The Colors of Spring

The girls and I were coloring at our kitchen table one morning several weeks ago. Crayons slowly emerged from the hard plastic pencil case into piles all over the table. One coloring book offered images of rabbits and ducks and frogs, another Elmo and Zoe and Big Bird. The pages were white and gray and slowly emerged to life as the girls added scribbles of color; pink, brown, green, yellow...

Spring is feeling a little bit that way... like God is slowly adding color back to the earth. Here in Buffalo anyway, we have lived for months under a blanket of gray and white clouds seemingly mirroring the white ground, bare trees and icy concrete streets. A dreary sight after many months if I do say so myself.

As I look out my window this morning the grass is lush and green (it needs to be cut actually!), there are buds on the trees, and the bush directly outside of my window is pushing forth purple stems.

Yesterday seemed to be the day when yellow was popping forth everywhere and I enjoyed enjoying it with the girls. On our way home from Playschool yesterday we passed many, many forsythia bushes (a favorite of mine) and I had a lot of fun teaching the girls how to say FOR-SYTH-I-A...kind of funny actually.

Forsythia have always been one of my favorite springtime flowers (bushes). While there are plenty of them here in Buffalo, the little town we lived in in New England seemed to the epicenter of Forsythia bushes. It was like a 4th of July grand finale of yellow buds, wildly splaying from bushes everywhere you drove or walked or looked.


In case you are not sure what I am talking about, here is a picture so that you can identify them for yourselves and take great pleasure in trying to get your kids to pronounce the proper name...

Other representatives of yellow in our yard; the several small patches of daffodils near our driveway (planted by the previous owners and left as little gifts to us!), and the dandedions popping up all over our yard...my husband, for the record wants to spray the grass but I am currently in moral opposition. In part, because we have young kids who play outside, in part, because the few weeds we have don't bother me that much, and in part because Ava loves to pick the dandelions...she brought me a beautiful bouquet yesterday....

I did try to explain that she needed to pick the entire flower (not just the head) in order for me to put them in a vase, but she deftly explained that many of them "did not have strings" so she did what she could.

...A treasure none the less from the hands of a four year old.

I think we may attempt to make a paper bouquet of daffodils today...here is a picture one such bouquet from the website alphamom.com  if you are looking for a craft to bide some time at your own house...

And lastly, the two little flowers that keep me busiest watering, nurturing, feeding and cultivating all year around...

Happy Spring!!

Contemplating God

Just wanted to post a quick link to a friend's most recent blog post. I think we can all relate--that  an attempt at "grasping" who God is can be quite confusing and mind boggling.  It sometimes leaves us wondering "Really? Is it all true?"

Yes. Even Christians, Christians who have known God all of their lives, ask those questions sometimes.

But, instead of living in doubt we continue to press into the mystery, and each time God reveals a new little bit of himself...a  bit that seems so hard to deny, a bit that soothes our souls so fully in some way, that though we do not completely understand it all, and although we sometimes wonder how we can fully believe some of the history recounted to us in the Bible, that it doesn't matter. That the bit of truth, the bit of faith we have, the bit of God's self that he has revealed to us in our prayers, in our questions, in our journey, is enough to keep moving on and pressing further into the mystery.

It's a wonderful thing to think about two days before Easter.

Please check out Sara's post "He Makes Beautiful Things"... I think it will get you thinking too!

Happy Easter!

My Little Busy Bee

Today's post will be dedicated to my daughter Ella. As I was looking through some recent photos I realized how many of them were quite funny and completely telling of this little one's personality.

When people ask me about the girls I often describe them in this way:

 "Ava, my oldest, is VERY emotional. She is very sweet, very smart, very engaging,  but perhaps one of the most emotional children on the planet."

"Ella, well, Ella is probably one of the busiest children you will ever meet. She NEVER sits still and is ALWAYS getting into something."

Most people nod with a knowing glance and yet I can see that they're thinking..."Oh, normal toddlers. ALL toddlers are emotional and/or busy."

And then...

And then they see my girls in action.

"Wow!" they say, "She really NEVER sits still does she?"

Nope.

Their eyes get big. They smile. They look at me with both humor and compassion. Then, and only then, do I know that they REALLY get it.

A friend and I took our 2 year old's to Panera for lunch this past winter. My friend marveled at how Ella literally never stopped moving the entire time we were in the restaurant. No matter how hard I tried she preferred climbing chairs and benches and stopping by other people's tables to look at their food and say hello. I looked in wonder as my friend's two year old sat quietly in her high chair, eating every bite of food and never saying a word. My friend eventually said to me that she thought Ella alone just might require as much mothering energy as both of her girls combined on some days.

I agree.

So, without further adieu...I present to you...Ella...the little girl we call "the cracker jack", "the tornado", "trouble", and "hurricane"... (Ava actually kindly told a librarian one afternoon (while I was chasing Ella all the way across the library as she started running and shrieking in delight), that,

"My sister is a capital "T"!!!"

"What honey?" The librarian said as she looked at her quizzically.

"A capital T." Ava repeated matter of factly.

I caught the end of the conversation and offered some explanation to the librarian.

"Ah, yes. We call her 'trouble with a capital 'T'!" I said laughing...and catching my breath...and holding a wiggling toddler who did not want to be held. I mean the library IS a place to run and scream after all.

Here are some pictures, for your viewing enjoyment of my little capital T!

Yes, yes. That would be Ella in one of our storage cubes. She goes all the way in and tries to pull the cover down over her head. 

Always cracks me up. Ella puts the sun glasses on and then cooly and confidently says, "Look mom. I got my glasses on." 

Why on earth would you put dirty laundry in a hamper when you can hide in one instead?

It's probably hard to see it here, but for a while Ella had this hilarious habit of climbing out of her bed (after I had put her in it for a nap or bedtime) and gathering books from her bookshelf, putting them in her bed and then sleeping with them. I woke her up from her nap one afternoon and counted upwards of 15 books in her bed. 

Here is the stack after I pulled it out of her bed...

That would be a pajama shirt being worn as a skirt for dancing purposes. 

Please take note of the number of band-aids my child is wearing here. When Ella is not causing her own chaos, her sister enforces chaos onto her. Ava adorned her with all of these band-aids. 

Ella is FOREVER getting into this cabinet and pulling DVD's out. One day I caught her sticking one through a tiny slat in the speaker. I'm glad I saw her putting it there...I would have never guessed! 

All dressed up!

"Mom, you can dress me up for Aunt Laurie's wedding, but I'm still going to crawl underneath the banister while the wedding party is trying to give sentimental toasts." 

"And, when I'm done crawling under, I'll crawl up!"

On the table, by herself, at 18 months. I freaked out...thinking she would fall...but first I grabbed my camera! 

Also, last summer, at 18 months old...

Hope you enjoyed the show! She certainly does bring a lot of laughs to our lives! 

Managing Momma Mondays: Some Guilt Free Thoughts on Naps and Slowing Down

     I'm going to tell you all to do something today that I don't do very well myself.


     Are you ready?


     ...slow....... down.


     There it is friends. It is not a novel notion. We hear it all the time-- that we live in an overscheduled society, that our children have lost the ability to creatively fill "free" time because they don't have any, that our running around and the stress it induces causes health problems, that we are actually less connected to one another because we spend too little time just being with one another...I think we all know these things, but it seems so hard to interrupt the frenzied cycle and simply have time to do what it takes to bring the craziness to a halt...to just be...to be o.k. with just being.


     It seems that we rush from thing to thing, event to event and then, when we are in between things and events, even though we have yearned for the precious downtime we become unsure of what to do with it. We become restless and perhaps start to feel a little uncomfortable in our restlessness. I know, for myself, that slowing down often makes me feel lazy, self-indulgent or at the very least, like I'm missing out on something.


    For the most part though, I will say of myself, that as busy as I can get I am also very deliberate about building rest time or downtime into my schedule. It feels like a necessary part of survival for me. I have been doing quite a bit of reading about the term HSP or Highly Sensitive Person. I'm not going to get into all of the details of that today (you can click on the link if you'd like to read more), but it has shed some light on some of the pieces of my life and personality that I have often wondered about.


     For example, I take a nap EVERY day. For as long as I can remember I have been taking a nap EVERY day. Before children, I would take a short nap after work, before I made dinner. Now that I have children I nap every day when they nap, usually for about 45 minutes, and then I have a short period of time in which I read or blog or just rest until they get up. Sometimes I start dinner, but usually I use the time to do things I am passionate about, things that recharge my batteries, like writing, or praying or reading. I don't clean or do laundry or tackle my to-do list...I do those things with the girls when they are awake. I use their nap time to just be. It is probably one of the most important components of my life as a mother. 


     Highly sensitive or not, we all need time to just be. If you don't need a nap, you should feel free to garden, or journal, or sew...whatever relaxes and refreshes you.  In our society people do tend to look at you a little oddly when you tell them that you nap everyday, but I've stopped caring what they think.  They may try to make me feel lazy, like I should be more productive, or  like I am in some way inferior because I nap to get through the day. It is a pretty anti-American culture thing to do after all. But, hey, everyone has their coping mechanisms and at least I'm not damaging my lungs or my liver or my checkbook while I nap to cope with life...right?! 


     Here's the deal friends...naps RE-CHARGE me. As I am reading about those who are highly sensitive I am learning that some people are simply biologically wired in a way to become more easily overstimulated by life at a faster pace. We live in an incredibly stimulating society-- t.v., marketing, advertising, books, grocery store lights and options, internet, facebook, twitter, i-tunes, i-phones, i-pads, Target, Wal-Mart, mega toystores...there are a bazillion ways to fill our days...and those of our children for that matter.


     It is easy to become overwhelmed (highly sensitive or not!) or overstimulated by just being out in the world and running our errands. When we are mothers on top of it, the whirring circle of demands coming at us is tiring as well...My prescription for dealing with it all is my napping and the brief downtime that follows. I have joked with others that I am like a computer that only works if you shut me off for 45 minutes a day and then reboot me...all files settle into place, I can process what has happened and have energy to meet the demands inputted for the remainder of the day.


     So, in conclusion, I want to encourage you all to give yourselves permission to rest, to nap, to find time each day to just BE. Pray, read your bible, go for a walk, read a magazine. Whatever recharges your batteries, and DON'T feel guilty about it. For one, because YOU need it. Two, because your children need you to have that time so you can care for them better when they are awake and moving around. Three, because we need to set examples to our children that it is ok to just be...to cultivate who they are at home in unscheduled spaces...to simply color, or paint or dance, whatever their little hearts motivate them to do. (That is one reason I was so happy to have pulled Ava out of preschool this year...She is highly sensitive like her momma and simply needed unorganized time to just follow her creativity and whims for another year before people start dictating how she needs to use her time all day.)


    I'm going to leave you with a passage from a WONDERFUL book I'm reading. My friend Sara, who is on of the most kindred souls I know, sent it to me for Christmas because it spoke to her to eloquently so she knew it would certainly speak to me. The book is called Mitten Strings for God, Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry by Katrina Kenison. While I would love to excerpt the entire first chapter here I will settle for the last few paragraphs...

     We have all fallen victim at one time or another to the relentless cycle of our children's playdates and after-school lessons, to push for their academic and athletic accomplishments, and to their endless desires...The adage of our age seems to be "Get more out of life!"...

     ...But in our efforts to make each moment "count," we seem to have lost the knack of appreciating the ordinary. We provide our children with so much that the extraordinary isn't special anymore, and the subtle rhythms of daily life elude us altogether. We do too much and savor too little. We mistake activity for happiness, and so we stuff our children's days with activities, and their heads with information, when we ought to be feeding their souls instead...

     ...Over the years I have learned to quit speeding through life, but it is a lesson I must take up and learn again every day, for the world conspires to keep us all moving fast. I have found that it is much easier for me to stay busy than to make a commitment to empty time-- not surprising, perhaps, in a culture that seems to equate being busy with being alive. Yet if we don't attend to life's small rituals, if we can't find time to savor the "dailiness" then we really are impoverished. Our agendas starve our souls.

    ..My deeper hope is that each of my sons will be able to see the sacred in the ordinary; that they, too, will grow up knowing how to "love the dailiness." So, for their sakes as well as my own, I remind myself to slow down and enjoy the day's doings. The daily rhythms of life, the humble household rituals, the nourishment I provide-- these are my offerings to my children, given with love and gratefully received.

With those words in mind, figure out what it means to slow down for you and promise yourself you'll allow time to do those very things this week.