Snapshot of Grace

For better or for worse. For richer or for poorer. In sickness and in health. In good times and in bad times.

Fifteen years, all of the above, and we have Grace to thank for every moment.

{This snapshot: A celebratory anniversary trip to the mountains, just the two of us. All of it made possible by Grace.}

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Linked up today with Emily {Chatting at the Sky}

Snapshots of Grace

The Miracle Desk

With the advent of a new school-year, I must confess that I've had to ward off homeschool-room envy. I recently told friends that I don't envy people's big, fancy houses; I envy people's school rooms.

Our kitchen table has worked mostly fine until this year, but with Blondie's increased work load, I begrudgingly shuffled books and papers and crayons from the table to the counter multiple times a day. We had to clear the school junk away so that we could eat breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner at this all-purpose table.

And if we didn't? Someone invariably spilled juice or smeared peanut butter onto somebody's math book and I would get mad because they were mad and papers were wet and I blamed all the world's problems on my lack of a homeschool room. Because I'm so rational and all.

And while I knew that I could make do just fine without an actual room devoted solely to education, I still needed a solution to the constant shuffling of papers and high-stakes juice spillage.

I literally lost sleep rearranging my entire house in my head night after night searching for a solution. And then, it hit me.

Take this seagrass settee...

And turn it into a window seat on one side of the kitchen table.

Use the empty space left by the moved settee for a long, narrow school desk and book storage.

So that's what I did.

You know how sometimes you really want something and you think it's going to change your life and make it so much better but then it doesn't turn out to be the miracle you though it would be?

This is not one of those times.

I spent about $100 and saved a whole lot of sanity. Also? I have always wanted a window seat for that big bay window. Turns out I had one all along. It was just sitting on the other side of the room holding piles of unfolded laundry.

I can't believe how simple this was and how well it's working for our family. Thanks for letting me show and tell.

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And thank you IKEA for the affordable desk solution.

{I used 2 Vika Annefors cubbies, 2 Vika table tops, and 4 Vika Curry legs. Instead of using one long Vika tabletop at $40 that would have required just one leg, Lily advised me to purchase 2 smaller Vika tabletops at just $5.99 each and 4 legs at $3.50 each. I saved a little money that way but more importantly, I actually have 2 separate desks if I ever choose to move these elsewhere.}

Love 'Em For Who They Are

If there's one lesson I've learned {and am still very much in the process of learning} about loving husband and children, it's this:

Love them for who they are and not for who you want them to be.

Clearly one could write a book on this but for now, how about just a post?

I am a girl of dreams and expectations. Prone to bossy-ness and control, I could write a list called How to Live Your Best Life Now and then a follow-up list called Did You Do That Stuff I Said on the First List?

Those are touching and endearing qualities for a wife and mother, are they not?

Sometimes I'm nudged to examine how much expectation I place on others in subtle ways. You may recall this post about Blondie a year or so ago. How I agonized over her issues with books and reading, how God showed me that I needed to just let go.

Well, she has continued to read...but more out of duty rather than delight. It has been a laborious, tiresome, chore of a task and I have simply hoped that one day she would grow to love books as much as I do. {Again, the expectations. Groan.}

We've tried American Girl books. Nope. I bought the whole Little House series, just knowing she would love it. She didn't. After painfully getting through Book 1, she came to me and asked, Mommy, will you be offended if I tell you that I just really don't like this book? It's just, well, sort of boring for me. I'm sorry.

And while I wasn't offended, I was a little sad and mostly bewildered. Oscillating between thinking of her as ungrateful and overly particular versus thinking that we just hadn't found the right genre, I was at a loss. After trying and failing with many books, I spotted one I'd forgotten about on the shelf, one I'd picked up brand new from a thrift store forever ago.

A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. The books {13 in all} are quirky and dark, full of irony, rich characters and ghastly situations. The children, though prone to one misfortune after another, remain inventive, heroic and hilarious. The plots are a roller-coaster of despair and short-lived triumph.

She can't stop reading. With each book, she's building confidence and reading faster, catching me up on the previous chapters whenever we get even a minute to chat.

And while I had visions of her snuggled under her comforter reading pioneer adventures and sweet stories of vintage girlhood, that's just not her thing.

I shouldn't be surprised. Roald Dahl, with his freakish characters and odd, mysterious tales, was one of my favorite authors as a child.

And so I accept and applaud this girl of mine who is coming into her own in many ways, literature preferences and all. She's not tattooing herself {yet} or dying her hair fuschia, but I'm learning, in both the big and little things, that while I can lead and guide, nurture and love, she is who she is.

I love her for that.

As for those lists about how to do life according to me, I don't think anyone's reading them anyway.

The Perfectionist's Guide to Domestic Imperfection

I'm a perfectionist.

Before you write me off thinking my house is spotless and I have a meal plan pasted on the fridge and freshly-baked bread in the oven, hear me out. I've often felt like a perfectionist on the inside but had trouble reconciling my far from perfect environment.

Thoughts like, If I'm a perfectionist why are there more weeds in my yard than flowers? Why are there 8 loads of laundry at any given time? Why is there any entire family of gnomes living in any one of my closets, concealed by the clutter and mayhem that seems to pile up at an alarming rate?

Often perfectionists may look very imperfect, so I've been told. I thought that was just nonsense but it makes sense. In the past, if I could not complete a project in its entirety, I simply wouldn't do it at all. Unless I could clean the entire bathroom perfectly, I wouldn't even take 90 seconds to clean the toilet. The incompleteness of it all gave me a rash.

Often perfectionism is construed as laziness when really it's just an all-or-nothing state of mind.

Unfortunately, my vision for orderliness has not meshed well with motherhood and homeschooling and the absolute mayhem that ensnares me every day. The school-year is sheer academic and domestic survival.

I always think that the summer will somehow save me.

Anticipating my summer self as Martha Stewart on a steady diet of Red Bull and espresso, I imagine that I will clean every closet, label and alphabetize everything, paint the shutters, slipcover my furniture, reupholster the torn-apart seagrass ottoman, plant a garden, cultivate flowers, read loads of books to the children, and rid my house of every last speck of clutter.

I wish I could say that's an exaggeration. It is not.

{Delusions of grandeur anyone?}

Tempted to give up / wallow in sedatives for the next 16 years, I told myself there had to be another solution. Any solution. Even an imperfect one. And therein was the answer. It's nothing new or mind-blowing but putting it into practice, telling myself this is the only way for now that anything will ever get done, has been absolutely mind-blowing for me.

Are you ready?

Baby steps.

My new mantra? It's better than it was.

That plus a big dose of acceptance.

I'll give you an example. Nearly 5 years ago we moved into this house. I put stuff in the kitchen cabinets rather hurriedly. Patterns and needs change over time and nothing in the kitchen was working for me anymore. Noth. Ing. I wanted to scream and curse every time I opened a drawer or door, usually because something fell out and hit my head or toe. I wanted to get the kitchen organized over the summer from top to bottom. I wanted to do it all in one day. I had a system in my head, a plan in place, but I knew I would not have a whole day to do it.

My solution? One drawer at a time. One day I did 4 drawers. It took 45 minutes. Four drawers in my kitchen were perfect: clean, organized, functional. Over the period of several weeks, I had a working kitchen.

This is not a difficult concept for most people. I guess I am just slow to learn.

As I mentioned, perfectionists tend to see things through the lens of all-or-nothing . And most of the time life just doesn't offer that luxury. I will probably not have the whole house clean and organized all at the same time until my kids are grown...and by then I'll be too tired to even care.

I function better, think better, and am nicer to others when I have visual peace and an orderly environment. I just do. But the other 4 people living here? Not so much. Something's gotta give and seeing as how I'm largely outnumbered, that something...someone is me.

I have a feeling that many times I will only get the toilet clean before I'm summoned to do something else. Instead of seeing how the rest of the bathroom doesn't match the clean toilet, I can choose to bask in {not literally of course} the clean toilet and be thankful that it is no longer a science experiment.

Tonight I'll go to be knowing that I have an organized kitchen even though those drawers may be surrounded by closets full of clutter and the gnomes. And on the days when the world is just too messy to handle, I may just crawl in among the neatly folded dish towels and take a nap.

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Postscript: I wrote this at summer's end. It's now October and I can confidently say that my new mantra is indeed working. Bit by bit, small task by small task, I'm making progress.

Dear History Department

My graduate school departmental newsletter arrived about a month ago. I promptly opened it, sat on the sofa, ignored my children, and proceeded to pout. For the next 45 minutes, I caught up on former fellow students and the faculty who mentored me in the craft of doing history.

And then I spent the rest of the evening feeling like a loser. The Man just sat by and watched the emotional carnage unfold. He endures this unpleasantness every time that dang, annual newsletter arrives.

I proceeded to wallow and to feel unsmart and unproductive, as if my life doesn't count because it doesn't have words like "published her 11th anthology" and "Distinguished Professor Lecture" and "fellowship" beside my name.

That's the track I was on. I completed all of my doctoral coursework and was 2 months away from qualifying exams, and the impending 5-year-dissertation process, when I bowed out. We welcomed Blondie, whose sense of timing is nothing if not both perfect and unpredictable, during my final year of coursework. Being mom, wife, and stressed-out PhD candidate made my hair fall out and gave me panic attacks.

So you see, I'm a PhD dropout.

Thankfully, I had supportive mentors who told me I'd be fine, who even told me it would be better to not be so stressed. Somehow I got full-time employment in my field and spent the next five years working at what I loved: doing history and mentoring students.

And then I stopped.

I stopped to do something I wanted to do way more than history, way more than teaching, way more than accolades, or even finishing a PhD.

I stopped to be a stay-at-home mom. It was one the best and hardest decisions I've ever made.

Of all the female alumni who have come and gone through my alma mater's history department and then opted to leave the field for full-time motherhood, you'd think a few of them would write in.

I have yet to see one.

Maybe they are all sitting home feeling, momentarily, like losers, afraid that their life updates might be frowned upon by those who have done more in the profession.

So I decided to start a movement. It will likely be a short-lived, one-woman movement because I doubt the alumni newsletter will lower their standards to print my kooky personal update. Lucky for you, it will still be published...because I have a blog.

Scooper {Class of 2000}: An assistant professor of American History at {anonymous university} and curator of an 1840s anti-slavery church, she traded in her college classroom three years ago for school around the kitchen table with her three children {Blondie, 9; Brownie, 6; Cupcake, 2} She’s still teaching history, among other subjects, but she can now send disrespectful students to their rooms if necessary.

Being a full-time mom is a lot like trying to get tenure: The hours are long, the pay is lousy, and it’s hard to get respect…but it’s a virtuous and rewarding job and that’s what keeps one going.

In her spare time, she hides from her children and plucks out an assortment of posts on her blog, the place where she dumps what’s left of her brain. In a sense {and to use some of her old graduate-school vernacular}, she is living out traditional constructs of motherhood and domesticity within the context of a modern, one-room schoolhouse.

She will be forever nostalgic and grateful for the four years she spent at {anonymous university.} The faculty and students there were among the most gracious and generous folks she’s known, great mentors in the craft of doing history.

You may think that's a joke, one of those letters you write just to vent and then toss in the trash. Think again. With fear and trepidation, I hit "send," breathed deeply, and embraced closure. It's like I broke up with, once and for all, an identity that I almost married but then cheated on and broke up with. And we all know that breaking up is hard to do, even if you know it's for the best.

I used to read a book with my Freshman Seminar students entitled, Finding God at Harvard. One of my favorite essays in that book, "A Childrearing Interlude," recounts a similar story. Kathryn Wiegand, a Harvard graduate-turned-stay-at-home-mother-of-five tells of the day she received her alumni newsletter. She was supposed to check a box, a box beside such noble vocations as doctor, attorney and concert musician. Near the bottom of the page she finally found her box. Beside the box it read, Childrearing Interlude.

Wiegand asked herself, This is not my real life? If this is an interlude, what exactly is the real thing? Something that pays? Something with a title? Something that requires a degree?

As she muses about what she would be doing with her life if not for said Childrearing Interlude, she arrives at an important conclusion: Thank God, who saves us from what we think we want. It's one of my favorite quotes of all time, one I've considered often as I've toyed with what might have been, despite contentment and peace with what is.

It didn't take long to get to the root of my newsletter lament: Pride {mingled with a bit of legitimate nostalgia.} Just when I think I've moved on from something, a silly prompt proves otherwise. It's ever-so-difficult to find that elusive balance between desiring good things, that we are actually good at doing, and yet daily dying to ourselves and the vain ambitions that can consume.

Our callings, as women and as mothers, don't all look the same. And honestly, I love the diversity that we each bring to the table. But one characteristic remains universal: Motherhood demands sacrifice and a realignment of priorities, whether we work in the home or out of the home. I know. I've done both.

Just this morning, I've scraped oatmeal from the floor, wiped bottoms and noses, uncovered a covert painting project in the garage instigated by none other than Cupcake and disciplined all three children for everything from sulky attitudes and excessive screaming to the aforementioned slinging of oatmeal.

But seriously, we all know that the hilarious and heart-warming moments outshine the difficult and disgusting...and that one day the difficult and disgusting are remembered as the hilarious. {Please, Mom, keep reminding me of that.}

Wiegand says it well, In dying to ourselves we give up the lordship of our own lives and thereby make space for his.

Maybe I should retract my newsletter update. Maybe I should scribble it all out and simply write:

Making space for his lordship, which is, in fact, a full-time endeavor and not in any way, shape, or form an interlude.

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{If you would like to read "A Childrearing Interlude," I found it on-line and you can read it here.}

Multitude Monday: 14-26

My favorite Veggie Tales is Madame Blueberry, the story of a "very blue berry" who accumulated loads of stuff to cure her discontented soul. Towards the end of the story, Madame Blueberry learns that thankfulness, not stuff, leads to a happy heart. The "thankfulness" song has become a favorite among my kids. Sometimes we even sing it as our prayer before mealtime:

I thank God for this day.

For the sun in the sky.

For my mom and my dad.

For my reasons not to cry.

For my friends that all care

For His love that's everywhere

That's why I say thanks every day!

Because a thankful heart is a happy heart!

I'm glad for what I have

That's an easy way to start!

For the love that he shares,

'Cuz He listens to my prayers

That's why I say thanks every day!

{From Madame Blueberry Learns to be Thankful, a board book, by Cindy Kenney}

With Madame Blueberry's message in mind, I add a few more entries to my list, baby steps on my journey toward 1,000 gifts:

14. Rain to soak our dry ground and thirsty souls.

15. The mess of home...& choosing to just live in it. After all, isn't most mess simply evidence of life thoroughly lived, of a home full of hustle and bustle?

16. A pre-dawn run in the rain.

17. Steaming cup of coffee that tastes especially good after pre-dawn run in the rain.

18. Steaming shower, more therapeutic than ever, after pre-dawn run in the rain.

19. Clamoring, full-of-himself Cupcake that has climbed up and over the sofa where I type this more times than I can count. Toddlers are noisy, busy gifts, are they not?

20. Late-summer proliferation of frogs {ewww!} that have provided endless delight for my two boys.

21. The promise and praise of Psalm 103: Praise the Lord, O my soul...who has redeemed my life from the pit, crowned me with love and compassion, and satisfied my desires with good things.

22. The fact that I can't possibly list right here and now all of the good things.

23. Grace, amazing grace, for this naturally-pessimistic and overwhelmed girl to see the good things in the mess of the everyday. Thoughtful teachers, her and her, who encourage me to count and to see.

24. Thoughtful discussion about truth, beauty, and art among Sunday friends.

25. A successful and crazy yard sale...much fun with neighbors as we joked and swapped a bit of junk.

26. A gentle and accommodating husband who puts up with yard sales and all of my crazy, who encourages rest and affirms my successes {both large and small.}

What are you thankful for?

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{Counting gifts with dear Ann today. Join us?}

Field Trips, Pediatricians, and Jail-Time

{This photo has nothing to do with the post but I needed a picture. I am not sure why Cupcake chose to watch Dora from the vantage point of a cardboard box.}

The "fantastic" thing about homeschooling is that every errand becomes a family affair, a field trip if you will. Today we all enjoyed an exciting field trip to the doctor because Blondie is sick.

Our pediatrician always scans the examination room and grins when we visit because it's not everyday she sees four enthusiastic people in the same room when only one of them is ill. She also knows that she will be asked 1,142 questions by three of the four said people in a span of just 10 minutes.

Outings like this have a tendency to make this already tense mama just a teensy bit more high-strung...if that is possible. I never know how long we'll sit in the waiting area or the subsequent examination room. {They call out names as if you've won a prize only to mock you and send you to someplace akin to Purgatory.} I also fear being vomited on by a child who is not my own.

And if that's not enough, I have a tendency to promise that no one will get a shot because they do not give shots for things like ear infections, coughs, and sore throats when, in fact, sometimes they do. Lying to your children about their worst nightmare, getting shots, always makes one feel like a winner, does it not?

So you see, I am not a fan of the doctor's office field trip. Today did not "disappoint."

After they called our name and walked us to the holding tank, I noticed that Cupcake was not his normal bounding-down-the-hallway self. When we got to the threshold between the hallway and room, he stopped cold. He remembered that they poke innocent children here with sharp sticks. The nurse had no choice but to leave the door open as Cupcake looked on with fear and trepidation. Now a public spectacle, poor Blondie endured getting her throat swabbed and because none of my children will ever be martyrs, she cried somewhat excessively.

Cupcake got mad.

He interrogated the stunned nurse, "Why you do dat? You hurt Blondie! You don't be mean to her! Don't you eber do dat again!" And this, of course, got us all giggling and thankfully distracted Blondie from all of the drama and trauma.

We finally persuaded him to enter the room and the nurse
abandoned me
left us for the more exciting task of watching a strep culture.

And so the four of us just hung out in the room for a while {and by "while" I mean a lifetime.} The boys looked for anything they could climb on or spin upon. Blondie asked 376 times how long this was going to take. I wondered why they did not have a margarita vending machine in the hallway. Finally I pulled out the flashcards stashed in my purse, hoping we could get some of our review work accomplished while we waited.

It seems that Cupcake, in addition to knowing how to intimidate a nurse, also knows his English grammar.

After tugging on my sleeve excessively, I finally relented, "Okay buddy, it's your turn. What are the 8 parts of speech?"

All 3 of us watched in amazement as he rattled off, "Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Adverbs, Conjunctions, Interjections, Prepositions, Adjectives." I kid you not. I call this phenomenon "trickle-down education." Apparently he is absorbing more than I realize as he plays with matchbox cars and knocks over trash-cans. He may prove to be the brightest {and meanest} one of the bunch.

{And y'all know that I do not usually exploit this blog to brag on my babies, but seriously, I felt compelled to share because it is both comical and a warning to be careful what you say around this kid. He repeats things with alarming accuracy.}

Because he is clearly a prodigy, he spent the rest of his time in the holding tank / Purgatory peeling all of the germ-infested and crusted-over stickers adorning the examination table and sticking them to himself. This task must have worn him out because he then chose to lay spread-eagle on the floor and do something like face-down snow angels {minus the snow} on the tile. I could literally see the staphylococcus setting up camp all over his hands.

So I did what any concerned mother would do. I let him eat a sucker on the way out.

This was after Blondie informed our inquiring pediatrician that she had band-aids all over her arm because Brownie told Cupcake to scratch her this morning...just for fun...and all of this went down while Mommy was taking a shower {and clearly not supervising the children.} She also told our doctor that Seinfeld, which she has only seen 5 minutes of in her entire life, is her favorite show. Brownie replied, "Me too. I love Seinfeld." Cupcake made it a trifecta as he chimed in, "Yeah, Seinfeld!"

So now I'm one of those crazy homeschool moms who doesn't supervise her children as they terrorize one another while watching sit-coms about self-absorbed New Yorkers who joke a great deal about sex and other assorted adult topics.

I'm pretty much waiting to be hauled off at any moment.

So, how was your day?

Ode to Dessert

Recently I've been feeling a big hungry. Or at least you'd think that by reading some of my recent posts about dinner and recipes and such. Not a surprise really, considering this blog's header is nearly a life-size photo of a plate of Parisian profiteroles and my children's blog names are all a different dessert.

The last couple of weekends, however, my food mood has reached a crescendo. We trekked up to my parents' house in the mountains over Labor Day weekend and were joined by my brother and sister and their families. My little brother has become a veritable chef and brilliant baker in recent years and we are the lucky {and slightly bloated} recipients of his culinary skills.

He brings his own equipment.

He concocts stuff that requires thermometers.

Stuff like salted caramel as a layer between decadent chocolate cake and whipped chocolate ganache frosting.

He zested an entire bag of lemons while watching football and made not one, not two, but three deserts in less than 24 hours.

I'm in a sugar-induced coma just writing this.

Over the weekend we were all together again for my niece's birthday and my sister commissioned him to make gourmet cupcakes with homemade buttercream frosting.

Seriously people, he spent all afternoon making these to-die-for Martha Stewart cupcakes. {Martha would have been so impressed.} I lost all decorum and licked the bowl at one point. {Martha would have so not been impressed.} I was willing to take my chances with salmonella. Sometimes the batter is worth it.

There's something about being with people I love that makes food taste better. Somehow it seems celebratory instead of indulgent. Maybe that's why there are so many allusions in Scripture about Heaven being a great feast.

{A low-country boil for my Papa's 86th birthday on Labor Day weekend}

Feasting and family just seem to go hand in hand.

As I've watched my brother in the kitchen with his thermometers and gadgets and fancy ingredients, I've realized that some things really are worth the effort. The stuff he makes is so good I want to stand up and applaud.

These days I'm always in such a hurry to get people fed and move on to the next thing...it's just the season I'm in.

But every now and then I think it's worth it to slow down and get a little fancy.

Taking time to lovingly create something extraordinary...it's a "good thing."

{You honestly didn't think I'd pass up an opportunity to post Cupcake eating a Cupcake, did you?}

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Unwrapping Cupcakes with Emily.