Child labor

Justin did a tremendous job moving the leaves from the backyard to the curb. Abby spent about 45 seconds "helping" before she lost her rake in a pile of leaves and decided to do flips in the yard instead. Caleb, for his part, picked up all the leaves within his reach and moved them into an impressive pile in his lap, but not before he tried to eat a few.

I think we're still a few years away from yard chores.

Get your hands dirty

For her next trick, Abby's decided to grow her very own holiday flowers. We started with a paperwhite kit from The Home Depot, and since it was too cold to do our messy project inside, I let her play with dirt in the kitchen. Not sure why I thought sitting her down with a box of dirt, a flower pot and a scooping spoon was going to be contained by the garbage bag I put under her, but it was fun nonetheless.

Abby had a great time deciding where her four bulbs would go in the pot. I showed her the picture of what the plant would look like once the flowers bloomed, and told her there were flowers inside of the bulbs that could only come out if we put them in dirt and watered them. Once she finished planting and patting down the dirt, she picked out a special spot in front of the kitchen window where her flowers will live and she can check on them daily.

I'm not quite sure she understands the whole concept of what we're doing, since every time she walks past the pot of dirt, she points and says, "Oh, look how pretty!" If she's that impressed with a plastic pot, I can't wait to see her face when she sees the flowers in a few weeks.

No mom is an island

A dear friend shared this post from Proverbs 31 Ministries on her blog recently, and it is well worth reposting once more. Be encouraged, moms...we're not doing this alone!

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Communing Over Chaos

by Whitney Capps

"Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." John 15:4 (NIV)

I am out-going and chatty. I like to make fun of myself. I love to laugh. I enjoy being with people - until I don't. You see, at heart I am an introvert. At some point I can sense my energy waning. I begin to crave quiet, silence and solitude.

This is why I cherish quiet time with the Lord. I love the stillness of sitting and reading the Word or a book that turns my heart toward Jesus. My husband knows that one way to fill my love tank is to give me an evening of going out to dinner alone: just me, Jesus and a good book. (All you extroverts just cringed at the thought of eating alone didn't you?) Don't get me wrong, I adore my family, but I need mental white space.

However, with three kids under age four, quiet time with the Lord is an endangered species. I don't often get to go the bathroom by myself. If the water closet isn't a quiet place, you can imagine the chaos that follows me to my prayer closet.

For a few months after our youngest was born I lived in a spiritual desert. My soul was parched. I was desperate for quiet time with Jesus and prayed earnestly for God to help me find time to be alone with Him. Faithfully, He always provided, but often my tired and flesh-wrapped spirit dozed off in prayer or got distracted by other things.

I couldn't consistently make it work. After several months of mostly failed attempts, I cried out to God, "I don't know how to be alone with You!"

"Daughter, you don't have to be alone with Me. Just be with Me. Remain in Me, and I will remain in you."

Rather than give up on being with Jesus because it's not like it used to be, my Savior is asking me to abide with Him all day. God has ordained this season of my life and He knows even better than I do how much my children demand of me. In the clamor of the sword fights and confusion in the playroom, He is my hiding place.

I am learning to seize each moment, and see it as an opportunity to fellowship with Jesus. While my kids recite "God is great; God is good," I have a chat with Jesus. When I feel alienated from girlfriends, I read a magazine article. P31 Woman and Today's Christian Woman magazines are spiritual lifeboats for me in this season. While my kids do art at the kitchen table, I read a psalm or two. Whenever possible I try to have praise music playing in our house. Sometimes singing those lyrics is the closest my heart may come to meaningful prayer time all day.

Please hear me. I am not suggesting that these brief moments should replace consistent, focused times of prayer and Bible study. Those habits are hallmarks of Christian discipleship and growth. I am learning, however, to rethink my ideas on fellowship with Jesus. In this season of my life it's not so much the quantity of quiet reflection as it is the steady communing over chaos. But hey, at least we are together!

Father, Your daughter longs to be with You. Remind me of Your constant presence. May I seize opportunities to enjoy You throughout my day. In Jesus' Name, Amen.

Learning is fun: Letter M

M says "mmm," as in making messes with macaroni. Justin gets full credit for coming up with our letter M craft, which was a big hit with our young craft-lover. As she placed each individual macaroni noodle onto the plate with care, she told me it was "mmm...yummy. M says mmm!" (Toward the end, she realized that the pasta was only sticking to the M that I had painted with glue, so she decided it was much easier just to dump the bowl of pasta onto the plate and shake off the ones that didn't stick. She's a problem solver.)

I made her brainstorm for a while to think of a few other words that start with the letter M, and she came up with mommy and little mouse (as in "goodnight little mouse" from Goodnight Moon).

We even managed to incorporate some ever-popular glitter into this craft, sparkling up a cardboard fork to go along with her crafty pasta dinner. I have a love-hate relationship with glitter. Today, in moderation, I loved it. And more importantly, so did Abby.

Don't push

Caleb (9 months) and Sam (10 months)

Spike and his buddy Sambo have come a long way since their laying-around-doing-nothing days. Now they do all sorts of stuff, like standing, crawling, terrorizing big sisters and playing together. As soon as Sam learns how to push, we're in big trouble.

When Caleb learns to drive, we're in even bigger trouble.

Caleb (almost 2 months) and Sam (2.5 months)

Brisket 101

We take our commitment to barbeque education very seriously. Thankfully, so does our family. So it came as no surprise that Granddaddy took a recent layover as an opportunity to help us demonstrate the importance of eating brisket and baked beans to our children.

We count ourselves truly blessed that our kids have grandparents that so wholeheartedly support our parenting philosophies.

Toothy Grin

I told you there was a tooth in there. I just had to wait for my little biter to finally open up and let me see it. Turns out there's another one coming up right beside it. And two more on the way up top. As if he needs any more efficiency in the eating department...

Side sleeper

As if I needed one more thing to worry about...

I've discovered that Caleb has a very specific, very consistent preferred sleep position. Unless he's already awake and sitting up in his crib waiting for me to come get him, I find him on most mornings and after all naptimes in the same spot in his crib, in the exact same position: curled up on his right side, feet in the air resting on his crib bumper, with his blanket wrapped all the way around his head.

Do kids attend some sort of How to Make Your Parents Fret class when we're not looking?

Learning is fun: Letter L

I do not find the idea of displaying decomposing plant matter on the wall all that appealing, but a number of factors led to this week's craft, namely:

1. God has littered our yard with an awesome amount of craft materials that are perfect for this week's letter.
   
2. Justin pointed out it was silly to stamp leaves on paper when we have plenty of actual leaves outside.
3. After three unsuccessful attempts, I was finally ready to admit that I simply cannot draw a leaf pattern to make the sponge stamps I wanted to use this week.

We've been working on the concept of what letter comes next (as opposed to just reciting the alphabet from memory), so I started this craft by making Abby figure out what letter we were going to work on today. I showed her all the crafts we've made so far hanging up in the playroom, and asked her what came after the K.

"Make a letter L craft!" she replied, clearly proud of herself for figuring that out. I affirmed her answer, high fived her little hand, and told her to go find her shoes. We trekked outside, picked out a few too many lovely leaves, which she proceeded to ruin by crunching them down into the little yellow cup she had brought along to hold her stash. I followed close behind, picking up similar leaves and not crushing them while she continued to fill her cup with leaf pieces until she was satisfied that she had enough to work with.Back inside, I looked up how to press leaves properly while Abby arranged her collection on the table, placing each leaf down gently and repeating "Look how pretty!" with each one. I used a little mommy sleight of hand to replace her crumpled leaves with my more usable ones, and showed her how to lay them out flat on a paper towel. Next, we picked out two heavy books and she grunted for me as I placed them on top of our leaves to flatten them out. While the leaves were busy being flattened, I set her to work coloring our letter L in some pretty fall colors. I was prepared for a mess when I pulled out the paintbrush, but she surprised me by keeping all of the paint on the brush or the paper. Sometimes she's weirdly obsessive about staying clean. (Other times, not so much.)
While she painted, I tried my best to press our leaves with some wax paper and an iron, and failed miserably. Four times. In the process, I also ruined most of our remaining leaves, so I finally resolved to quit while I was ahead. Our quiet morning craft time was running out, and with Caleb about to wake up from his nap, I packed up the paint and the leaves and decided to take the kids to the park.

Back home, we ate lunch and regrouped to finish The Craft that Took All Day. And I realized that Abby was just as happy gluing down the leaves themselves as she would have been to glue down neatly pressed wax paper leaves. Later, we'll head to Kinko's for the last part of our day-long craft activity: Laminate a Leafy Letter L.

Milkman

My apologies to the American Society of Pediatrics, but Caleb enjoys cow's milk way too much for me to wait until he's a year old to start letting him drink it. For a nine-month-old, he's got pretty good taste.

This kid can down some whole milk. If he keeps this up, a gallon a week isn't going to cut it for long.