sis

eli calls david "day day"
he calls jacob "jake"
he doesn't say anything for claire. that is, until we came up with "sister". he now calls her "sis".
i like it. we're all using it now.

eli

eli is in a big boy bed now. it's been a bit of a nightmare as he simply won't stay in it. he climbs out of his packNplay, he climbs out of his crib. he wants to be in the bed but he doesn't know how to fall asleep in one.
jon's been sitting beside his bed waiting for him to fall asleep. i've been laying beside him waiting for him to fall asleep.
it's getting tiring.
and yet we celebrate this step toward "big boyhood"

a big problem

"mom - do you know what the biggest problem is?" she asks in a serious tone.
"what do you think it is?? i answer.
"i found out you can't listen to a book on CD and read a book at the same time. you can't keep track of both of them. it's a problem" she said. in her quest to read through all the A to Z Mysteries and the Clementine series she's been trying to inhale words and stories as much as she can.
i love her thirst for stories. i love her excitement for digesting as many as she can.

of TV shooters and melting like an ice cube

goodness. it's been awhile since i last posted.
but a few things have happened since then, mostly notably a finished dissertation.

hoping to start this up again.

here goes.

some jacob-isms:
-he calls TV satellites "TV shooters"
-this morning, he said he was so cold he was "melting". "Mom - I'm melting. Help me. I'm melting into an ice cube"
-he frequently whispers (to no one in particular): "Aslan is on the move". Listening to books on CD, especially Narnia books is one of his favorite activities. Junie B Jones is another.

eli-isms:
-he REFUSES to use his high chair and demands that he sit in a regular chair like everyone else
-he demands to have a pillow in his crib, that he be tucked in like the brothers, that he be given a stack of books just like the brothers
-he still likes to throw things - across the table, across the room. He has a great arm so sometimes we don't get mad but rather we comment on the good throw.
-he's obsessed with Whitby (our backyard neighbor dog)

david-isms:
-he LOVES playing on his soccer team (jon's the coach).
-he's still so competitive with just about everything that he cries when he loses (this happens frequently when we play board games).
-he still wants to marry gaby rooks when he gets older.

claire:
-she loves reading the Boxcar Children, A to Z mysteries, Geromino Stilton.
-her 4 front big teeth are finally growing in. watching her try to each corn on the cob or an apple is quite funny
-she LOVES her 2nd grade teacher and class
-she's into finding fossils

that's it for now. enjoying my kids. that about sums it up.

Lent

My dear friend Lynn gave me a new idea for a Lenten practice. She suggested that I try to do random acts of kindness during Lent, a way of adding something during Lent rather than taking something away (as I've often done in the past). While I realize we're already almost half way through Lent, I'm posting this as a way to hold me accountable.

I've tried to get the kids involved in this practice. At night time, Claire and I try to tell each other what we did (when we remember). We then brainstorm other things we could do.

Here's a list of some of what we've done...
-flowers to a neighbor
-holding the door open for someone in the grocery store
-buying a coffee for a college student at lemonjellos
-letting someone go ahead in a line (that was one of Claire's!)
-sending a card to someone who wasn't feeling well
-asking someone to play with you (Claire's idea)

I've been thinking a lot about this in these last few weeks, weeks of more intense dissertation writing for me and thus, less of everything else that I/we normally do.
Is it easier to show kindness to strangers? Is it easier to be random about it? Or does the randonmess encourage more of a discipline of kindness?

I've been thinking about this concept of "discipline" since reading 1000 Gifts. This book is about living a life of gratitude/thankfulness. It's more than saying thanks. It's more than being thankful at particular time. It's about living thankfully, grace-fully, with a spirit of God's goodness to us all the time.

It's hard work!

I try to write down 3 or 4 specific gifts of my day in a notebook before I go to bed. I started listing general ones (friends, kids, good weather) and then challenged myself to be as specific as possible. It has been in this specificity that I feel I'm (slowly) changing the way I see and experience things.

To be thankful for my children is one thing. But, to be thankful for the tight grasp of fingers around my neck when Jacob gives me a hug, or the smacking noise that Eli makes when he tries to imitate Jon giving me a kiss on his way out to work, or the twinkle in Claire's eyes when I get to the punchline in the funny story I'm telling her or when I see David working hard to find the tiny piece of LEGO that Jacob says he has to find right now...these are gifts that I can continue to look for and be aware of.

The specificity of gifts, something I once viewed at being thankful for "tiny" or "little" things, encourages me to be attentive, to be more present so I can notice them, enjoy them, express thanks for them.

take apart party

last night we had a demolition party with some friends. we collected as many old/broken electronics that we could find (cameras, fax machine, laptop, toaster, etc).

we let the kids take them all apart. it was awesome.

jon was in his glory. while i was proud of myself for getting screws out and opening up a camera face, jon was creating his own little machines by hooking up batteries, wires, fans, etc. jacob and david loved taking the keys off old keyboards. claire loved making art creations with the pieces she found.

it was cool, and, it was a good step for me in getting past my fear of physics (lest i forget how i didn't understand a thing in my physics class in high school).

he's a smart one

we're trying to keep eli's pacifiers in his crib (only giving them to him when he takes a nap or goes to sleep for the night).

the little stinker makes a bee-line for the stairs whenever we put him down. he climbs the stairs in a matter of seconds, giggling to himself as he does it. then, he makes his way to his crib in his desperate attempt to get his pacifiers.

i've got to give him points for that.

"Nasty" he said

and then I laughed before I could stop myself.

Where does a 3 year old come up with a word like that?

how fiction can be true...

some of my fav lines from because of winn-dixie:

The preacher: "Dear God, thank you for warm summer nights and candlelight and good food. But thank you most of all for friends. We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us. We pray in Christ's name. Amen"

Gloria Dump: "There ain't no way you can hold on to something that wants to go, you understand? You can only love what you got while you got it"

Gloria Dump: "It's different for everyone," she said. "You find out on your own. But in the meantime, you got to remember, you can't always judge people by the things they done. You got to judge them by what they are doing now. You judge Otis by the pretty music he plays and how kind he is to them animals, because that's all you know about him right now. All right?"

India Opal: Just about everything that happened to me that summer happened because of Winn-Dixie

A to Z mysteries and Nancy Drew Clue Crew

We've been struck by detective fever these last few months. The kids love reading mysteries and there seems to be no end in sight to the stacks of A to Z mysteries and Nancy Drew (elementary school version) that they get from the library.

Though the "series" aspect of these books drive me crazy, I have to remind myself that series reading is a normal part of kids' reading development and that I was a huge series reader when I was younger. Nonetheless, I'm trying to get the kids to predict the oh so predictable story structure in each book.

Sometimes it cracks me up when I hear their predictions (of "who done it?"). David in particular makes me laugh (inside!). With a serious face, he'll guess that a character in a different book or even different series was the one who stole the stamp or who kidnapped the prince. Jacob tends to use the same 3 words when talking about the books: "robbers", "police", "bad guys". And Claire? When I read the books aloud to the three of them, she usually sits to my left and just stares at my face when I read.

Claire's Ramona party

It was wonderful.

We squeezed toothpaste out of the toothpaste tube. We pulled Kleenexes out of the box. We made fortune teller cards. We watched Ramona and Beezus.

Jon thinks I'm silly but I really do think that birthdays are pedagogical opportunities to help inspire kids to read and relate to characters in books.

Can't wait until David's Narnia party!

Because of Winn-Dixie

Claire, Jacob, David and I are reading this book together at bedtime.

I love the writing style. Not sure how much the kids will pick up from it but I've been feeling guilty about my "no pet" rule, not guilty enough to change it, but enough to want to continue reading stories about pets.

David and Jacob acted out Winn Dixie and Whidby (our friends' dog) today. They put socks on their hands for paws. They ran around the house chewing on bones. They didn't smell or shed hair or make a mess. It was lovely.

Mom - do you get lonely? and other Claire questions

I haven't posted for a long time.

But, writing short blurps on here seems like a great procrastinating activity for doing work on the dissertation. So, I think I'll start again.

Yesterday on the way to school, from way back in the van, Claire asked me,

"Mom, when you go away by yourself to write your book, do you get lonely?"

I told her that sometimes I did. That it's hard leaving the fun that they and dad often have when I leave. That sometimes I don't feel like I know what to write or that I just don't feel like writing. But, I also said that I need to do my work and I need to be alone so that I can do it and that I love what I'm learning about.

Her question fascinated me because I'm so curious how she (as my oldest) is making sense of this crazy year I'm having in trying to finish my dissertation. I've told her that I'm writing a book. "What page are you on now?" she'll often ask when I get ready to do my work. "Is the book about us?" she's asked.

I'm also thinking about how I'm sponsoring her concept of "writing" and how I can help my kids think differently about writing by sharing with them my process (i.e. that I don't start on page 1 but that I write lots of things and then after I write them down, I move them around and then figure out what my story is about).

Fun stuff.






Such interesting questions

He cried

We took down our Christmas tree the day after Christmas. We had good reason - we were leaving for a weeks vacation to Toronto. I just wanted the Christmas stuff down so that when we came back we'd be ready for school and regular schedules again (aka my tidy control nature coming through).

So, while the young ones were napping, we took the lights and decorations off the tree.

When Jacob got up from his nap, he came downstairs and saw the bare tree.

He cried. "Put it back on" he demanded for at least 1/2 an hour. "I want it back!"

I think it's my tendency to look ahead to the next thing. Jacob reminded me to celebrate something fully, to the end.

Jacob-isms

"mommy - pick me up"

"tank you mommy tank you"

"i lovf you forever and forever"

favorite songs: john jacob jingleheimersmidt, on grandpa's farm, hokey pokey, jesus loves me,

favorite TV show: kippur

the year of focused calling

it has begun.

i started calling this year of dissertation writing my year of saying no (to everything except to my family and to my dissertation).

my wise sister Sarah encouraged me to reframe that as my year of focused calling. it's my year to focus specifically on my dissertation, to my calling as a scholar, researcher, writer.

i vacillate between feeling overwhelmed, feeling extremely blessed and fortunate (so few people in this world get the luxury of having the time/opportunity/job to thinking/writing/reading), feeling resentful of the demands of this work (for me, for Jon, for my kids), feeling excited about what i'm researching, and on and on.

i remember in my guidance committee meeting a few years back, one of my committee members asked me about the affordances that motherhood provides for my life as a scholar. the question took me off guard. i hadn't even considered having space in that meeting to discuss such an issue.

years later, i'm still reflecting on that question. and, i'm thinking about the interrelated one: how my scholarship helps me with motherhood/parenting.

more to come.

he is a gift to us

eli has 7 teeth. he sits up. he eats finger foods. he brightens up a room with his smile. he, like all of them, is a gift to us.

someone asked me how old he was a few days ago. i told them that he was 6 months old. jon reminded me later that eli is actually nearing 8 months.

oops.

i think i'll be doing that to him for the rest of his life.

steps away from us

claire was itching to go to school this morning. "when can we go?" she kept asking as i was trying to feed eli, clean up the breakfast dishes, get jacob and david dressed, pack claire's lunch and put a few dabs of makeup on my face.

when we got there, we put her stuff in her locker and then went to her desk. as i was leaving, claire started hanging on my arm really tightly. and then, the tears came. "don't go mama" she said. "i want to stay with you"

her kind teacher gave her a hug and gently led her into the classroom. i waved good-bye and watched her enter the world of her first grade year, a world she's ready to enter, but a world that's new and different for her, for all of us.

i stood there waving, and then, my tears came.

parenting is about letting go - i know that. it's about letting go and blessing our children in the new steps they take. i think that this morning i had the realization, in the depths of my heart, that those steps are often steps away from us.

The Trumpet of the Swan

E B White comes through once again.

This time David, Claire and I are reading about Louis. He's delightful. And, we're all caught up in the drama. Should he have taken the trumpet? What will happen to him?

We came across the word "cygnet" in another book we were reading. "Mom!" Claire said with a big smile. "We know what that means!"

I think that's one of the biggest reason that I enjoy reading to my kids - the shared experience, the learning of new names, places, people together. In my grad school speak, I'd describe it something like: "the social purposes of literacy, the literacy practices embedded in relations, in home life, in parent child relationships". In my life at home, it's much more simple. It's one of the few times in my day when we all sit down together - they sit on my lap or close enough for our shoulders to touch. We talk, we read, we ask questions, we offer ideas, we laugh, we gulp in the story and always want more.

This past summer, we went to 3 HSRT children's performances: The Brand New Kid, Busy Town and Frog and Toad. Wonderful. All of them. Jacob still runs around and acts out the snail mail carrier from Frog and Toad. I catch David singing the "Cookies, cookies, cookies" song when he thinks no one is listening.

the boys and dress-up

with claire away at school, it's been fun to watch david and jacob at play together.

and, dress up seems to be the hot activity as of late.

in a 15 minute span, they had dressed up as "workers", as "surfers", as "sledders", and as "scary tigers".

they made me laugh. it would, however, have been more enjoyable for me had i not needed to assist them with just about every clothing change.