Coming up to Easter

This week, our entire household has been focused on the countdown to tomorrow’s Easter service.  The church has four days of services this year, but Sabbath happens to be under Devo’s jurisdiction (with creative input from Leilani)…so you can understand that it holds a vast amount of work, time, and focus for our family.

It’s been a week of late bedtimes (either because we put the kids in late, or because they just won’t. go. to. sleep), meal prep disorder and too many defaults to eating out (ugh, I am so done with cheap food), days where the morning routine doesn’t get finished until 11am, or the lunch dishes are still in the sink at 3pm, and days and days where the kids entertain themselves for hours on end while Devo and I work on “shhhhh, Mommy and Pappie have to concentrate” kind of projects.

And I recommit myself to focusing on here, on now, on home.  On things that do not, by nature and necessity, exclude the smaller members of the family.

Lesson learned.  Again.

But in the meantime, it is also incredibly rewarding to birth an idea and see it come alive and take on its own shape and power.   I have the premonition that we possibly should have arranged to provide kleenex at the church doors.  I must remember to tuck some in my purse in the morning.

Lia has been most interested in reading the daily accounts of the Last Week.  Lots and lots of questions from both girls.  I have tried hard to find ways for her to understand how Jesus offended and infuriated the Pharisees.  Verbal insults and intellectual and theological challenges do not register powerfully yet in her six year old experience.

I have also not quite been able to define the concept of (Peter’s) denial to either her or Amelie’s satisfaction. “Mommy, what does ‘deny’ mean?”

But Lia will cajole me every day until we’ve snuggled up on the couch and read through the day’s events, with Lia reading over my shoulder.  Amelie informs me that she prefers to play quietly…she doesn’t like reading books without pictures.  (Levi, if you were wondering where he is, is tucked into his bed before reading time commences).

For tomorrow, I plan to sit quietly with my children, and set aside the harriedness of the week.  And we will experience this together, as the old story becomes new once again.

Lent Begins

Lent is a call to weep for what we could have been and are not. Lent is the grace to grieve for what we should have done and did not. Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not. Lent is not about penance. Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now.

Lent is a summons to live anew.

~Sister Joan Chittister

I’m not sure that I wish to fully embrace this particular Lenten journey.  Pregnancy has a way of cleaning everything out that has been stored in my attics and basements.

It pretty much makes me feel like this most of the time.

I suppose that Lent is a type of “pregnancy”…a time of waiting, excruciating vulnerability, getting rid of the old junk to make way for new life.

Maybe I should count myself blessed to be ahead of the game, already prepped and ready to go on this journey, thanks to coursing hormones and general biological upheaval.

Maybe I should gather courage to embrace the raw meat.  Become an emotional sashimi enthusiast for the duration of Lent.

But, frankly, it’s daunting.  I’d rather just get to the “new life” bit.  (Wouldn’t we all?)

After Christmas

…1… Devo thinks the camera’s problem is the usb cord.  I was unsuspicious….it’s been bent for like two years, why would it stop working now?  But we haven’t replaced the cord, so there are no pictures.  Still.

Which is kind of lame at Christmas time.  All the pictures are stuck in the camera.  Which just means that we’ll skip Christmas for now, and come back to it later.

But it was good.  Merry and bright.

…2… I got my first seed catalog of the season in the mail today.  I’m trying to remain sane, reasonable, and practical.  But I’m seriously thinking of digging up some of the grass so that we can have melons.  Lots of melons.  I’m sure the kids would enjoy dirt paths around vegetable beds to run around and get lost in just as much as they enjoy grass. Right?

…3… While driving out and back from my cousin’s wedding this weekend, I listened to two fascinating stories on NPR.  First, on Being, Joe Carter and the Legacy of the African-American Spiritual.  Spirituals sometimes get the bad theological rap of being ‘escapist’.  But this interview, with fantastic interludes where Joe Carter sings, explored and deepened my understanding of what spirituals say about God, people, and suffering.  There are free downloads of the songs he recorded during this interview…go get them!

On the way back, on The Changing World, Mandela: In His Own Words.  It was almost like my trip had bookends…two stories of intense suffering under unimaginable oppression, and a response to that suffering that did not include bitterness and hatred.

…4… We went on a most awesome trip to the mountains yesterday.  The main highway to the snow was closed due to road damage, so we took a roundabout route.  Three hours of driving, 45 minutes for lunch, and a glorious 15 minutes of sledding.  It was a great time.

In fact, on this trip, for the first time, we sang a chord as a family.  This is a big first!!!!! (We also sang The 12 Days of Christmas innumerable times).  We had watched White Christmas, and there is a scene where Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and the other actress who’s name I’m too lazy to look up, sing about snow.  Snow, snow, snow, snow!  What better thing to sing, when searching for snow?  Even Levi could chime in with “noooo”.  I know, we’re destined for family musical greatness…just envision The Trapp Family Singers…

 

Children’s Choir

:: catching up, post #5…see, I told you I was busy ::

December 4 was the Ordination/Commissioning Service for my good friend (and Devo’s pastoral colleague) Janeen.  She’s been Children’s Pastor here since Lia was 6 months old…so she IS our children’s pastor.  Ordaining women in ministry is not something that is common in our denomination, so I am so proud to be a part of a community that acknowledges the work of God through women.

She requested that my Children’s Choir participate in the service.  We hadn’t done anything since the Easter Messiah last year, so I was glad to get it going.  Janeen requested You are the Shepherd.  A beautiful, beautiful song to follow her ‘response’ at the end of the service.

And then we thought that the children could lead the opening hymn, so I chose the perennial success To God Be the Glory.  Because no matter what happens, everybody can sing “praise the Lord!  praise the Lord!”

Three weeks of rehearsals, through Thanksgiving weekend, no less.  I opened up the choir to the ‘younger than 6 year olds’ for the first time and we had a whole row of 3 year olds.  It was a lot of fun.  We spent a lot of time working on the three verses of To God be the Glory and I am proud and gratified to say that they knew the second verse really, really well.  O perfect redemption, the purchase of God… If anybody ever needs ideas on how to teach this hymn, I have many.

We ended up choosing Gracie as our soloist for You are the Shepherd.  Gracie is four, and I’ve been sitting in Sabbath School with her for two years at least.  She was just. darling.  It was unbearably sweet.

It was such a great group of kids, I’ve started thinking about what we should do next year.  So many of my kids are getting almost too old (or so they think), so I’d like to do another something before they outgrow Children’s Choir.

And then we dashed out the door, I dropped the family off at home, and sped off for my choir concert.

edited to add :: I just realized that I don’t know who took the pictures that my husband acquired.  Let me know who you are and thank you!

Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

I’m sorry I missed your call the other day.  I’m surprised I could even find the message, it was sandwiched in between about thirty five campaign calls.  I don’t know who they think they’re going to convince to vote for them by leaving those annoying messages.  I don’t think it shows good fiscal management to spend that much money to call people up, irritate them, and leave a recorded message.

We did indeed have piano lessons on Thursday.  And Mrs. Linette said the kindest things about Lia and her progress.  You know we had that Fall Recital on Sunday.  Lia dressed up as the Sugar Plum Fairy and played her little piece.  She didn’t play it as well as she usually did, but that didn’t seem to phase her.  It was a grand social event for her, making friends with the kids she was sitting next to, and then having a glorious post-recital romp with Ali and Micah and Amelie.  She informed me that she talked to her new friends during the whole recital.  At least, until she went to sit with Micah, who was ‘lonely’.

She got two new pieces at her lesson, Jingle Bells and The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.  I’m excited for both.  We’ve been working on her playing less tentatively and deeper in the keys, and I think she’ll get right into the spirit of things with Jingle Bells.  And then the Sugar Plum Fairy is pretty ‘difficult’ – for sure the most difficult piece she’s played yet.  She’s sight-reading so well now that the pieces she is assigned are not challenging…at least to read and get the basic idea.

Lia’s stretched up the last week or so.  Today she went around and showed me how tall she was – she could reach this or that.  Her head touches the roof of the car when she stands (not when she sits, she clarified).

And when she opened her mouth and peered inside this week, she discovered that she is getting molars, too!  Just like Levi!

So now Amelie’s mealtime prayers go thus ::

Dear Jesus, Thank You for the wonderful day!  Thank you for Lia’s teeth and Lia’s molars and Levi’s molars.  Amen.

And Amelie, of course, is sure that she is getting some new teeth, too.  Or perhaps has some wiggly teeth.

The girls have decided to study The Nutcracker Suite (hence the Sugar Plum Fairy stuff).  Interlibrary loans are the bomb.  (Did I just say “the bomb”?  I thought I swore in highschool that I would never say those two words in colloquial usage.  Well, as my Grandma always says, one shouldn’t swear.)  But our library system apparently doesn’t have a recording of the original score.  The closest I’ve found uses synthesizers behind the orchestra.  Very 90s.  Very disturbring.  I’m a purist.

But we also got an album from Beethoven’s Wig. I had seen the group mentioned on some blog some where some time in the recent past and snatched it up when I saw it in the online catalog.  It’s so fun – “sing a long symphonies” and other classics, all with singing words.  We have album 3 and the opening number is Carmen’s Toreador, entitled Bull in a China Shop. Hahahaha.

I finally, finally ordered and received the Math U See.  But Devo keeps thinking we’re talking about Matthew C.  (Who is that? he wonders.) Amelie loves to play with the manipulatives.  But maybe that is because all of their toys have been confiscated.

Yes, our first toy confiscation has occurred.

Friday we were working upstairs in the loft and the girls were playing with the kitchen toys, the dolls, and the doll clothes.  And when it was time to come downstairs, I asked them to clean up.  And then I asked them again.  And then, that was it. That was the end of this era of toy-picking-up-patterns.

Toy clean up has recently gone like this :

Me : Time to clean up the toys.

Me, five minutes later : Girls, it’s time to clean up the toys.

Me : Amelie, you clean up the books.  Lia, you clean up the dolls.

Lia, whining : Amelie isn’t helping.

Me : Amelie, please help.

Amelie : non-verbal declaration that she is NOT going to pick up the toys now.

Me : cajole, cajole

Lia : whine, whine (although, she does pick up the toys)

Amelie : lays on floor, possibly weeping and wailing

So I told them that they needed to clean up their toys without me saying any more about it.  And if they didn’t pick them up, Pappie and I would box up the toys and put them where they were not allowed to play with them.  And then I set a timer … they needed to start picking up before the timer went off.

And they both soberly and deliberately came downstairs, sat on the couch, and read books.  I would love to know if they had a conversation about this, or if it was an unspoken agreement on a selected course of action.

The timer went off, Devo and I picked up all the toys in the house, stowed them in the front room and closed the door.

And they haven’t said a word about it since.

Well, I take that back.  Amelie did mention the next morning that she missed having a snuggie.  And Lia told our friend Marni who came to babysit them Saturday night that their toys had been confiscated because they didn’t pick them up.

But that’s it.

Weird.

Ironically, the house is still the same amount of messy and cluttered.  So I guess I can’t blame it on the toys.  We didn’t give a timeline…I think we’ll wait until they ask for them and then sit down and talk about the privilege of playing with toys.  And the responsibilities that come with the privilege. And the expectations that exist in this home.

And in the meantime, I’m going to work on figuring out what on earth is making the mess if it isn’t the toys, and eliminating it.

Love!

Leilani

 

Wild Times

Today is officially our day of Return to a Sense of Normalcy.  At least, I’m hoping hoping hoping it is.

It’s been wild around here.  Our church has just added a second service (‘contemporary’, for lack of a better word) and the first two weeks were awesome in the most literal sense of the word.  But as you can imagine, it has also been a lot of time and alot of work and a lot of anxiety for the pastors.  To put it mildly.

And then <BIG ANNOUNCEMENT>, it has been officially announced that Devo has come to the end of his (NINE YEAR!!!) tenure as youth pastor here and he is going to transition to a new position.  To be very clear…same church, new position.  It’s not exactly clear yet just what the new position will be, but all the options look promising.

And it’s all great and going to be great, but that, also, obviously, has taken lots of time and work and anxiety.  To put it mildly.

Devo and I fell into the habit of having serious conversations…several hours after a normal bedtime.  And then he’d often work some more after that.  I pretty much threw up my hands and let our daily life run very very loosely.  If we were going to be in a time of fluctuation and change, then by George, we were going to embrace fluctuation and change.  Besides, otherwise we might never have seen Devo if we hadn’t arranged ourselves somewhat around the 15 minutes here and there we could see him.

So there was the new service launch, followed by week of prayer at the academy, and it was all pushing us right to the very brink of insanity when the girls and I came down with the stomach flu Thursday night.

It wasn’t pretty.

WARNING :: GROSS SUBJECT MATTER…skip bulleted items if possessing of weak stomach…

Some thoughts after a night and a day of a stomach bug ::

• Words for vomiting are actually pretty cool :: vomit, emesis, puke, throw up, hurl, retch, up chuck, barf.
• I have never before shared an emesis basin with another before, but it’s quite a bonding experience.  And that’s what happens when the chain reaction is set off and there are only two receptacles for three people.
• I love how encouraged Lia was every time it became evident that another person had joined her in sickness, it really cheered her up.  Guess misery really does love company.
• I heard it said once that you know kids are “big” when they can make it down the hall to throw up in the toilet all by themselves.  I guess Lia’s a big girl now.
• Premarital counseling question #657 – Who will take care of children when they have the stomach flu?  Does anyone have a weak stomach that would preclude them from Puke Support Duty?
  
• Devo’s week of prayer theme was “7-Up”…What’s Up, Fess Up, Own Up, Listen Up, Stand Up, Show Up.  And Friday he facebooked that he had indeed completed the 7th “up” … throw up.  Hahaha.

I was so thankful we are a one career family and I had nothing else to do but take care of my family.  Oh, and survive.

Friday we recovered, Sabbath we were raring to go again, and then Saturday night Lia’s stomach rebelled against the day’s culinary offerings. And her stubborn streak made one of its (blessedly) rare appearances.  She planted herself next to the toilet and refused to budge.

She was determined to spend the night at the toilet, and yes she was very comfortable, thank you very much.

And she did look quite comfortable.  And I did think seriously about letting her just stay there and go get some sleep myself.  But I just couldn’t do it, so after a couple of hours (and a number of chapters in my book), I finally coaxed her off her perch and we snuggled together on the couch, our handy puke bowl ever at the ready.

And lest that sound too calm and nurturing, I think I ran out of calm and nurturing some time around 1am, and was ready to plead with tears and threats…but luckily was not driven to do so.  That would have been a mess, wouldn’t it?  I can just see myself whimpering, limping in to wake Devo up and beg him to rescue me, puke notwithstanding, with Lia crying hysterically as she clings to the toilet.

It could have happened.  It very nearly did.

We survived the night.  We survived the week.  We survived the last month.

And now I’m hoping that we are shifting back into a normal life.

Please.  Please.  Pleeeeeeeeeease.

I’m ready.

 

 

 

 

Snatches

:: Would you like some cheese with your ham? ::

:: Lia photographs Amelie ::

:: My closet finds new inspiration.  Today’s name of choice…”Chandelier” (or “ChandeLIA”) ::

:: An exploratory look reveals the long awaited adult teeth…growing in their own row behind the babies.  Lots of teeth wiggling going on here. ::

:: incidentally, Lia has begun ending her speeches with “she said”.  For example, “No, I don’t want another sandwich…<in a quieter voice> she said.”

:: After a 17 month hiatus, Friday Night Youth returns.  So does the minestrone and hot chocolate ::

:: A trip to the creek today…this is what I want for my children ::

Crud

I’ve been all in a dither lately. Discovered that I had an accumulation of soul crud and set out to do some serious decluttering.

And because it seems that the state of my soul equals the state of my home, I have discovered that I have an accumulation of crud in my house, too.

The discipline of silence has been doing a pretty good job of stirring up the soul dust and generally making me very uncomfortable.  I feel quite like an ugly lizard in the early stages of molting.

The exercise of decluttering is starting to make inroads on the home front.  I spent last evening pruning the kids’ bookshelf.  And what a revealing exercise it was.

I should keep this book because so-and-so gave it to us.  I should keep this book because it’s about cerebral palsy, and that’s a worthy topic – even if the book isn’t well written or well illustrated.

What if I need this someday?  What if a year from now I regret getting rid of this?  Sometimes the kids like the most surprising books…what if I’m getting rid of a book they might eventually like?

Oh no, I only have five coloring books now, is that enough? (Five coloring books for two little girls who don’t really like to color).  I know I don’t like having lots of books based on cartoons, but what if Lia would be interested in reading this Clifford book all by herself?

Should I keep all three copies of “Guess How Much I love You?”…remember how you gave away the extra copy of Goodnight Moon and now your Goodnight Moon is torn and you need a new one?

BARF.

But painful though it is, now that I’ve gone through them once, I’m tempted to do it again and see if I couldn’t pare down more.  There is, after all, a library just down the road.  The only books we really need are the read-it-over-and-over books.

Like The Story about Ping.  Which we are currently reading over and over.  And over.  (Amelie :: When the boy got Ping, I had a tear. I don’t like that part.)

Almost our entire book collection (which is really quite vast) are hand-me-downs from friends.  So I keep thinking, as my stack of give away books gets bigger, Freely you have received, freely give.

I’ve been thinking alot about my house lately.   I’ve been holding onto quite a lot of stuff, just in case we would want it in our future house.  But thanks to the Nester, I finally had a dawning of realization :: THIS IS MY HOUSE.

For a renter who has been on the brink of buying for two years, this is a big shift.

So I’m taking a big breath, and sending all the things that I’m not using and loving on out the door.  Hopefully out the door through craigslist for some of it, with a few dollars coming back in.

Compound that with the fact that every where I turn there is CRUD everywhere.  The small children take things from here or there and drop them on their way hither and yon, and every day as we clean up I say to myself, “We have too much stuff”.  After a while I started listening to myself.

I’d rather my life rule my stuff than my stuff rule my life. Both in my home, and in my soul.

If you know what I mean.

And now I’m going to go do some more decluttering.  Mindfully, because I’m counting it as a spiritual exercise, too.

The Measure of My Days

~natural laundry detergent~

~Sabbath challah~

~challah to share~homemade granola~

~record of this week’s official learning~

~My box of washing soda arrived today.  Because no stores in this area carry it, I ordered it from Great Cleaners…free shipping if you sign up for automatic shipments.

Grated down our Dr. Bronner’s soap bars (one bar is still incognito, probably disguised as a baby, wrapped in a dishcloth, and tucked somewhere for safe keeping).  We used Baby Mild and Citrus Orange to make two different “flavors”.

I don’t know how user friendly my pretty canning jars will be when dishing out the soap, but they sure are satisfying.  Everything is satisfying in a mason jar.

Recipe is from SouleMama, source of everlasting inspiration, peace, and beauty.  In one of the comments, someone has done the math and figured out the cost savings.  Imagine that, save money and be environmentally friendly.  Doesn’t happen often.

~Methinks it’s time to share the goodness of our challah recipe.  Maybe next week I can take the gallery of photos it deserves (my new favorite pasttime, photographing breads) and share.  It really is unbelievably delicious.

~Devo mixed up a batch of granola this afternoon.  Easy peasy now that I mix the dry ingredients in a paint bucket.  Just takes a few minutes to toss some with the oil and water and fill up the oven.

~Lia’s Book of Learning, with this week’s record of “official learning”.  Opposite page, her drawings from our experiments with the changing forms of water.

I’ve begun to think that I should keep a record of the things that I do and accomplish so that when I get to the end of these exhausting days I can say to myself Oh, yeah, you DID do alot today! Because, you know, at the end of the day sometimes you need a little cheering squad.  Especially when you’re so tired you can’t remember what happened just mere moments earlier. 

It’s been a wild week, trying to get into this new, fuller schedule.  The bones of our day are still the same, but the level of faithfulness is going up, up, up.   And it’s wearing me out!

O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go

O Love that wilt not let me go,

I rest my weary soul in Thee;

I give Thee back the life I owe,

That in Thine ocean depths its flow

May richer, fuller be.

~George Matheson

Not Baal

As I left the room, I said, “Tomorrow is a special day – the day when we worship God together!”

Lia’s little voice comes out of the darkness, “Not Baal!”

Can you tell the Sabbath School lesson is on Elijah this week?

End of the Week Round-Up

End of the Week Round-Up — by no means all inclusive.  Or even representative.  On further reflection, maybe I should retitle it End of the Week Weak Stream of Consciousness.

1) Herbs.

Can I ever have enough herbs?  There’s nothing like running my hands through the basil.  Or the dill.  Or the thyme.  Or the rosemary.  I cannot imagine a life in which I have enough herbs.

I have five run-of-the-mill basils, a purply basil, a purply ruffly basil, and a spicy globe basil.  And yet still I ration.

I have one dill.  And it was so intent on flowering, that I let it…it seems against the cosmic order of things to thwart so determined a process.  Next year, more dill.  MORE DILL!

And speaking of more, next year (or, perhaps, even this year) MORE TOMATOES.  Here we are at the beginning of August and I’m rationing tomatoes.  This is wrong, very very wrong.  (I don’t think the tomatoes like their new place in the garden…too much clay?)

2)  VBS recovery.

See, I said that Pharoah was cute.  I think I’ll name this picture Reason #23,986 Why I Love This Man.  Not everyone has a rockin’ Pharoah for a husband.

As I said, post-VBS, the children have {all} been down with a mild cold.  Perhaps “down” is the wrong term.  Maybe I should say that they’ve been “up” with a mild cold…up at nights, that is.  I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m going to succumb (how can I not, being bathed continually in snot?  hey, that rhymes).  But I’m ignoring my sneaking suspicion and consuming vast quantities of vitamin C.

3) New (to me) blog genre (or would it be a category?)

I’ve been perusing the crafty blogs this week.  I need a new bookmark category because all my new favorites are getting lost in the home decor category.  Here’s a few, maybe you haven’t seen them::

Posie Gets Cozy

Angry Chicken

Not Martha

All Sorts

4) This week’s sewing fun – Snack Bags from angry chicken.

They are like  old-fashioned fold over baggies – remember those? – made out of fabric. So easy, so quick, so cute, so usable!  They are even easy and quick when little someone’s sit on my lap and do all the sewing.  Or, serging, rather.

In her video tutorial, angry chicken uses a serger.  I have a serger.  My mom bought it for me, oh, five years ago.  She used it to sew me an extraordinary bridesmaid dress in a feat of sewing daring and prowess.  And I’d never gotten it to work since.  I became, through a number of hours of pouring over the manual and peering into the machine, proficient at threading the thing.  But I could never get it to make a decent serge.  (Or whatever the terminology would be). And getting to a Joann Fabrics class just never got to the top of my “I really should do this” list – it remained firmly entrenched in the “I feel perpetually slightly guilty that I have not done this” list.  Do you have one of those?  (I recently starting actually making that particular list – hoping to check some of those things off and release some guilt into the stratosphere).

Well, cute and reusable snack bags were inspiration enough.  I retrieved the serger from its resting place in the garage and the girls and I watched a youtube tutorial to freshen up my threading skills.  We threaded it, and as I was fooling with tension knobs, I discovered two more knobs around the back side.

{blink}

Voila.  Now I have a working serger.  Thanks, Mom!  I’m going to use this gift alot!  Five years later.

The girls picked their fabric and sewed their bags, including a small one for a friend’s birthday gift, and we filled them with homemade crackers. Yum.  They didn’t last 24 hours.

Fanks, God.

Dear Jesus,

Fank You for the wonderful day.  Fank You for the paint and the drawings.  Fank You for the planets. Fank You for looking at the pictures that we painted.

Amen.

(Dinner’s ‘new prayer’ – by Amelie).

Amelie’s Lunch Prayer

Dear Jesus, Thank You for our whole family.  Thank You for the stuff we do now.  Thank You that we’re so friendly.  Amen.

Really it’s all about church

Time has flown!  Where have I been?

1) watching World Cup Soccer, and now Wimbledon. Devo’s wondering why he had to preach THIS week of all weeks.  But never fear, I’m sure he will watch all the important matches AND manage to write a sermon.  As well as taking the kids to the park, reading stories, and taking them swimming.  Because he’s Super Man.  And he’s mine.

2) Sewing. I got a remnant of this cute green and white stripe canvassy fabric at IKEA, came home, and promptly sewed it into a valance for my kitchen window.  Said kitchen window has been dressed for the last two years in a repurposed white eyelet skirt.  The skirt is now being repurposed into a cape or dancing dress, as needed by the imaginations of small girls.

I also sewed a beach/picnic blanket.  She came, she sewed, she conquered.

Dumb thing took way longer than it should have.  Mostly because I was piecing together scraps.  It’s hard to feel like a domestic goddess for hours on end when you know you should have been finished hours ago.  But now it’s complete, and only cost the batting – which I got on sale.

3) Cooking. Buttermilk pancakes.  Hummus, tzatziki, and Greek salad.  Homemade pizza.  Vietnamese spring rolls.  Roasted garlic.  Roasted potatoes and yams with garlic and rosemary.

4) Reading Little House in the Big Woods with the girls. We’re over halfway through and we just started this week.  I’ve decided to skip over all the parts where Laura bemoans her ‘ugly’ brown hair and glorifies Mary’s blond hair.  We are at an impressionable age.

5) Reading soulemama.com. Do you find that you focus on certain blogs at certain times?  Sometimes I’m all about thenester.com.  Or bakingbites.com.  (I’m always about testosterhome.net).  Other times I can go days without looking at them.  Right now it’s Soule Mama, with her bright colors, four children, and creative life.

6) Debating the church problem.

{Hi, my name is Leilani and I have a problem with church.}

I have reached a crisis point.  So let me confess, for confession is good for the soul::

I am incapable of getting my three children bathed, dressed, fed, and shod, going to Sabbath School, to the potty, and to church, and then to the potty, and then after church playtime.

The bathed, dressed, fed, and shod part isn’t so bad.  Usually.  In fact, we are almost always early.  (My philosophy : Get out the door as soon as you are ready or risk disaster.)

It’s the NAP.  Daily nap at 10am is great…except on Sabbath morning (Sabbath School starts at 9:45).  Levi won’t sleep at church and he just gets wilder and noisier and wigglier.  Until I feel as though I’m on the rack, being tortured.

So instead of enjoying the one day a week I get out into the wider world and interact with people, I ‘run the race marked out for me’, and it’s truly a heruculean effort.

Two weeks ago I was determined to stay and hear the sermon by one of our great (female!) religion professors.  We did alright until two minutes into the sermon.  And, people, you know how it goes.  When we melt, it’s instantaneous.  There was no time to gather the toys, the shoes, the girls, the bags, and the shrieking baby.  I just grabbed him up and fled, leaving the rest behind.

Lia and Amelie happily migrated to the pew behind where a friend from Sabbath School happened to be sitting. Having people watch my children without even the courtesy of me asking their consent is a great exercise in letting go of pride.  Let me tell you.

So Levi and I stood in the hall (he wasn’t getting down to run and think it’s all a lark, no way Jose), and peeked in the door at the girls in one minute intervals.

The logistics are simply impossible.  One me, three of them, innumerable opportunities for trials and temptations, difficulties and disasters.

No matter how much I gird up for the fray beforehand, each week is just getting harder.

Devo has been so busy – I don’t even know what he’s doing, he’s so busy – we don’t even get to wave at him.  Or shriek, depending on our sensibilities.

I’ve been real tempted to whine.  But how would that sound?  Why can’t you sit with us in church?  Why do you have to do your job? Good ones, Leilani.

I started seriously thinking about the pressures of church a few weeks ago when the Sabbath School pianist didn’t show up and I played for the first few songs.  Another lady kept an eye on Levi and Amelie.  And I sat there on the piano bench and thought I can’t believe how much easier this is!  All I’m doing is sitting here! It was literally a shock to my system to realize how much strain and stress it is to take shy Amelie and wiggly Levi to Sabbath School.  Frankly, the hardest part is managing the baskets.  I have taken away their ability to handle their own baskets.  For the sake of my sanity, I put all the stuff into one basket and dole it out at the proper time.

I’m sure people look at me and think that I’m not allowing my children to learn responsibility, but frankly I don’t really care.  Let them fill my shoes for a day and see if they can keep all the stuff inside the baskets.

Sometimes I look at these families who have two people to share child caring on Sabbath mornings and do one of two things : sit up straighter, thinking loftily of my prowess in navigating the morning alone.  Or, slump a little and wish my child caring partner could be around to share the load.

I don’t like admitting defeat, but I think that sometimes the time arrives when I must admit that I can’t do it all alone.

That time would be now.  I can’t do it all alone.

Except, of course, that I have to do it all alone.

So there you have it.  Prime time for coming up with a new solution. And, lucky for me, I have a new solution.

I have decided to try week swapping.  Sabbath School one week, then come home for the nap, then go back to church to chat afterwards.  Next week, stay home for naptime (skipping Sabbath School), and going to church.

I have actually garnered the consent of the girls for this new proposition.  If, indeed, they actually understood the proposition.

So this week, being that Devo is preaching, we will try skipping Sabbath School, and go to church.

Last week, when I left potluck after 20 minutes of chasing baby, mopping up spilled water, cleaning up spilled food, and herding children apt to scatter like the winds, I told Devo that I wasn’t coming to church anymore.  (Does that constitute a whine?)  Ignoring the possible slight on his work situation, he instead promised to think inventively about how to make Sabbaths enjoyable for me.  Because it’s important to him that I enjoy Sabbath.  And gave me a hug (which was observed by that other group of people…all of them…as they were getting into their car).  Which made me feel a whole lot better.  A little bit of love can do alot…