Just a couple of quick pics...

Pictured below, four of the brightest spots in my days. Too much going on to even start to write... The boys turned 3 months on Monday, wow! The girls are celebrating half-birthdays this month too, six and a half and three and a half. Time is flying!

(Their first smiling together picture, today - I just adore them in their overalls... Jimmy on the left, Danny on the right. Not quite Danny's best smile, but Jimmy's ultra-mega-open-mouth makes up for it I guess.)

Spelling love her way: J-U-I-C-E

9 AM this morning:

"Moooommmmyy....."

What Rachel?

"Abby (sob) won't put (sob) her twin in the stroller (sob) with mine (sob)."

It's OK honey, she can do what she wants with her twin. Do you want a hug from mama?

"No, (sob) I want some juice. (Sob) Can I (sob) have some juice in a (sob) cup please?"

OK Rach, I'll get you some. Immediate end of sobbing.

She's a cuddler, but since the time this girl was born, she has more often than not also found incredible solace in a cup filled with juice or milk.

[Full disclosure: I'm not that different. For me it's more like, "No, I don't want a hug, please just talk to me!" OR "No, I don't want to talk, please just hug me!"]

Might as well just listen to what they're saying and love them like they want to be loved!

(Below: the quickest pic I could find of Rachel with a cup - age one and a half)

Enjoying the kids, at 3 or 20.

Once upon a time, I was 21, and John was 25. We got married. We lived in a house made of badgers and cheese in Wisconsin. Our church was tiny, so we chose between friends who were 10 years younger or 10 years older (with the one exception - love you Sue!!). We often chose in favor of the younger, and headed up a little junior high youth group for a couple of years. John had actually lived with some of them since they were tiny. The boys were still pretty young, young enough that I could hold my own in frisbee golf, football, tag, and even threw one in the snow. It was great fun.

Now upon a time, I'm 29 and John is 33. Our new friends are around our age and we all have kids 6 and under. I've lost touch with middle and high school and young college kids. I think it will be great when my kids can actually take bike rides and play sports with me.

We visited those same kids (and their parents of course!) last week. They're all around 20, six feet tall men that would now scoff at a sporting competition with puny ME! Their kid brothers and sisters now played with my own kids, like doting older cousins.

Hanging out around all those grown up kids and their (smart!) parents was absolutely awesome, a total change of pace for us. The people made the vacation.

I was reminded that behind the cool, or gruff, or punk, or whatever exterior, these "kids" are really fun to hang out with, interesting to talk to. Hours of investment in their young lives has kept them surprisingly easy to reconnect with now.

It was exciting to think about our own four kids growing into such fascinating young adults. A glimpse of the craziness of the house in 10 or so years!

People always tell me that the harder parenting issues come up later. These parents and kids have to discuss parties, college, military, boyfriends, media time, cars, it's some crazy big stuff! Definitely bigger than the bedtimes and vegetable fights we wage now, I almost had to laugh at how worked up I get over this little stuff.

And what to do together as a family? It's easy now - zoo, park, pool, they all get unanimous cheers. Sitting down for dinner together with _everyone_ is downright simple now. The agreement, never mind the regular time, shrinks when they are around 20! Never mind dragging an 11-year-old along to the playground with the younger siblings.

I've come back home with a huge new appreciation for our young kids. A renewed enjoyment of the older kids, a realism and excitement about where mine are headed. And a new admiration for their parents, especially those in the trenches of helping their kids out the door to the big, wide world.

Figured I'd better write my thoughts down quickly, before I take yet another playground trip for granted or forget to value the college kids, friends, parents, and grandparents who I have in my life. Wouldn't you know, I don't have a single picture from the entire week of a kid anywhere near 20!


Love them now, love them when they grow up!


Four generations of my family.


Can you tell who is already getting too old for the zoo?


Hanging out with the little brothers of the "grown up" kids.

When you're with us, you're royalty!

As I bumbled out of bed this morning, a mini-Snow White greeted me immediately from the couch. "Hi Ariel, I've been calling for you!" Ariel, as in Disney's Little Mermaid, who I hardly resembled no matter how much imagination you have! Then again, she calls me that all day, every day that she is in the mood for it.

Cheesy as it was, Rachel's greeting made my morning. In her two-year-old way, she says: "there is something about my mom that is like a princess". (A privilege that every girl they know is granted, but still!) Oh, and "mom, I want you to be part of our never-ending-make-believe-princess-world". I'm royalty, and included in the game. Does it get any better?

As an aside, I thought princesses were pretty corny up until a year or so ago, even for little girls. Isn't reading about real stuff more interesting, or pretending to be something that actually exists more practical, like a doctor or teacher? But then grandma gave the girls some princess costumes, and we "met" the princesses at Disneyland over Christmas, and I had no choice but to go along with the frenzy. I'm coming around to see that instilling my girls with a sense of beauty, grace, and kindness - even through a lot of fairy tales - isn't so bad.

Anyhow, all these royal thoughts made me think a bit about how I treat others. Do I greet and treat them like royalty, even as they roll out of bed? Do I find them a role to play in my activities, games, meals? A little lesson in real-life love from my two-year-old...

The pictures are old - from Christmastime - but you catch a glimpse of our royal family. Yes, we all posed with "fake" Snow White, because after an hour in line, that is what you do!

Overlooked kids

I've read a couple of places this week about miracle babies, or tiny ones fighting for their lives. I'm amazed at the fight that these little ones and their families put up for life, and especially the support that sprouts up around them.

Without taking anything away from the little ones, my thoughts turn as I look around me at dozens of kids every day. I look at my own two girls. I think about the thousands in my city, probably over 2 billion on our globe. What about them? They were formed perfectly, and have moms and dads (and others) who have poured care into them from day one - are the lives of those kids and the love of their parents deserving of more support and celebration than we're giving them???

For me, the obvious answer is a resounding YES. Instead of coming alongside a frazzled mom who is yelling at her kids, I sometimes think - "how could she talk to them like that?" She chose life for them. She takes them to the doctor. She puts food on the table for them. I know how challenging those little things can be for me. Of course they are for her too.

Our schools, and even our church Sunday school classes have a chronic shortage of volunteers. There is always room for new foster parents. For court-appointed special advocates for children of abuse - I see those on billboards around town every week. And that doesn't even scratch the surface of needs of children around the world. Giving my time to fill in those holes - even just a little locally - is a sacrifice. I'm only sometimes willing to make it.

In focusing on the lives that are not yet or are just hanging on, are we overlooking the treasure of children who already are?

If I can jump on the bandwagon to pray for or sponsor a baby or child far, far away, can I celebrate and encourage each child (including my own), and each all-important parent or caregiver that crosses my path this week?

Huh....

Workout buddy

I’m not much for working out with a friend. Even with my match-made-in-heaven John, we part ways at the gym. For me, exercise time is when I get some intense and much-needed alone time to recharge.

But today a workout buddy that I couldn’t refuse busted her way in.

Rachel (two-and-a-half) was in a sour mood, and requested a pass on our trip to the gym. I decided to give in just this once, since I could do most of what I’d planned at home, albeit with her underfoot. So much for recharging, intense, and alone.

Then as soon as I started my warm up jumps, she joined in.

Even on the single-leg hops, holding on to the sofa.

I got hot, and took off my extra layer of wind pants. She took off her tights. She’s kind of inspiring I guess, in a cute sort of way.

I pointed out that my red shorts matched her red skirt. She ran to switch her red shirt for a white one to match me.

I did some push ups. She got right down too. But of her own admission, hers were more booty raises than push ups. “I look like a fwog,” she said.

I did step-ups on the sunken living room step. I had 5 lb. weights, she wanted the 3’s. I gave her the teeny collars that hold the weights on the dumbbells instead.

She ran and finally got her gym shoes on. “I want you to do more exercise with me, mommy.”

Time for a shower. My anti-shower kid wants one too. And her clothes must be piled up just the same (carefully haphazard) as mommy’s.

Kids are copycats, though often I wish that mine weren’t (they copycat my flaws!). But in that copying lies a powerful gift too – that they might occasionally pick up on some good habits, and that I feel loved, special, worth copying. Hopefully they’ll learn more than just jumps and push ups from me.

I still need that workout alone time. But every so often, having a teeny workout buddy is really sweet.

Free for the asking, apparently.

I have a smudged up little white board in my kitchen, where I jot down a running list for next shopping trip. It's my valiant effort at not making 5 trips to the store every week.

Apparently, word got out. I always tell John, well, if you need chips for lunch, just write it on my board, and they will magically appear (once they go on sale!). He's got a request in for gin currently.

Well, Abby figured the system out the other night at dinner. I had her write PEZ up there a few days before, because I owed her some. But she jumped up and added to the list while we were eating on Wednesday. And added. And added. We just cracked up laughing. Fuzzy picture below...


On the one hand, it's nice that apparently everyone (you included now!) knows where to go to get stuff from me. On the other hand, maybe there's a reason that we don't always get what we ask for. If John did, we'd have liquor and Ruffles but no garlic with dinner. If Abby did, we'd have triplet babies, plus several cars, cans, puppys, and kittys.

Two great inventions that keep my life sane: "Sorry, not happening." And erasers.

Hanukkah in March

Wrong season, wrong holiday, I know. But the title of the children's book caught my eye at the library: Just enough is plenty by Barbara Goldin. Yeah, I want my kids to know that, I'll check it out. Never mind that I missed the "Hanukkah tale" subtitle.

So it's Jewish holiday education at my house this week, as we read about a family celebrating the holiday where one day's worth of oil miraculously lasted eight days. Just enough turned out to be plenty. This Polish family had no money for presents that year, yet shared their few latkes with a stranger who happened by on the first night of Hanukkah. They worried when he showed up, but welcomed him gladly in. "We can stretch the 'just enough'", Mama whispered...[to her worried family]. "We're poor, but not so poor." The stranger got plenty to eat and a bed for the night, and left them a surprise gift at the end. They'd have plenty to share for a while.

I found Poland on the map with my girls, and I might try my hand at making latkes for the first time later this week.

But more than geography and cooking, this week it's on my mind that our family - maybe even led by their mama - would find ways to stretch our just enough into plenty. I've said over and over during our many years of grad school (equal to our years of marriage!) that somehow we've always had "just enough". For which I am very thankful. But the sweetest compliment to me would be to hear my little girl say to her mama, like Malka at the end of the story, "I'm glad you're so good at making just enough be plenty."

What are you doing with your just enough?

"Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Luke 6:38

The bees are coming!

Seeing as I enjoy food so much, and a dash of photography, I wish that I had skills at taking pictures of food. Because presentation, plus a great picture, can make me hungry or interested in a recipe just like that. It is exceedingly difficult though!

Anyhow, that doesn't mean that I don't occasionally dust off the old cake-decorating tips, pass hours (more than I should) in the kitchen, and have some fun baking for the school carnival's cake walk. (They are the B--- "Bees".) Oh, and then I make a valiant effort at a food picture. Never satisfied with the picture outcome...

Between birthdays and half-birthdays and now this, I think we are in the 100s for number of cupcakes at our house during the last month. Yikes! And yum!

In celebration of our new president (a day late)

I'm looking forward with curiosity and hope to see what our new president will accomplish. But no reflections on the inspiring speeches and elegant balls of yesterday...

The biggest local changes that I've seen coming in with the Obama presidency are in my girls! Abby goes around humming the "Barack Obama" song she learned at school, and then the girls argue over who gets to be Sasha and who gets to be Malia in their make-believe games. (Somehow my dominant two-year-old Rachel has won the right to be Malia, even though Abby protests that Malia is the big sister.)

In celebration of the new president, here is Abby singing about everything she learns at kindergarten - voting (on Nov. 14th?!), the White House, his wife Michelle, and of course, Malia and Sasha. Probably won't make it on American Idol any time soon, but I love her just the same.

Art therapy

"The Peanut Gallery" - I recently hung six clipboards on the wall of our hallway to serve a sort of rotating art gallery. Problem is, lately the girls have been generating about 6-10 pieces of art per person per day, so it can rotate pretty quickly!

Abby's bright watercolors of people (new accomplishment for her - love the long fingers!) are some of my favorites, cheering me up every time I look from my computer to the hall way... It's great to see that what spills out of them in their creative time is bright and colorful.