Thanksgiving rambles

Thanksgiving dinner is over and gone.  But leftovers appear tomorrow.  And there is a last batch of potato rolls in the oven that will soon become my ritual before-bed milk-making snack.

Mom is walking Levi round and round the house in the umbrella stroller…he managed to cough himself awake after being put to bed.

I slept in a little this morning, despite Devo leaving at 6:15 to play a thankful round of golf.  He had thought to change his plans when he heard me talking to Levi in the middle of last night.  Yesterday was a really long day.  Tonight is a really long night.  Tomorrow is going to be a really long day.  Won’t you please sleep, baby boy?

There is a typhoon passing by the south (or is it the west) and we are experiencing barometric pressure fluctuations.  Changes in barometric pressure causes young children to bounce off the walls.  Almost literally.  Very odd phenomenon.  Very tiring phenomenon.

On the morrow we hope to take Liana driving.  Because we’re cool.

Wedding Tail

It must have been an unofficial Dress Up Day.  Amelie was parading around in her wedding “tail”.

“Wedding veil?” I ask.

No, her wedding tail.

 

Five Years Old

Lia is five years old today.

(Well, actually tomorrow, if you take the international date line into consideration.  But we’ll pretend it’s today.)

Five years ago I was in the throes of first-time labor…which is different from subsequent labors in that everything is new and not familiar.

Five years ago I saw her sweet little face for the first time.  It seems impossible that it took me several days to get used to her face.

Five years ago I was experiencing my first day as a mother.

The morning after she was born, she heard me walk into the room and smiled.

And now she’s five.  She’s my smallest best friend.  My grocery list reminder.  My great experiment.  My sous chef.  My wide-eyed wonder, reintroducing me to this great big world.

This year I aim to give her space.  Space to be herself.  Space to be a child.  Space to learn and grow and change.  And lots of space for daydreaming.

I’m thinking of it as the difference between taking a clump of clay and molding every surface with my hands…and letting the wheel spin while just guiding things along.

Happy Birthday, sweet girl.

The Lamb is What?

Love to hear Lia sing “Worthy is the Lamb”.

It usually comes out, “Woolly is the lamb!”

Or, on occasion, “Whirly is the lamb!”

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Lia ::  Levi sounds like a motorbycle!  (Which would be a cross between a motorcycle and a motorbike.)

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Lia, coming into the kitchen :: I want to eat the smell that I smell.

Catch-Up, Catch-All

I’ve been having a hard time managing my time…usually sleep wins out over an uninterrupted session with Mr. Mac here.  But I have been faithfully jotting down a few thoughts each night (often losing the small window of opportunity to say a real goodnight to my husband, Mr. Insta-Sleep).  And tonight I’ve laid some precious sleep down on the altar of Blog-dom, and transferred my jots to the screen.  I don’t know if this will be a sustainable enterprise, but it’s worked tonight.

So you have a choice facing you.  Read it all at once (a record-breaking six posts!) and curse me when nothing shows up here for another week or so.  Or read a post a day.  Do you eat your chocolate whole or do you nibble?

Now I really want to know.  Do you eat your chocolate whole, or do you nibble?

I nibble.  Lasts longer.

 

Attendance at Redemptive High School – Required

I went with Liana (my sister, she’s 14) to an island-wide trivia academic competition today.  And chauffeured her three friends – all of us smashed into the king cab of my mom’s truck, a delightful after-school combination of like, you know, girls and sweat.

The competition was held in an all-girls Catholic school, my first foray within the hallowed grounds of <introductory music> Academy.

And while first saying that I had a great time meeting Liana’s friends and trying to answer all the trivia questions, apparently I haven’t quite come to terms with my former adolescent self.

How is it that 14 years, one high school diploma, one college degree (and the accompanying education and time), half of a masters, one husband, three children, and seven years of marriage later – just stepping into a high school environment transports me instantly into my previous incarnation?

Ill-clothed, uneasy in my own skin, eager to be liked (or at least to not make myself ridiculous), aching to be something other than what I was.  But at the same time unwilling to relinquish my social independence, my intelligence, or the convenience of a pony tail and t-shirt.  I was just hoping that somebody (preferably somebody cool) would see me for the gem I was and lift me to a happy and peaceful agreement between my inner and outer self.

College was much, much better.

I read recently about a man who decided to go back and redo the less-than-positive experiences of his life.  So he went back to kindergarten.  And had a wonderful time.  Rewrote history, so to speak.

I could hope for a redemptive high school experience.

I’d reincarnate myself as myself – just better dressed and more comfortable with things like, you know, standing and walking.

I’d like the ability to see people my own age as people like me, not as people about to humiliate me with their indifference.

Oh, and I’d add an increase in the ability to converse with said (now rendered also awkward and searching for their eventual selves) people.  Even if that meant said conversation was, you know, like, kinda high school-ish.

 

Brain Fog and Sudoku

I looked in the bathroom to find my mom perched on the edge of the tub, doing sudoku.

“It’s supposed to help with brain fog,” she says.

She read somewhere that when you suffer from brain fog, you should engage in something that uses a different part of the brain.

Hence, sudoku.

Does it help? I wondered.

“I don’t know,” she says.

I close the door on my way out, leaving Mom hiding in the bathroom, that most sacred of all mommy hiding places.  Doing sudoku.

The Great Big Breath

This morning we heard the rain on the roof.

The entire family (minus the sleeping infant) dashed for the door and threw it open, all of our faces alight with expectation, awash with desert dwellers’ joy in a two minute tropical shower.  Two year old to 32 year old joined in a perfect moment.

And as we stood there marveling over the miracle of rain, I felt us simultaneously take what I’ve come to think of as The Great Big Breath.

It seems to be a sabbatical phenomenon.  Or, perhaps, a Sabbath phenomenon.

This series of unexpected, invigorating, rejuvenating, glorious Great Big Breaths that only happen when there is space for them.

The BE attitude

On Sabbath I spent time thinking (or not thinking, as the case occasionally was) about be.

I seem to spend my days striving or trying to be…something.  Be responsible.  Be a good wife, mother, housekeeper, cook, daughter.  Be calm, kind, frugal, organized, educated, well-spoken.  Be. Be. Be. Be. Be.

Even the Sabbath is filled with wearisome BEs.  Be on time (!!!).  Be at church.  Be happy. Be friendly.  Take away church and I still feel the pressure to be faithful, be in tune spiritually, be good to people in need, be a student of Scripture, be still, or be still and know.  Be. Be. Be. Be. Be.

Take that away and I feel that I need to be me.  But that, also, is an awfully tall (and messy) order.

A Sabbath (sabbatical) is, I think, divine permission to just…BE.

No strings attached.

 

Other Realities

Thoughts (while sitting on the beach) about my usual life:

This is not the only reality.

Just remember that.

Vistas?

These first few days of sabbatical have begun to slowly swing open the heavy doors of daily life and give glimpses of vistas beyond.

I am inspired, conversely (or, perhaps, perversely) , to both cast off my worldly goods and to pierce my ears so that I can wear dangly earrings.  I want to wear bright colors and am flirting with the idea of doing something drastic to my hair.  I want to travel the world and grow all my own food.

Now I just need to desire a sports car and I could legitimately be in a (very early) midlife crisis.

I wonder what it would be like to celebrate Sabbath apart from the trappings of church, ironed clothes, and time constraints.

I day dream about living in an open shelter with billowing mosquito nets, with a breeze and a view.  No walls.  No airconditioner.

I’ve started jotting down a few things before I go to bed each night, just to keep track of…myself.

Getting over jet lag

The jet lag caught up with me on Tuesday.  Jet lag and insufficient protein intake combined with an award-winning 8 baby wakings the night before.  Yesterday I just felt like I was chasing to keep up, but never quite managing.  And today I only needed one Mommy time-out.  So I think I’m adjusting.

I’m starting to get my feet under me and when someone asks me a question, I occasionally have an answer.  Mom and I are still working out the details of co-habiting with small children.  She sleeps “in” on the weekends, we sleep “in” on the weekdays when she’s up and getting ready for work anyhow.

And we’re getting the food situation straightened out – what my family eats, what her family eats, what is actually in the pantry – but that process has been somewhat derailed by Lia’s new stage of announcing at every single meal “I don’t like that.” Those words are no longer allowed at the table.  They have officially been replaced with, “May I have a no-thank-you helping, please?”

Once we get a basic meal planned, then we get into details.  At which point I usually announce, “well, the way my mother makes it is…”  Or, “that’s not how my mom makes it”.  And then we laugh.  Mom’s lasagne?  Yummy.  With spinach?  That’s not how my mom makes it!  (But it was really yummy).  Sorry, Mom, for holding you to your cuisine of 10 years ago.

But, really.  Micro food environments are fascinating.  We go to make quesadillas and run aground on the details.  Corn or flour tortillas?  What size tortillas?  What kind of cheese?  (Well, that one is easy…tillamook cheddar all the way!).  How much cheese?  Grated or sliced?  Warm the tortillas first or just put them in?  Make whole tortillas or fold them over and make halves?  Microwave or stove? Put a lid on the pan or leave it off?  Cut them with a knife or scissors?  In how many pieces?  What kind of salsa?   (Lia -  I don’t like this salsa!  Mommy – It’s the same as we have at home!)

By next week we’ll have it all figured out.

But with all the busy-ness, Mr. Levi takes the cake.  Busy, busy, busy.  He vacillates between intense skill mastery and wailing boredom.  His newest trick is to babble.  Within one day he’s gone from “na na”  (which makes my sister Liana very happy) to full sentences.  Having ‘words’ to say comes in very handy for a small boy when he wants to complain about something.  Wiggle, wiggle, busy, busy.

Traveling with {small} children

Let me begin by saying that our family much prefers traveling 24 hours by plane to traveling 2 hours by car.  Don’t try and make me feel bad about that, like if I just knew all the secret tricks our kids would magically become great car companions.  It’s just the way it is.  We are not a happy car driving family.  Yet.

Plane traveling, though, is great.  Mostly.

Let’s start with the general philosophy – only take what the two of you parents can carry and still hold a hand at the same time.  Without a cart.  With an umbrella stroller.

This philosophy is now encouraged by having to pay for every piece of check in luggage.  LAME-O.

So we packed for our three month stay in one suitcase and one duffel bag.  Someday I’m going to get this bag, and then see how efficient we can be.

Now, for the good stuff.  The carry ons.

Carry on philosophy – only take what the adults can carry on their backs, leaving arms free for pushing umbrella strollers and carrying tired children through airports.  Not to mention dealing with tickets and passports.

First, we do not take car seats on the plane.  Other people swear by them.  Getting them down the aisle and locked into place while shepherding small bashful people makes us swear.  (But, when we did still think it was a good idea, Janeen had the great suggestion of strapping it to a luggage cart and using it as a stroller in the airport.  Brilliant.)

Other than the struggle of transporting the carseats, we found that the girls didn’t want to stay in them, so we ended up with kids on our laps and no elbow room.  Because you can’t keep kids strapped in for 10 hours on a plane.

So in the two bags that are carried on our backs (no over the shoulder bags!), our packing generally goes as such.  Devo carries the tickets/passports, computer(s), and camera(s).  I carry everything else (which is remarkably lighter than the technology).

Diapers (one for every 2 hours in transit, plus a few extra), wipes, vaseline, and compact extra clothes for the kids (two sets for the baby).  This all goes in one packing cube.

One baggie with liquids, including infants tylenol for just in case.

One small bag with tylenol for the parents, vitamin c, my beloved thyroid medication, and toothbrush.

Sweaters.  But only for the little girls.  I can keep a blanket on myself and an infant when sleeping.

For food we take trail mix or nuts.  And non-spill sippy cups.  The non-spill part is very important.  Non-spill means that liquid does not come out unless someone is sucking on it (and no caps to open and close!).  We have the flight attendants put the drink of choice in the sippy cup and it greatly reduces parental gasping and lunging.  This bonus by far outweighs the inconvenience of lugging empty cups around.

And about toys.  Now that the girls are older, we are packing them each a very small bag with toys in it.  I think there were five identical toys in each.  Paper and pen, very small doll…and I don’t even remember the rest because the only toy that got any attention in 24 hours of traveling were the dolls.  Which is saying something, because usually my kids don’t play with any of the toys we bring.

I take a one-pocket bag that can fit alot, but collapses when it’s empty.  The girl’s bags fit in the top of my bag.  As they get older, they will carry their own bags.  But for this trip, it was infinitely simpler to tuck them into my bag for getting in and out and around places.

This trip we also took the snugli.  Which I referred to mid-trip by various names such as the thingy, the backpack, the sling.  And then wondered why Devo never knew what I was talking about.  We didn’t really use the snugli.  I thought it would be a good idea for holding the baby secure while sleeping, but we couldn’t get comfortable.  And I hate wearing it because it makes my shoulders really hurt.  So I don’t think we’ll take it again.  But I still think it’s a good idea.

The last thing we take it the aforementioned umbrella stroller.  Yes, so you can’t pile things on it (including other children).  But it’s compact, it’s easy to get in and out of, the tiredest child gets to use it, and you don’t get really upset if it gets all beat up.

So there you have it!

 

 

 

 

Guam – Our Sabbatical Begins

I’d like to announce that we arrived for our (almost) three month sabbatical with – three children, three carseats, two suitcases, two carryons, and a partridge in a pear tree.

Here we are in Japan after 20 hours of traveling, one poopy (executed, of course, right when we began taxiing towards the runway – so we had to sit, and sit, and sit, in it), one bowl of ramen, one visit with my cousin-in-law in the Portland airport, one purchase of non-spill sippy cups, four lame movies, and a partridge in a pear tree.

So now we’re here.  Blessedly.  And already our horizons are expanding under the influence of the wide open possibilities of a sabbatical.  A Sabbath.

Mr. Rug Doctor

I had a date with the Rug Doctor tonight.  It didn’t go so well.

So as I squat here in front of my computer desk on a damp, but still dirty and stained carpet, I resolve once again to never choose carpet.

Have human beings every invented something more disgusting and unhygienic to live with them?  I think not.