It's raining in Rome

It was one of "those" days when I was trying to make fun memories with my child but everything was going wrong.  Everything from my youngest waking up too early to my word being contradicted to cookie dough sticking to, well, everything.  This wasn't what I had in mind when I thought of making holiday cookies.

"That doesn't look like a snowman, Mom," my son told me with disappointment dripping from his voice.  He had his hands poking around in the dough and then into the flour and then into his mouth. 

While I was trying to instruct him in the ways of germs and hygiene, my little sound-track kept repeating herself behind me saying, "Mommy, look!"  I stood there with cookie dough gooping up my fingers, the table, and the rolling pin, a snowman leaning precariously on my cookie sheet, my mess widening by the second...and I sighed.  This certainly held the potential of becoming a lasting memory, but not necessarily a positive one.

The good news is that in that critical moment I remembered a phrase offered to us during our parenting classes:  Rome wasn't built in a day.  

We'd like to see our children "get it" immediately.  But usually they won't.  They are children, after all, and it takes time (and consistent parenting) to develop good habits and solid character. 

The phrase was meant to encourage us in our parenting but it went beyond that for me.  It pertained to me directly and to the parent I'd like to become someday.  And it pertained to Fun-Things-Gone-Bad.

Thanks to those well-timed words, I managed to take courage in the middle of my cookie episode. "It is only raining in pre-Rome today," I told myself.  

I imagined the work on Rome being halted during untimely downpours.  The mud, the set-backs, the delays...it wasn't what they had hoped for. But the master planners didn't despair.  They knew the sun would shine again --and Rome eventually became an empire. 

Somewhere in our kitchen the sun must have started to shine because our cookie dough consistency grew workable with more flour and we eventually had trays full of cookies that passed the approval of my junior assistant.  Even the baby grew happy playing by herself.

So the next time I'm losing heart over a child (or a mommy) who isn't "getting it" at the moment or if I'm disappointed over Fun-Things-Going-Bad, I'm going to remind myself that it is only raining. 

After all, Rome wasn't built in a day. 

5 of our Seasonal Traditions

1. Gingerbread House  

Yes, we're amateurs, and no, our house wouldn't win any prizes.  Unless, of course, there are prizes like The Most Fun We Had All Week.

2. Pomander Balls

I may be seriously behind times but I was only introduced to oranges decorated with cloves when last year at my sister-in-law's house.  This year I did my own and had so much fun with them that they became an instant tradition.  According to what I read online, these aromatic balls can be kept from year to year, but considering oranges and cloves are cheap entertainment, I plan to do fresh ones each winter.

3. Cut-out Cookies 

Ok, why can't bread be seasonal?  Bread dough and I get along much more nicely than cut-out cookie dough and I. Which is why I rarely make cut-out cookies and why they turned out like the picture below.  I'll tell you later about cookie dough sticking to rolling pins and other tragic tales in a later post.  But, hey, if you close your eyes when you bite into them (saves yourself the pain of seeing what you are eating) they taste amazing. Plus, my sprinkle-happy four-year-old had a ball decorating them.

4. The Slumber Party

No holiday would ever be complete at our house without our traditional family slumber party in the living room.  The children love it. 

5. Holiday mail  

Okay, so whether this can be filed under the category of "tradition" is debatable, but it certainly is a sign of the season.  We get three-fourths of all personal mail in the month of December. To us it feels like mail by the truckload.  I mean, sometimes we get two whole pieces of mail in one single day.  That is worth celebrating.  

So tell me, what traditions do you have at Christmas time?  

A Gift for the Season

Sometimes gifts are boxes all wrapped up in shiny paper and bejeweled with ribbon.  

But sometimes gifts look different.  Very different.  Sometimes they look like an unidentifiable black spot that grows on your skin.  The finishing touch isn't a pretty ribbon but a concerned mother. 

Right, Brother of Mine? 

The "thing" was noticed a while ago.  But what mother is going to take one look at a tiny but unusual black spot on her strapping six-foot-three son who is swamped in work and convince him in a minute to get it checked out by a doctor?  Not our mama. At least not when we're working with this Brother of Mine.  

So it was forgotten.  At least until Mom saw it a month later.  "This thing is growing, Son.   You really should get it checked out."

"I can't right now." His words were decisive.  He wasn't buying into her concern.  "We are in our busiest season at work and there is no way I'm taking off for this.  You worry too much."

But isn't concern for her child part of a mother's job description?  Especially this mother.  She buried a sister, a best friend, and a father-in-law all to cancer and she wasn't going to let a suspicious looking spot on her son slide by unchecked.

So when it was seen again this past week, she gasped.  It was an audible gasp, but an involuntary one. Catching her breath she said, "Okay! This thing has grown substantially.  Now you have no choice.  You will be going in to the doctor.  I'll even pay for the appointment if that is what it takes, but you need to get this checked out."

No amount of protesting or pinning valid excuses to the moment were going to buy him an escape route this time.  Eventually his moaning and groaning gave way to a reluctant, "Okay, then.  Friday is the only possible day it will work for me this week."

The doctor was no fool.  He had met tall young men before sent to him by a concerned mother and he read the undertones of this visit.  

"Actually, young man," the doctor said, "your mother is right.  This needs to be removed.  However, the spot you came in for doesn't look as dangerous as this one."

His finger traced a neighboring spot.  "This one I'm very concerned about and it needs to come off today."

Mothers are too kind to say "I told you so" but ours would have had full rights.  Yet in the following days, her concern swallowed those rightfully spoken words and exchanged them for prayers.  Family and friends joined in.  

Then came the dreaded phone call.  "The spot removed was cancer and we need to see you in our office tomorrow morning." 

Cancer?  Life and death flashed through his mind.  Her mind.  Surely this wasn't happening.

The appointment turned out to be encouraging.  "It is melanoma in situ, which means it is contained."  The doctor looked at my brother.  "In a year, you would have been in serious trouble."  

But which spot was the cancerous one?  No, it wasn't the black unidentifiable one that Mom had gasped over.  That one was just a decoy God used to get a young man to a doctor.   The cancerous spot was the one the doctor noticed.  

Gifts come in all shapes and sizes.  This time the gift was The Spot that God Grew.  It was all wrapped up in a mother's concern and tied in love's golden thread. 

Merry Christmas, Brother of Mine.  How about a miracle for a present?

My heart is full.

I blame it on the time of year.

I celebrate a birthday, Thanksgiving, a wedding anniversary, and Christmas 

all within two months time.  It is just too much.  

Too much happiness.  

     Too much love.  

                                         Too much of everything good.

So because we're still in that season, 

my heart is full.

I suppose as I age I'll be in great danger of my heart exploding

 into a zillion happy pieces during this time of year.  

As it is I think it comes pretty close.

I was given piles of birthday presents.

Ten, I think.

I didn't even know there were ten people

who would not only remember my birthday, 

but who would want to give me a present.

But there were.

And then there was Thanksgiving with its

turkey, dressing, and all the traditional aromas that go along with it:

Sage. Pumpkin. Spice.

Thanks.  Family time.

Sitting at a little table for two of a charming coffee shop,

sipping seasonal lattes,

talking and laughing,

dreaming...

"Happy Anniversary," he told me, grinning.  

We toasted with our cardboard and paper cups full of Chai.

"Here's to many more wonderful years."

We chose the Loft at the cabin where we were gifted two nights.

It was my zany idea to skip the luxurious Master Bedroom with its perks 

and to opt for the Loft with the Skylight,

but he seconded the suggestion immediately.

Stars would have twinkled through the Skylight

had they not been hidden somewhere behind the clouds.

Instead, rain danced on the skylight, our little Window to Heaven.

It played there for most of our two days and two nights

but we thought that it only

added to the charm of the dream-like Loft.

Rain also danced on the cabana roof 

where steam most likely was boiling out of the slat at the top.  

We reveled in the Hot Tub Room with all that 

curling steam and deliciously hot water.

Hours to soak up the luxury.

The children loved it.

Yes, the children.

I know.  I said I have some zany ideas.

But the children sleep so much and so well.

We could divide our days into fourteen hours of anniversary dating

and ten hours of family vacation.

The cabin was huge.  

The children slept on a different floor than we did.

We wouldn't even know they were there

unless they were hungry.

Which they were at seven every morning.

And at two in the afternoon when we thought they'd be napping.

Okay, so our days weren't the 14:10 ratio we expected.

But family vacation is worth something, too.

Our days were too soon gone

and too full of love.

So my heart hurts today.

It aches because John had to go back to work
and I to normal life

and the children needed a mother

not a starry-eyed dreamer

who is living off of coffee and sweet memories.

But Christmas is coming and I can't see my heart getting better anytime soon.

Because it melts into a puddle over seasonal sweet things

like volunteers who ring bells in the frigid cold

all to give gifts to the poor

and the college that forfeited its rightful income earned by parking violations

and had the violators pay in canned goods instead

so they could give to the poor.

Christmas. 
A time of giving and cheer,
Celebration and joy
and gratitude and loving
and peace and happiness.
All because of Christ.

As I said, my heart is full.

Maybe it is the season.
And I love it.

The Annual Family Photo Session? Check.

It isn't even December, folks, and I have two neat piles on my desk, one of family pictures, and one of envelopes.  I think this means I won't need to have my annual minor panic attack when I realize that the Christmas countdown is on and we haven't a single family picture to send out to all our friends and family. 

Last year (like most years before it) I wasn't so fortunate.  "It is cold now," I lamented to John in mid-December. "We missed our golden opportunity again."

We were down to three familiar Family Photo Options with which we are faced annually:
1) Take pictures outside in the cold with our noses glowing red as though we were distant relatives of Rudolph the Reindeer. (Been there done that --and ended up with black and white photos to try to mask our red noses.  I need to ask my mom how many generations back Rudolph is in our genealogy.)
2) Take an indoor picture.  Unfortunately, been there, done that, too, in spite of my love for outdoor pics.
or, 3 and my personal favorite) Go on Pinterest. Find a lovely and creative family photo with children about our children's ages and send that picture out with a note saying, "No, this isn't us. But this is a much better photo than we could come up with on our own..."

Well, this year we were fast heading towards the Pinterest Family Photo Option had not my photographer sister saved the day by saying:  "Hey, I saw a lovely place in Denver for family pictures.  And I saw a neat pose that would be adorable with your family.  I'll take your pictures for you..."

Perfect.  

So we watched the weather until it changed from cold and colder to a mini heat wave when the thermometer actually pushed the fifties on a Sunday afternoon.  We grabbed the moment (thanks, Dawn) and got the pictures taken.  Fortunately, our actual photography sessions go pretty well (provided we aren't freezing into position when we do it) and are little stress when they actually take place. 

This means we have our pictures printed and waiting on the family update to be completed.  That is a sequence I'm entirely unfamiliar with and hardly know how to handle. 

Applause, please.
 

Hey, I caught you doing good!

He might only be four, but he's learning it can be fun to do something nice for other people.  Recently he's gotten into "doing a blessing" for me.  At least once a day I'll hear, "Look, Mom! I'm doing a blessing for you. Am I your blessing boy?"

And he'll be wiping up some water he spilled or he'll sneak quietly up beside me and toss a pair of socks in my lap after noticing I have "no socks and cold feet".  A blessing boy indeed.  

I'm glad, then, that I was reminded recently about The Blessing Book idea.  "Catch your children doing something good and record it in your family's Blessing Book," Paul Lloyd said during our Saturday morning parenting classes. "Pull out the book on birthdays and read to the birthday child all the ways they were a blessing that year."  

I absolutely love the idea.  Hopefully I can remember to keep this up for the next twenty years until my children are grown and recording blessings of their own offspring.  What a neat collection and what a great way to fill a child with positive feedback and praise!

Some of my favorite kiddie quotes:

1. "Mom, can I break out our windows?  I'm a fireman."  My sister looked down at her son to see him standing there with a hatchet.  Hey, at least he asked first!

2. And speaking of axes:  "Mom, why do doctors use axes to check reflexes?"  We got him a doctor's kit, taught him the basic uses of the instruments, but apparently need to work on terminology next.

3. It was a mini astronomy lesson, thanks to a child's encyclopedia and a page full of planets.
"This is Earth," I told him. "This is where we live."
"Oh." He eyeballed the remainder of the prettily colored planets.
"Which planet does Grandpa Hoover live on?"

I love little people's speech.  Their description for life's issues are priceless:

4.  "My nose is all tangled up."  Yeah, mine gets that way too during a really bad head cold like he had.

5.  And ever feel just really miserable?  Like, inside and out?  My son has and summed it up by saying, "I'm hot, cold, and tired."

Communicating with a child

My son was listening to music the other day and asked, "Why are they singing about one box of kitty fur?"  They weren't.  While I realize that songs can be easy to misunderstand, "one box of kitty fur" wasn't particularly close to the original ("I've never seen the many thrills and sights unfurled.") 

With that in mind, it is no wonder I need to repeat myself sometimes.  Twice.  It usually works best to simplify things with one or two basic commands to make things unmistakably clear. Sound familiar?

Very. 

Because I'm a child myself and that is how my Father deals with me.  Only He never grows weary of repeating things when I'm not getting it.  Life's complexities can be too hard to wrap my mind around, so He simplifies things.  Like this week when He gave me two basic things to focus on: Pray in every situation, and Jesus is the answer to everything.

Pray, because He's Jesus

When the children are into each other and I don't know how to handle it He says, 

"Pray, I am Wisdom."

When my heart is restless or I'm uptight about something He says, 

"Pray.  I am Peace."

When I am tempted to be discouraged, He says, 

"Pray.  I am both Hope and Joy."

In the middle of a temptation to sin He says, 

"Pray. I am Power to overcome."

And if I fail to pray and fall into wrong attitudes and sin, He says, 

"Pray.  I am Forgiveness."

"Pray.  Because I'm Jesus."

I need a Parent Who can clearly communicate with me. He knows how to eliminate conversations like we had at the table a few weeks ago:

"Do you think the noise I made sounds like a bear?"

"I don't know.  I didn't hear you."

"Oh.  I said, 'Do you think the noise I made sounds like a bear?"

"And I said I didn't hear you."

"Oh.  DO YOU THINK THE NOISE I MADE SOUNDS LIKE A BEAR??!!"

The parents are laughing.  "I meant that I didn't hear the bear noise."

"Oh."

Communication.  I'll get it right someday because I can pray.  He is both the perfect Communicator and Teacher. 

God knew how much I love a child's imagination.

Even before I was a mom, I'd laugh until I ached over other people's children and their incurable imaginations.

God knew that and providentially gave me a child with an imagination as big as the sky.
And I absolutely love it.

I knew my son had a world-class imagination

when he was still an only child and brought an airplane to me with a scowl on his face.  In his limited speech he told me, 

"Tyler grab! Tyler grab a airplane.  I say NO!"

Oh boy.

So we had sibling rivalry with an only child and his imaginary friend.

It happened three times in a row. 

The airplane got put on the counter "until you boys can play sweetly with each other."

It got better and better from there.  

Storybook pages come to life in  my living room.

Yesterday it was a yardstick with a shirt on it slung over his shoulder.

The shirt was hay, the yardstick his pitchfork, and he was Old John Skipton going to feed Bonny, the horse, with James Herriot.

My shopping cart has been a trash truck or a cable car for years.

So has our bed.

But there's more.  More so precious it hurts. 

So imaginative I hug myself and write cute things he's doing on my ever growing list of things that bring me joy. I kiss his cheeks -crumpets, his dad calls them- and tell him how special he is to me.

And I take pictures, trying to impress these golden days in my memory forever.

Lots of pictures.  He loves looking at them, too.

One day when he's grown past the stage of falling out of a wash basket boat with diving gear on, we'll look at the pictures together and laugh until our sides ache. 

My Son's Imagination...

One day he's a diver, complete with an oxygen mask and tank on his back, goggles, and an underwater camera (yes, he thrashes his way across the floor, photographing sharks and whales and things).

Diving is more fun with a friend.  

(By the way, he wanted to take his frog and get-up out into the grass. I nixed the idea because it was wet outside and I didn't want to have a wet, muddy frog in my house afterwards.  In retrospect, I probably saved our house when I told him no as I can imagine our very proper landlord coming over with an eviction notice had he seen this apparatus thrashing its way across the front lawn.) 

They stayed inside and went boating instead.

He makes a great astronaut standing on the moon with his space helmet and oxygen tanks.  "I'm climbing into my honeymoon," he said, "and am going to the planet."

His original spacesuit. This one was limiting in that he couldn't see where he was going and had to walk really slow. 

One day he got to use a real hose to help his dad wash off a real "firetruck".  A real hose that sprays real water sure beat my vacuum attachment which generally is pressed into service as a fire hose!   And, no, I still don't know how he manages to keep his oxygen mask sucked on so well.

A pilot like Daddy.  Only Daddy's briefcase is black and this little guy's is blue.  

Logic will take you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. -Albert Einstein 

Observations from a woman with a broken stove:

1. Old habits die hard. I had a kettle of Syrian tea on the stove for five minutes and wondered why it wasn't getting hot. Then I remembered. My stove has been broken. For a week.

2. Quirks that come with a rented house sometimes become blessings.  Like an extra stove in the spare bedroom upstairs, for example.  We've had the oddest guest room ever, but now I'm glad for the stove!

3.  Telling guests that instead of having "breakfast in bed" they can make breakfast from their bed is no longer a funny joke.  It has now become painfully too close to home.  We turned down the option of having guests for the weekend because the stove is in their room.  Who wants to knock on the guests' room door to ask, "Excuse me, can you turn the oven to 350 for me?  I'll hand you the breakfast casserole when the stove is preheated and then do you mind bringing it down when it is done?"

4. Cooking upstairs when your fully stocked kitchen is downstairs means you get lots of exercise.  Not that I don't need it.  But whoever thinks of cooking as a cardio workout?

5. The children have excellent appetites for supper because they have trailed me upstairs and down for the duration of the cooking process.  Exercise becoming a family affair isn't a bad thing, now is it?

6.   Maybe I should patent the idea as a weight loss program.  Hey, I might be on the verge of something good!  Maybe this is my million dollar discovery for the day.  I could write a book on it titled The Cardio Kitchen or Cooking Upstairs to Slim Your Downstairs. ?  Or, maybe not.

7. You make more trips to and from your stove when you cook than you probably realize. Try running up and down a flight of stairs any time you want to check your food or stir anything or turn on your oven or check to see if the oven has preheated. Or try getting to the stove only to realize you needed a spoon or a hot pad which is now an entire flight of stairs away from you.

8. Prayer becomes a natural part of the cooking process.  "God, please don't let me trip on the stairs with this kettle of boiling soup!"  (For your info, the children are banned from the stairs when I'm carrying hot food!)

9. I've finally learned what that obnoxious whistle on the kettle lid is saying.  I know.  It says the contents are boiling.  But what it actually is saying is "MOM!!" in kettle language.  It hollers from upstairs and I dash up the steps two at a time to rescue it. 

10. There are Dewdrops of Joy even in a broken stove.  I get to look out the upstairs guest room window while I wait for my food to cook which means there is a whole new view of the world to enjoy.  

A Taste of Japan

Late this summer we hosted a Japanese student in our home for one delightful week.  One of the perks of that, we learned, was when Nana was leaving and needed to offload some Japanese items in order to make space in her suitcases for the many purchases she made in America.  I sat on the edge of her bed while she explained a pile of food items to me in her extremely limited English (everything, both item description and recipe preparations, were written in Japanese on the products; I'm still not sure I made the pudding stuff correctly.).  Apparently either she or her mother was afraid that she would starve while she was here and packed accordingly.

With Nana at her graduation from an English class
-- no, John is not sleepwalking

So for a couple of months now, I've had ready-to-go rice, papers of seaweed, a boxed curry, a pudding-like dessert mix, rice pilaf of sorts, and Japanese candy in my pantry.  Plus, after Nana returned to Japan, we received a large box in the mail from her which included Japanese snacks and a little outfit for each of the children.

I wanted to make a Japanese meal, so I looked online for recipes and ended up making "Soboro Don" --Japanese chicken and eggs served over rice. Delicious!

Trying out chopsticks--a hostess gift from Nana

I thought about trying my hand at making sushi to use the seaweed in my pantry, but I don't know what I'm doing and it appears that my seaweed papers are the wrong size for sushi.  Any {delicious} ideas on what to do with seaweed papers that are 2.5"x 7"?  Leave me a comment with your suggestions.

Does he look Oriental??

I think we might have learned our lesson, and for this Japanese meal, we spoke only English.

A few months ago we were having a Chinese meal and got into this thing of speaking "Chinese".  Only no sane Chinese person would have recognized anything we said.  For example, one of us needed a napkin, held up a soiled hand, and said something like, "A wing foo chi?"  And the person closest to the napkins handed one over.  We had grand fun "talking in Chinese" until the meal ended.

And then Nana came.

There she sat, sweetly and politely like any well-bred Japanese girl would.
My son was eyeing her.
Apparently his wheels were turning and before I could say "wing foo" he was speaking to her in our variation of "Chinese"!

For some odd reason, Nana didn't seem to understand a thing he said.
Maybe his accent was poor?
Or maybe she only spoke Japanese?

Nana looked questioningly in my direction, silently asking for help in understanding what he said.
I managed to change the conversation; John subtly gave Tyler one of those wonderful parental "looks" which stopped him from practicing his Chinese any further, and a potentially embarrassing situation was diverted.

Okay.  So maybe we would do well to save our "Chinese" until the children are older and less apt to try it out on someone who looks like they might be from the Orient.

"Remember the Poor"

Jesus said that we'll always have the poor with us.  Sometimes, especially during the abundance of harvest/canning season in rural America, the poor can be pretty far from our minds.  John and I have chosen, then, to occasionally remember the poor on purpose.

Here are some ways we found to remember the poor:

1. We make a meal from a country that has poor folk.  The first that came to mind was India.  According to Operation World, 40% of the population lives below the poverty line.  (Below the poverty line in India means the head of home earns less than $1.25 per day, according to Wikipedia.)

For our "Remember the Poor" meal, I made curry and rice. Especially after reading stories of the truly poor, I realized that my simple curry was a rich man's meal (the truly poor don't split a pound of meat between only four people).  But for us, curry reminds us of India, and in this case, the poor in India.  Tyler likes to eat with his fingers when we have a meal like this, which, for him, is a great way to  keep the poor in mind.  ("Some boys have no spoons!").

2. We pray for the poor.  Tyler prayed the blessing on the meal and was encouraged to pray for the poor children as well :  "Dear Lord Jesus, Thank You for our food.  And please can You give food to the little boys and girls who have hungry bellies?  In Jesus' Name, Amen."  When supper was nearly finished, he said, "Did Jesus give the poor children food?  I prayed that He would."  Oh for the faith of a child!

3. We read stories about poverty-stricken people.  I looked up stories of the poor in India and stumbled across a blog (check it out: Stories on Poverty in India) that has heart-wrenching stories of people who not only live in extreme poverty, but have no hope in Christ to redeem the sadness of their lives.  No redemptive future to assuage the pain of this life?  My stomach knotted up.

4. We look at their pictures and read facts surrounding them.  We found a slideshow on poverty (several, in fact, including this one).  The facts are staggering (i.e.  According to Unicef, 22,000 children die every day from poverty).  After seeing pictures of children with their entire rib-cage obvious, our son was full of questions.  The knot in my stomach tightened.

5. We read stories to our children and discuss the poor with them.  Another great tool to discuss the poor with young children is a little book printed by Christian Aid Ministries called Red, Yellow, Black & White by Dwayne & Lois Stoltzfus.  Tyler nearly knows it by heart now, but will bring it around to discuss the poor again, to ask questions about the children with no mommy and daddy, and to talk about children with no food.  It offers the opportunity not only to tell him about the poor but to instill the truth that no matter what happens, God will be there with you.

6. We give to the poor.  These 'Remember the Poor' meals are also the perfect time to give financially to the poor.  Ever feel inclined to go out to eat?  Make a simple rice meal at home instead, pray for the poor, and donate the money saved.

"I was an hungred, and you gave me meat; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink... naked, and ye clothed me."  Matthew 25:35,36

Things every child should avoid saying (or doing) while being potty trained--

unless, of course, they love sitting on their potty chair:

• "Puddle!" 
• "It's coming out!" (After she was on the potty, I realized she was referring to the clip in her hair.  Sorry, girl.  We're not in the position to take chances right now.)
• "On a belly!" (Only, to my potty-training oriented brain, it sounded like "on a potty" which is exactly where she was headed until her big brother did her the great favor of translating the phrase.  "No, she's swimming.  She said she's on her belly." Got saved that time.)
• Cry or shriek.  Because any time she cries or screeches about anything, whether legitimately or in play, it gets interpreted as a mishap waiting to happen and she gets whisked to the potty.
• Walk stiff-legged.  Self incriminating when you are in this stage of life.  Best to save duck impersonations until after the panic of potty-training has faded into a thing of the past. 
• Look startled. Also self incriminating.

You know you've been potty training all week when walking onto carpet feels like you've gone on vacation.

You know you are potty training when...

...your normal life ends and a bizarre one begins which revolves around body functions and potty chairs.

...your child's normal life is also archived.  She is now living hers on the potty.

...your newest, latest home improvement is a potty chair in the kitchen.

...you can recognize a duck-like waddle from a block away.

...your toddler can't walk into another room or onto carpet without you panicking and asking if she has to go potty.

...you treat any drop of water on the floor like hazmat just in case it actually is.

....your most spoken words for the week are "Do you need to go potty?"  And you know instinctively that her response will be, "No, not now."  And she's right, of course.  What she really meant was she would have to go one minute from now and it would be done on a carpeted area.

...she stands up for you to check the potty for any kind of success and you find a button and a pencil but (fortunately) nothing you were looking for.

...a tired mother's rationale sets in on day two when things aren't as advanced as you hoped: "You know, she looks pretty little sitting there.  Maybe I should wait until she's older to do this.  After all, we are going on a trip in six months and I'd hate to travel with a baby 'newly' potty-trained!"

...you coax more liquids into her little water-logged belly in a morning than she drinks in an average two day period.

...two hours after you finally get all that liquid into her, you end up washing half of it off your kitchen floor and cheering wildly when the other half is deposited in the potty.

...after handing out a single, miniature MnM to reward even the smallest of successes, you realize your dentist is probably sitting in an executive office right now, researching island escape options. Brilliance finally dawns and tactics change.  Craisins sound good, Sweetie?

...you subject your family to texts like this one: "She woke up dry at 8:30 and went like crazy in the potty!! :) Mommy is ecstatic!"

...your toddler learns that potties are mobile if you scooch them just right.  Our little lady inched her potty half way across the kitchen floor so she could get the toy she wanted.  But don't worry.  She and her unusual transportation motored back to their starting point when she had what she was looking for.  And she never stood up once.

Little Charmer

...evening finds you holding yourself at arms' length and threatening to shower in Pine-Sol saying, "I've emptied so many potties, wiped so many little behinds, cleaned up so many puddles, and taken care of so many spooky undies that I feel contaminated."

...a day is considered a success if, at its close, there are more clean undies than wet ones piled in the laundry room.

Celebrate October!

Autumn is easily my favorite season of the year.  Apparently it is also a favorite for the guys behind the National Month titles for October alone is honored with 112 of them.  I knew it is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and continually purchase pink ribbon-ed items when I get the chance.  But there's 111 more to celebrate or recognize, including Down Syndrome Awareness Month.

Fittingly, just after having celebrated National Coffee Day on September 29th, October is Caffeine Addiction Recovery Month.  I imagine the person behind that sequence decided if you overdid yourself on National Coffee Day (or thoroughly caffeinated your children) it might take a month to recover. 

There are also some interesting National Days in October: 

National Fire Pup Day, October 1:  Does your preschooler need a craft?  Click here for a darling fire pup craft using a Styrofoam cup.  And when they're finished and hungry for a snack, make some great cookies together because today is also National Homemade Cookies Day.

Do Something Nice Day, October 5:  Challenge your children to find something nice to do for someone--their teacher, or maybe a sibling. 

National Frappe Day, October 7:  Yeah, I know.  This is Caffeine Addiction Recovery Month.  Apparently today saves those people from going cold turkey--and gives the rest of us who aren't addicted an excellent excuse for a good ol' caramel frappe.  Yes, caramel.  October is National Caramel Month.

Low on lunch ideas?  Here's one: National Fluffernutter Day, October 8:  Whoever came up with this didn't necessarily have a real bent for health food, or else had overdosed his children on greens and whole grains and was trying to counterbalance that with a fluffernutter.  A fluffernutter is a sandwich made on white bread and spread with peanut butter and marshmallow creme.   It is a lunch idea.  I didn't say it was a good one.

National Sausage Pizza Day, October 11:  At least one meal this month is planned in advance! or if you want your meals planned two days in a row, celebrate National Gumbo Day on October 12.

National Take Your Parents to Lunch Day, October 16:  Aw, that's my mom's birthday and she lives two whole states away. If it were possible, though, I'd jump at the chance!

Make a Difference Day, October 25:  For better or for worse, we almost always are making a difference to someone.  But what fun to have a day to purposefully look for ways to make a positive difference to somebody!  Wouldn't it be fun to do it for a stranger?  Do something like putting $10 on the grocery bill for the person behind you in line.  Find a way, and make a difference!  

National Mother-in-law Day, October 26:  What better excuse than this to thank your mother-in-law for raising a wonderful son and then giving him away? 

So there you go.  Have fun Celebrating October!

The Incentive Chart

This week Tyler got a sticker each time he said, "Okay, Mommy" or "Yes, Mommy" to any kind of instruction given to him.  He was looking forward to the Grand Prize (a cheap matchbox car) and did an amazing job of remembering to respond immediately with a sugary, "Okay, Mommy" to basically anything I told him.

In fact, the little chap is brilliant enough to create opportunities that required extra "Okay, Mommy"s throughout the day.  For example, he did some hovering in my kitchen until his eyes lit on something he knew probably would be a "no".  

"Mommy, can I put that away?"  (I was baking and he was pointing to one of the ingredients that lives well above his head.)  

"No, I'll do it."  

I was barely done speaking before this dramatically slow and sweet "Okay, Mommy" was spoken. Then, in a normal voice but with extra-shiny eyes, he said, "Do you think I need a sticker?"

Hey, it wasn't quite what I had in mind, but I decided that if he is going to increase the times he says "Yes, Mommy" and thus form the habit sooner, I'm not going to begrudge the guy a sticker.  They say it takes three weeks to form habits, so I plan to stock up on charts, stickers, and prizes and am already looking forward to the end results.  Having a four-year-old who immediately and cheerfully says "Okay Mommy" to any instruction given?  I'll take it! 

Laura, if this idea works, I'll owe you big.  

Confessions of a Gardener

This was 3 years ago, but my thoughts exactly.

First things first. If gardeners are people who make food grow, I'm really not a gardener even though I have a garden plot.
Every year I fight my soil to produce anything. When I am successful at all, I  have to sneak my produce out of the jaws of my crop-eating garden before it randomly kills off something else.  Last year it killed my tomatoes, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and every flower in the flower bed.  This year it was my corn.  

I think gardens are beautiful.
Especially gardens that are well-kept and look like a dream, all mulched and lovely like my friend Gail's. I've already seen my own garden looking beautiful, but that was in winter when it was buried under three feet of snow.

"If our livelihood depended upon our garden," my husband began, and I took the liberty to help him finish his thought, "we'd be destitute street urchins living in a cardboard box on a street corner."
We wouldn't be if we could grow things.  But that conversation occurred this morning while we were picking our second planting of corn. (The first planting died in perfect growing conditions when it was knee-high.  Our produce-farming neighbors hadn't seen anything like it.)  So we replanted. These five rows of corn should have easily produced enough corn for a family of our size for at least one year, possibly two.  We got a grand total of nine bags of corn for the freezer.  Nine.  If it weren't for my husband's day job, I'd be up in the attic picking out my box.

I love knowing exactly what wholesome things are in all my home-canned products, from chili soup to fruit danish.
But I work hard to get there, thanks to my pressure canner.  My history with pressure canners has been fraught with frustrations. The first one I had was in cahoots with our garden in destroying our produce and would build pressure up just high enough to cook my food but not high enough to safely can the stuff.  So I'd have to re-can with all fingers crossed.

Sensibly, after years of overcooked food, I got a new canner, in spite of the guys at the recycling plant who tried to talk us out of recycling the old one.  The new one wasn't supposed to jingle unless it reached 15 lbs of pressure or more.  The first time I used it, the gauge never winked, blinked, or moved a muscle but stayed entirely expressionless while all indicators told me I had a time bomb in my kitchen. My no-jingle canner was jingling hard and the safety valve stood tall at attention.  This is the same canner that, with a new gauge on a later date, was screaming like a fire alarm for no good reason while I had my wide-eyed children sheltered behind a wide-eyed-me on the other side of the kitchen for safety purposes.  How do I even find canners like this anyway?

Currently, I'm all for supporting local economy.
This morning in the corn patch while we picked a stunted cob off of every fourth stalk (the other 3 stalks had no corn at all) and harvested enough bugs to give our son a head start in entomology, we decided that maybe we should take a break from gardening for a few years and be the ones to support local farmers. 

Lord willing, we'll garden again.  Someday when the children are grown up enough to not be wailing at the end of my bean rows while I pick and actually need the responsibility and experience of a garden.  Or someday when our family is big enough that $4 of tomatoes no longer lasts a whole winter. 

Or maybe today is simply a bad day to talk about it.  Nine bags of corn?  At least it fits into my freezer nicely; I was worried about that. 

"Teddy Bear Party"

Today, September 9, is National Teddy Bear Day.  Since Teddy Bears are a big part of my children's life, I dreamed up a Teddy Bear party and invited some friends over to help us celebrate.

When everyone had arrived, all the children old enough for a craft decorated a plain gift bag with a bear face and their names.  I had the younger children's done in advance.

Using the bags to collect the treasures, we went on a Treasure Hunt where I had hidden simple treasures at each hiding place.  

Following the treasure hunt, they took a break and ate the Teddy Grahams they received as one of the Treasure Hunt surprises.  The break was just long enough for me to get my Teddy Bear face ready for them to play "Pin the Face on the Teddy Bear".  You know how those kinds of things look in the end, right?  So we played a variation of it the second time  around where every child got to help be Teddy's Doctor and put the facial features where they belonged.  (And, yes, I know this is no masterpiece of a bear face, but I needed 14 pieces so each child could have two turns and I was running out of options.  Thus the eye brows.  Children generally have a healthy imagination, so they were perfectly happy with this sorry bear.  To them, he probably looked exactly like something they saw in a zoo when they were little or something.)  

We played Hide the Teddy Bear next and each child got a chance to hide their own teddy bear for everyone to find.  While they all had their bears with them, we tried to take World's Nicest Group Photo with ten preschoolers and ten bears.  Yeah, the one in tears is mine.  

The only time things felt a bit chaotic was when lunch was on its way.  That's when our "Day Care" had petty squabbles and enough noise to deafen a jack hammer.  But lunch set things right:

Chicken Nuggets (Bears eat chickens, right??)
Over-sized, Bear-shaped dinner rolls with Honey Butter
Carrots with Ranch
Apples with a yogurt dip

Jello cut into Bear Paw and Puppy shapes

I think they all liked the party-- including the little guy who said,  "It wasn't as fun as I thought it was going to be.  I thought it was just going to be children with no parents!" 

Right. Me and ten preschoolers, ages 2 and up. I don't think so. However, if you want to do a Teddy Bear Party for the children in your life and want to really make it fun, keep that suggestion in mind.  

the Bears and Bags Table

P.S.  By the way, September 11 is National Make Your Own Bed Day.  Wouldn't it be fun to reward the children in your home who do that without being told?