Jealous?

Ever had your toes done by a five year old?

My Girls

Stylin with Halloween outfits!

Fall Fun

We were fortunate this year to have the Templetons invite our church family to their magnificent property for a fall celebration. This was our stand-in for a visit to the pumpkin patch. Mr. Scott actually went to Ingles and purchased bags of little pumpkins and strew them along a hillside. He informed me he had the fastest growing pumpkins in town. I don't think any of the kids noticed the produce stickers.


After all the littles claimed a pumpkin, they found a spot at the table to decorate them. Although Holt completely outfitted his with paint and glitter, he still wanted it butchered by Birch the next night when we set down to carve them.

Next the kids were treated to a fall candy hunt. Each was given a bag and showed the boundaries where there was candy aplenty. After we got home, I realized we had brought several leaves and ants as well.

We were then treated to an old fashioned hayride through the woods. This is always my favorite part!

We capped off our evening with s'mores all around. Let it be known that fall is my absolute favorite time of year!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

I am project oriented. If I am going to spend time doing something, there's needs to be an "outcome" in the end. The blog is one fine example. I love that if I spend some time sitting here, in the end I get to press "publish". I sometimes forget that the joy lies in the doing, not in the product. But I am wired in a way that needs there to be a payoff in the end. Sometimes it takes my children to remind me to just "be".

Take Mouser for instance. For the past, I don't know, year perhaps, she's been intent on digging holes in the front flower bed. It should be called "bush bed" or "mulch bed" because there's never been any actual flowers in it. But nothing brings her pleasure more than a cup or little trowel and some dirt under her fingernails. She can dig a lot longer than you'd imagine. She's made hole after hole, all the while asking me, "Mama, when can we ever plant some flowers together?".

So a few weeks back, Juliana had a birthday party and Holt had a karate belt test and I decided I'd do something special for Mouse. Off to Home Depot I went. When I returned, I came bearing dirt and pansies. She was as excited as Christmas. In so many ways she does remind me of her Grandma.

I spatially and aesthetically arranged each pansy over the location it should be planted. I dug each hole (I know! You're asking "WHY?" She had so much more experience at this skill!), then she set the pansy in its new home and refilled the dirt and patted it down.

When we finished, I stepped back. It was a really nice looking little project we had accomplished. I gave her the pitcher and she watered our symmetrical flower garden. We were finished. We were surveying the fruits of our labors.
And then...

"Mama, I'm ready for the scissors now."

"WHAT?"

"I want to cut off one of the blooms. For you."

Now, had I to do it over again, I would look into her sweet little five year old face and see her intention and realize the gift she was offering. Instead, I saw our little project destroyed.

"Mouse. If we cut off the blooms, they won't grow back. It won't be pretty anymore."

"But it's for you."

And I'm so ashamed to say the "living in the moment-ness" and joy of what we were doing together went sailing right on past me.

"Let's not, okay, Mouse?"

Wailing. Not just crying. Wailing. And wailing finally began to hit home.

So I went inside and got the scissors. And after the five minutes it took to get her to breathe normally again, I began to understand that the whole point of this project was to make a gift for me. And I was taking that away.

So she proudly cut off her favorite bloom. We brought it inside and put it in a little cup of water where it sat on my windowsill until it began to disintegrate.


And when she asks for the scissors again, I will fetch them quickly for her. I've come to see that nothing could be more beautiful than my flower garden of bloomless pansies.

A Hand's Worth of Fingers

Mouser's turned 5!

In the end of September, Mousa's birthday fell on a Tuesday and because Bounce and Beans closes shortly after we get back from school, Carolina's birthday was rescheduled for Thursday. I can't remember why Wednesday didn't work. I'm so behind blogging, I'd have to go back and look at my calender for that unimportant detail.

Thursday was Baby Z's overnight visitation so it was just the original five of us. Since this is her year for a "just family" party, she was given a wide field of choices. She picked Bounce and Beans and Cici's.

Since she's a child (and heck, who am I kidding? I have this problem also), she couldn't wait one more minute to open her presents, so we did that first thing.




And how much did I love the Mouse card from her Grandma?

But without a single doubt, the best gift (as far as I'm concerned anyway), was the most precious card written (without prompting) by her brother. As he read it to her, she rested her head on his shoulder. I was a mess by the end of it, and the tragedy of it is that I can't find it! If you've been here, you're not shocked by that, and once I gut the sun room and take apart the shelves with all our school/art supplies, I'm sure it will resurface. I will then return to this post and erase all mention of disorganization and quote it.

Then we zoomed to Bounce and Beans where the real fun began! We had the place mostly to ourselves. One of the enormously gratifying benefits of homeschooling lies squarely in getting to do things during off-hours!











It was then only a short drive across the parking lot to some serious pizza eating.

And finally back home to cap off the evening with a cake fit for a fairy tale princess.



Happy birthday, Mouse. No one can cut, color, dig holes, serve plastic food, stage parties for your babies, snuggle, hug, or fill our home with joy quite like you!

September Birthdays 2010

Every year we make our pilgrimage to Nashville to celebrate the multitude of birthdays our family has in September. I believe this tradition originated to honor our oldest members, both born in September. This was our first party since we said goodbye to my Grams. Her absence was loud.

We lost 94 years off of our cake this year. We are still thankful for the blessing of all the years it represents.

My Roll Tide cousins-in-law. There's usually more than one SEC football game playing!

The after lunch badminton game:

And plenty of family to go around!

Carnies

No one I know under the age of 75 listens to local A/M radio... except Birch. He suffers through Karen Carpenter and the Bee Gees in order to hear local news and the police blotter. On rare occasion when we are together in his car, I myself have been transported back in time. A few rounds of Rainy Days and Mondays and I'm straight back in the seventies with my Marcia Brady hair. Truthfully I think this started when he was hoping to catch an airing of a commercial he'd taped for his chiropractor. It evolved from there. And while I'm perplexed by this side of him, just once it paid off for us all.

All he had to do was be a certain number caller in order to win tickets to the fair. I truly think he could have gone to lunch before calling in (how big an audience can they possibly have? And demographics say most of their listeners don't hear very well). He scored.

I've always been a little leery of small town fairs. "Fair" is really a misleading term here. "Carnival in a field" is more accurate. But, free is one of my very favorite words. After arriving, we learned that we not only received free admission, but 4 free unlimited ride bracelets. Seeing as how each ride for each person was about $2.00, this was quite a treasure.





And ride we did. Holt and Mouser sampled all the kiddie rides, several times each. We steered bumper cars. We giddy-uped carousel horses. But then Mouse pointed to the sky and said, "When are we gonna ride that?" She had her heart set on the ferris wheel. I hesitated. What would happen when we swung to the highest point and she panicked? What then? But she assured me, on this her heart was set.


So we got on, the two of us. No one else was up to the challenge. The operator immediately pulled the lever and swooped us to the very top. We stopped. The bucket seat swung straight up, straight back, and stopped. We could see for miles. And Mouse? She gasped- but with delight, not fear. She was in love with the wheel.

After we had not perished at the end of our third ride, Holt climbed aboard. We rode again and again, around and around. And as closing hour approached, our family was one of the few that remained. Our last ride on the wheel we rode solo, the only seat filled. It was the last ride of the night and the operator was generous. Never has a carnival ride lasted that long. I pointed to where our house was, across a couple of miles in the darkness. I knew that every time after when I passed that grass field, I would remember the wonder of my children as the world dropped away and the ground came rushing up, the screams of the riders and the sweet laughter beside me.

On the Brink

One night late in my pregnancy with her, she kicked so deliberately that I could trace the outline of her foot, heel to toes, in my palm. I remember a faint trace of sadness as I prepared for her birth, knowing that I would soon have to share her with the rest of the world. And when I held her, I knew both overwhelming love and fear at the same moment. A mother's yin and yang.

When she was a toddler, I was rocking her in the dark one night, singing every soft crooning song I could think of. At just the moment I was certain she was asleep, she turned, touched her fingers to my lips, shook her head and whispered, "Shh... Mama don't sing." She loves this story.

She was such a very verbal child. She was the first and a girl, after all. Her first sentence took place at the Hallmark store at the mall where we lived in Charlotte. She had spied treasure- a whole rack of stuffed animals. She pointed to the floor, looked at me, and commanded, "Mama, sit down. Play toys." What else could I do, but unload all my bags, sit and play toys?

On the night before her first birthday, I watched her sleep, hair caught in her fingers mid-twirl. I wondered what her life would be like, what she would be like, what siblings she might someday have. I wondered if she would love me later like she did then. I hoped. Again, I feared. I prayed. That's what we mothers do.

And now she's in this place. While there's still so much child left, there are angles I catch where I see glimpses of what she'll become, what she is becoming.

I couldn't love her more.

The Summer She Was 12