell me I’m a terrible neighbor, even if you think I am.  Ok?  ok.

So Hank.

Hank is a great dog, really he is.  But he has some . . .  quirks.

Like terrifying the UPS man, which I find mildly hilarious.  Shouldn’t you just expect that if you’re the UPS man?!

Also?  Hank runs away.

We have an electric fence.  Doesn’t matter.  We have a choke collar.  He slips out of it.  You name it, we’ve tried it.  None of it works.  None of it, I tell you!

A few months ago, the doorbell rang and I looked out the door to see a uniformed officer.  Because of the way our driveway is situated, I can’t see the car in the driveway.  Which is why I assumed that it was a cop.  Which is why I assumed that Peter was dead, because why else do uniformed officers come to your door except to tell you that someone has died!?  Which is why I started sobbing before she even said a word.   I may have a problem with jumping to conclusions (usually I disguise it as ‘discernment’).

Turns out she was just an Animal Control Officer, coming to tell me that someone had filed a complaint against Hank.  She was super nice to me, probably because she thought I was a FREAK.  But the complaint remained.

We thought he was doing better sticking to his territory until we got a handwritten letter in the mail last week.  It was addressed to Resident.

I’ll spare you the details.

Apparently Hank has been on the run again.   And we had no idea.

I felt terrible.  No one wants “those neighbors” . . . and now we are “those neighbors”.  I wanted to give her a numbered list of excuses why we have been lax lately, along with a bulleted list of things we have done and ways we have cared for him.  Because we really aren’t bad dog owners.  We walk him and feed him every day.  He always has fresh water and we sometimes even give him baths.  So maybe we don’t brush his teeth or buy him the organic dog food, but we do take him to the vet regularly.  Doesn’t that count for anything!?   So what if we completely lose track of him a few times a week!?

Instead, we went to our neighbor’s house.  We knocked on her door and we asked for forgiveness.  We were wrong.  Guess what else we did?  We introduced ourselves.

Perhaps this is the part that I am most ashamed of.  We have lived here for eight years and we had not met our neighbors four houses away from us.  She had to address our letter to “resident” because she didn’t even know our names.  Ouch.

We talked for awhile and we gave her our phone number and promised to try harder.

Until a few days ago when I panicked.  I forgot I’d left him out, without his shock collar on (not that it matters).  When I looked out the window, he wasn’t in his spot at the back door.  Or in the garden, sheepishly digging a hole to burrow himself in.  I yelled his name (quietly, so the neighbors wouldn’t hear, of course).  Nothing.

Panic.
Dread.
Shame.

And then.  I heard his collar jingle.  In the garage.  In his dog house.  I heard Hank, yawning and stretching, slowly walking to me with a look that questioned why I interrupted his afternoon nap.

Ahh, Sweet relief.

Last night he was outside the back door.  We were getting ready to leave, throwing around our various hats, gloves, boots, coats, scarves, etc (except for William who still claims he’s hot enough for shorts and pushes his sleeves on his coat up to his armpit just to prove his point).  In the general chaos of that 3 minutes, he saw his chance.

Poof!  Hank was gone.  For most of the night.

Never mind that we slowly drove the back road over and over again, softly calling his name, trying to shine our headlights inconspicuously into the neighbor’s backyards.  He was on a mission and he was not going to reveal his location to us.

This morning we found him in his doghouse.  With the normal symptoms (he always has a limp and an bloated belly when he returns.  It’s nice).  And the sheepish look to his face.

What are we going to do?  Because, well, he’s a dog.  I guess we can take away his peanut pop treats and break out the toenail clippers for punishment.

You know, we always jokingly said that we wanted to try out a dog first before we had kids so that if we messed up on the dog we’d know to just skip the kids.  Apparently we forgot to wait until the dog hit the teenage years.

Hopefully this isn’t a look into our future.  Because we all know that shock collars don’t work on teenagers either.

P.S.  Of course I’m just kidding.  About the toenail clipper thing.

Leaning In  0

It happens every year without fail.

I set up the kids’ Nativity scene, with Mary and Joseph and Jesus in the stable and all the others spread out, looking outward.

Every year, it stops me dead in my tracks when I glance at it and see that the they have changed it.

The characters tipping forward, leaning in to see Jesus.

Ah.  Those kids.  They teach me so much.

May my life be like this.  Eager, yearning, longing to be closer to the One who gave so much to me.

Middle Child Syndrome  1

Kate’s Birthday was 9 days ago.
Now, in my defense, we did make the video on her birthday.  I just couldn’t figure out how to upload the crazy thing until today.
And so, Happy Birthday to Kate .. . . a little late.

two-ah.  4

My littlest girly turned two this week.

I hear her awake after her nap most days, singing to herself, “Hap Bir-day ME!!!  Hap Bir-day ME!!!!”  Peeking into her door, I whisper, “Eliza! Did you have a birthday!?”  She nods her head up and down.  “YEAH!”

“How old are you?”  I say.  And she raises the pointer finger on both hands, puts them right next to each cheek and says, “Two-ah!”

She got new blue shoes with birds on them, which are her three favorite things (blue, shoes, birds).  How could I not get them for her?

And then there was the rocking horse from Papa and Dotsey that she promptly named “Eliza Grace” and then renamed “Hee-hee-hee-hee”.

Ah, we love her.

A few weeks ago, she walked up to a picture and said, “Baby?  Annie?  Me?”  She was asking me if the baby in the picture was her or Annie.  Allowing her to enter into our grief hurts a little sometimes.  She is so joyful and innocent and I wonder how this will touch her.  Will she get it?  Will she feel slighted that she wasn’t part of us when it happened?

The story of our family goes on . . . and oh, I’m just so glad that I have the privilege of raising this one.

Happy Two-ah Birthday, Little E.

P.S.  Language development?  Well, it’s a beautiful thing.  Unfortunately, Eliza is bringing many laughs to her siblings as she works certain letter sounds out.  Her word for soup:  poop.  Her word for coffee: pee-pee.  As if that’s not bad enough, she looked at me and exclaimed yesterday, “I’m TOOT!”  (cute). William and Kate were rolling.

Sharing the Hard.  4

Sometimes I take pictures of food and think that maybe I’ll post a recipe.

Or I’ll see something in my house that I like, so I pretend I’m going to be a blogger that posts about how I decorate.

Or the kids.  Yeah.  My kids are cute.  And funny . . .

And then when I sit down to write, words flow out of me that scare me a little.  I wonder if it’s right to put words out there that are so personal.

Eliza gets into the markers and I don’t even notice because I’m not paying attention.  I just keep writing.

When I was in third grade, my teacher told me that I was a good writer.  Maybe I was.  Or maybe I wasn’t.  It doesn’t really matter.  What matters was that I believed her and since then, I’ve worked hard to use my words, to craft them to convey what my heart feels.

There are other days when I sit down to write and nothing happens.  Sometimes I just don’t want to.  Or I have nothing in my head coherent enough to string together.

I’ll fold the laundry and think about something amazing . . . but it’s just too hard to put into words, so I end up not trying at all.  Because haven’t we all had something that we thought was going to be the best, only to be embarrassed at how it really turned out?

And then?  Then there are times when I write something that I’m afraid isn’t even true in my life.  Am I trying to be someone that I’m not?  Am I painting a picture of the person that I wish to be, when really my life is lying in shambles around me and I don’t even know how to begin to pick up the pieces?

Don’t you see why I just want to post a DIY and call it a day?!  A picture of a few ingredients, a jar of modge podge . . . that I can do.  Couldn’t I?

So much in our lives take courage.  Courage to live, courage to be a friend.  Courage to fail, courage to grieve the failures.

When we feel our courage hanging on by a thread, we finally realize that we’re where He wants us to be.  At the end of ourselves, ready to let Him lead.

John 9:2-3 talks about the man who was born blind.

“Rabbi,” his disciples asked him, “why was this man born blind? 
Was it because of his own sins or his parents’ sins?”
“It was not because of his sins or his parents’ sins,” Jesus answered. 
“This happened so the power of God could be seen in him.”
I know that the hard things– the very things that I don’t want to write about– are the things I’ve been called to share so that the power of God can be seen in me.  And it humbles me.  

So I write the hard words . . . and I put that new recipe post firmly out of my head.  Maybe someday.  But not today.

What is He stirring in you?  Don’t shy away from it.  Skip the courage and bow your head.  The Hard Thing just may be your next right move.

Quiet House.  4

 My house is so quiet this morning.
I folded the blankets, picked up many pairs of random shoes, wiped up the sticky spots . . .
And they are as I left them.
No big kids trailing behind me to undo what I cleaned up.
Seems strange.

True to Damaska form, we were yelling and hurrying and french braiding up to the last minute this morning.
And then I yelled, “DON’T FORGET TO TAKE PICTURES!”

Oh yes, we took pictures.
Note to self: Don’t check Facebook to see all the sweet, cute pictures of other people’s children.

Here’s what we got:

Along with a sweet, pesky photobomber:

So.  Today.
Kate (who kept randomly yelling, “I can’t believe I get to go to Kindergarten today!!!”) is sitting in her new classroom and William (who played the kool kat) is now a big 2nd grader.

And my house is so quiet.

Eliza’s not quite sure what to think of it all.  Neither am I.  But I have a sneaky suspicion that she won’t mind the extra attention.

Eight.  2

Eight years ago I started out on this thing called “Being-A-Mama”.  It’s quite the thing isn’t it!?

When I gave birth, a month early, five weeks into living in Michigan, I had no clue.

My post-birth glow quickly turned grey when they told me that William would have to be transferred to the NICU in another hospital.  I stubbornly told them I would be going with him.  They tried to tell me no.

It didn’t work.

I spent the next week on a fold out couch, only because they’d kick me out of the chair next to his bassinet.

That first week was terrifying to me because it was my first glimpse of how very little control I would have in my life.

The NICU is a scary place.  I had no idea places like that existed.  Up until that point, I had assumed that babies were born and then they went home.  That was the plan, anyway.

In those short eight days, I learned a lot.  I heard nurses singing sweet songs as they rocked babies.   I saw babies who didn’t have one visitor.  My tears for my new son combined with my tears for all the tiny babies who were fighting much bigger battles than we were.

It was good for me to have my eyes opened up to the world of sick babies.  It marked me in a big way. And now I know, well, that was just the beginning.  Little did I know that a short stay in the NICU, later bringing home a healthy, pudgy baby, would get lost in the shuffle of much scarier, heart-breaking things.

So it seems right, somehow, that William ushered us into parenting.  After all, aren’t all first borns the guinea pigs of the family?  If only he knew that the parenting really has more to do with us– his Mom and Dad– than it has to do with him.

The other night, as I put him to bed, he asked me, “How do you know when God has called you to something?  How do you know it’s really God?”

And I couldn’t help it.  I flashed back to the tiny bassinet with cords and IVs stuck in his arm.  I saw Kate and her tantrums that end in deep sorrow.  I pictured a small room where we sobbed and told the kids that their baby sister was going to die.  And I watched myself give birth a fourth time, barely able to breathe until I heard that cry.

I told him, “You know God has called you to something when you can’t imagine doing anything else.  When, in spite of your fear, in spite of your sorrow, in spite of your mistakes, you still press on.  That’s when you’ve been called.”

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.’
  Psalm 91:1-2