It’s the evening of Thanksgiving… We’ve savored our pork roast and mashed potatoes (the turkey coming later this week when we gather with more family members), now we’re sipping our tea and trying to stay awake until bedtime… It’s been a long week already. Little sleep, lots of teething and colds. But we’re so thankful…
You are one year old today! As you snuggled beside me in bed this morning, stretched out so big and tall, I kept thinking of the tiny bundle I was holding in my arms almost a year ago. You’re so very precious. You’re getting so big… It’s hard to believe.
Mommy made your birthday rather eventful by fainting this morning. I’m just very thankful I wasn’t still holding you when I fell! You’ve been so good, taking a nice long morning nap so Mommy could sleep, and playing nicely on the bed (only hitting my head with your toys a few times!).
Daddy decided you needed to open one of your birthday presents this morning, to keep you entertained. You love your new shape sorter. It has a lid with the shaped holes in it, and the rest of it is a bucket with a handle. You’ve proved yourself to be an amazing problem solver. It was too hard to figure out which shapes went where, so you took off the lid, put the shapes in the bucket, and put the lid back on! You spent a long time playing with it this morning. I think it was a hit…
This afternoon Daddy made the mistake of telling you that you could go play with Aunt Mouse after your nap. You didn’t pay much attention to the nap part, and were only concerned about the “go” part. You proceeded to wave “bye bye” and cling to your daddy from that time on. You seemed convinced he was going to go bye bye while you were napping. So your poor daddy didn’t get much of a break from the store today. He finally gave in to his crying Pumpkin and put you in your carseat, where you waited so patiently while he fed the chickens and got ready to go. So you’re taking a nap at Aunt Mouse’s house now. And Daddy knows not to talk about “going” anywhere until he’s ready to walk out the door with you! You’re the “goingest” girl I’ve ever seen… It doesn’t matter how short the trip is, as long as you get to go!
I do have to tell an embarassing story on you for your birthday. I think I’ve written about how you’ve taken to brushing your teeth. You loved watching Daddy and Mommy brush their teeth so much, and one day when you were sitting on the bathroom counter you grabbed a toothbrush out of the holder and brushed your teeth. None of this “baby toothbrush” that Mommy bought at Walmart which fits over her fingertip so she can clean your teeth. You want a big people one! Well, Mommy’s made the mistake of brushing her teeth several times while you were on the potty. You came to associate teeth and potty time, and would point to your toothbrush while you were on your potty. I helped you brush them a few times, and then let you hold it by yourself once or twice. You did very well at keeping it in your mouth. You just had to have it taken away once for brushing the floor (the floor doesn’t have any teeth, Punkin, just so you know…). Until last night.
You were having some serious potty time, and thought you needed your toothbrush. You were being very good, and just brushing your teeth and chewing on the toothbrush handle. Mommy was hanging out in the kitchen with Daddy, calling to activate our credit card, etc. I kept an eye on you and you were being so good. But about two seconds later Daddy went to get you off the potty and declared you were going to need another bath. How you made such a mess so quickly, I don’t know. But you’d stuck your toothbrush down in your potty chair and proceeded to brush your messy all over your legs and the potty chair. Somehow you kept your clothes clean, and it even appeared you’d kept the toothbrush away from your mouth. Needless to say, you got another bath, the toothbrush got thrown away, and you won’t be brushing your teeth while sitting on the potty chair again any time soon. And Daddy and Mommy got a good laugh out of it…!
We are so very thankful for our best little Pumpkin. I’m sad for you that you have to spend your birthday getting molars in. But we can see white beneath the gums on the bottom of your mouth on both sides. You’re soon going to have ten teeth! Talk about making a girl look old. You’ve had a rough few days, but as Aunt Katie observed yesterday, you have such a cheerful disposition, even when it’s obvious you don’t feel well. There’ve been lots of “snuggle buggle parties” as we call them, and you’ve needed to hold Mommy while you fell asleep a lot. But considering that I’m almost out of the yummy grape pain reliever drops, we’re trying to dole them out sparingly and help you get rest whenever you can. It’s tough growing up!
You bring so much sunshine to our days, my baby girl. Mommy and Daddy had a lot of fun together before you came, and really kept quite busy. But now we wonder what we ever did without you. Maybe we slept all the way through the night most every night, but when we’re snuggling you close, even some lost sleep doesn’t matter. We are so very, very thankful for you. And so proud of our obedient little baby girl. Thanks for being the best Pumpkin ever. (And how old will you be when Mommy has to stop calling you Pumpkin?)
Lots of love,
Your mommy
I love it when my friends re-prioritize their life “out loud.” I really do. Because each time, it helps me re-prioritize my life. Whether they point to something in their own life that also has happened to become out of balance in mine, or whether they just make me re-think everything to make sure I’m focusing on what I’m supposed to be focusing on… I really appreciate friends who are open and honest, who are obviously making God and family their first priority, and they don’t care who knows it.
Being relatively without internet, especially for the first year of our marriage, was a way to really step back from so many things that took way too much time online. As it is, these days I check email several times a week next door, some days it’s several times a day. Sometimes that’s too many. But at the same time, checking it once every day or two helps me feel more on top of my responsibilities online than the overwhelming feeling of finding 36 messages when I haven’t been online half the week. E-mail is my way to keep in touch with some special people. Like my brother’s girlfriend. And a very special mentor who also happens to be a Southern lady. Gone are the days when I exchanged dozens of short emails with a certain bestest girlfriend. But at the same time, our emails are filled with more content when we do email. And that’s nice, too.
Then there’s blogs. I keep trimming my Google Reader and LiveJournal lists to just those blogs of true friends, of those who I really want to keep in touch with. True, some are friends I’ve never met in person…but some of us date way back to the time I put my pen pal ad in New Attitude magazine. We wrote old-fashioned letters back then. And some of us, of course, date way further back than that, but as busy moms keep up via blogs these days (glancing in Kelly’s direction…). The only two non-personal blogs I read (other than that one at ylcf.org…) are those of Josh Harris and his twin brothers the Rebelutionaries. Gotta keep up with those guys. Never actually met them, but feel like I’ve known of them forever, since my parents went to their parents’ seminars way back when (even before the days of I Kissed Dating Goodbye!)…
When I took the YLCF respobsibilities back over from Natalie, it was with the stern determination on my part not to let it consume too much of my time. Blogger’s ability to schedule posts has been the biggest lifesaver. We streamlined the site so all I have to do is make minor edits from time to time and plug in the courtship story links that our amazing team member Elisabeth sends to me all ready to go. I do enjoy previewing the posts (though sometimes I nearly have a heart attack at the grammar and spelling…then hit the delete key, or else bravely write the person back and say “love the idea, but re-write it so it’s decently worded and at least half the words are spelled correctly”). Editing must be in my blood (as I glance at my mother and her mother…). Not to mention writing. When Natalie and I talked about what to do with YLCF, the truth was, we knew we would always be writing…so why not keep a place to write?
I’ve always liked the movie “Chariots of Fire.” Eric Liddell felt God’s pleasure as he ran. But when I write, that’s when I feel God’s pleasure. I’ve been writing as long as I can remember. Letters to Merritt and his sisters…letters to my pen pals… That little girls’ club “Purry Kittens” had to have a newsletter, of course, and now the rest is history as we look at what ylcf.org has become. Then I discovered LiveJournal and a more personal way to keep up with my friends. But there got to be so many and it was so very overwhelming. I got married and only kept in touch with a handful of those people. Now what used to be the daily letter to my boyfriend, which I would compose all day in my head, figuring out just how to word a certain anecdote…it’s become a not-so-daily blog that keeps grandmas and aunties informed on the main feature in our lives these days: my little Pumpkin.
Yet I want to be focusing on my little Pumpkin, not just thinking about what I’ll write about her. So now I write during naptimes and when I’m at the store with no customers (like right now). How much you’ll find written here in the blog from the little pink house once Pumpkin takes fewer naps remains to be seen… But I will have to teach her how to write, how to type. And what fun that will be.
The strange paradox of being blessed and cursed with the love of writing is that you don’t ever want to be too busy writing about life to live it, but in living it there is the constant drive to write about it. Yes, the need to write ebbs and flows with the seasons and times of your life. But it’s always there, buried beneath the surface. And my love of reading often fights with my love of writing, as well. They are both what happens in my spare time. But which one gets precedence is a constant question. And when my stack of “to review” books gets high, I get overwhelmed, and yet I don’t know why, because I only review books I love reading anyway.
But writing is only one slice of life that I have to prioritize. There’s the dishes, the always-dirty floor that my Punkin is always eating things off of. The bathroom which never quite gets cleaned once a week, the laundry which is calling my name more than once a week these days. And the priorities I try to define as I go about my day. Have to do the dishes before Punkin’s been down very long or I’lll be too noisy and wake her up. Can fold clothes and set table if I’m very quiet, and cleaning the bathroom while she’s sleeping is easy, but don’t dare put away dishes or she’ll be awake in a flash. Of course, while she’s up, there’s the considerations of how she’ll be heartbroken when I put the broom away and that she will always get just out of sight when my hands are covered in bread dough. There’s the rush to make the house just so right before Daddy gets home. Trying to have dinner warm when he gets there only to have it over-cooked because he had a late customer. It’s a constant running list in my head of which thing should take precedence. And since so many of the things are things I can’t do while my Pumkin sleeps, how to involve her in them so she doesn’t always feel like she’s being placed in her walker so Mommy can get something done. My Punkin is one of my first priorities. But so is her daddy who likes a clean house and warm dinners. So we balance priorities. All day, all week long.
I don’t always get it right. Sometimes my love comes home to find a stressed wife and a grumpy Punkin who is feeling ignored. But sometimes, we have time to read Little Britches together in the fifteen extra minutes before Daddy has to leave for work. And sometimes, like last night, we sit down with just-popped popcorn and homemade eggnog and watch the first half of “Miss Potter” together, while Punkin’ snuggles contentedly between us sucking her fingers and holding her burp rag. And that’s when it feels like, even if for just a moment, we’ve prioritized well enough for the day that we have our tasks taken care of and we are doing what’s most important. And that is why prioritizing matters.
Here’s to prioritizing. And lots of eggnog and good books. Not to mention a few stolen moments to write about all the good times, so the memories are recorded to look back upon some other rainy day…
Yes, pre-sets. We have a radio again. Novel concept. That really good deal we got at Sears that had no reception? Um, it’s the one playing in our kitchen right now. We looked on Sony’s website and found that the Much More Expensive version had a telescoping antenna, and thus we hoped to get better reception. So I ordered one through Circuit City the day Marly was in Town. (Then the order confirmation said that only me with my ID and my credit card could pick it up. So I called and said, um, it’s not me, but my sister-in-law, who is in Town… So should I cancel the order or can I give you permission to give it to her? Oh, just have her ask for Jeff? Okay. No names necessary? Okay. Well don’t give my radio away to just anybody…I’d prefer you give it to my sister-in-law! So much for security. Oh my.) We got it home and it didn’t have very good reception, either. In fact, it seemed rather worse than the cheap one. Because, oh yeah, Sony’s website was wrong. There was no telescoping antenna. It was just like the other. It got its reception through the cord. So we got out the cheap one, un-did the twisty-tie from the cord, and wah lah. The cheap one had better reception. Seriously. We didn’t really need the three-CD changer or the remote that came with the more expensive one. It was not worth $60 more just for those little features. Plus we liked the look and feel of the cheaper one beter. So…we kept the cheaper one. And last night when I plugged in my cell phone, I discovered why we’d thought at the beginning that it had such terrible reception. Plugging in my cell (not Merritt’s, just mine) causes the reception to go all fuzz. Seriously. And of course, our cells were charging when we first tried it out. Oh the craziness! But yes, we have a radio again, with a CD player, in the kitchen where I can listen to it even when Punkin’s asleep. So we’re all listening to Christmas music and feeling Christmasy. Though Thanksgiving has yet to come. Along with our Pumpkin’s birthday.
There are so many things to tell you all. But we’ve been a little busy living to have time to blog. Yesterday we rearranged the house. Well, not too many things actually moved except for the crib and couch and two bookshelves, but it changed a lot. With a little Pumpkin standing up in her crib now, the falling asleep thing has been hindered by the fact that Daddy and Mommy aren’t sound asleep in their bed when she’s trying to fall asleep. And we all know it’s more fun to see what Dad and Mom are doing than to fall asleep. So I started brainstorming. I was thinking about buying another room divider like the one we have from JC Penney. But we ended up making it work by using bookshelves as dividers. Pumpkin can still peek out, but she can see a lot less, and when she’s laying down she can’t see much of the house at all. And so far, it’s helped a lot with being less distracted as we fall asleep, and less anxious when we wake up. It wasn’t as much a privacy issue for us yet as a sleep issue. If we haven’t built a house yet by the time privacy becomes an issue, it will be easy to add a room divider. For now, Punkin’s walls are bookshelves. And in our house, that’s pretty normal.
She also has a new little play area, between the desk and one of the bookshelves. The desk! Yes, I have my desk back. Since we don’t have icky diapers to change anymore we can plop her down anywhere to put her pants back on. Almost forgot there was a desk under that changing table! Having all the toys so consolidated has made me decide to start doing the putting away half the toys thing, because someone already has many more toys than she needs to play with (and get out) at once, and besides, it’s always fun to get toys out after a while and have them be all “new” again. I may have to institute the same rule with books. She discovered she had a whole basket of board books that were all her own. And she’s finally learning how to open board books. (They’re a challenge. Cloth books are way easier for little hands. But we’re getting the hang of it.) So she sometimes forgets to even get out her toys and spends all her time “reading” her books. We keep her books in a basket so she knows that all the books in the bookshelf are off limits. And she’s been very obedient about that.
All the rearranging has gotten us into the organizing mode, not to mention that Merritt got the store room finished so we have started to migrate some things out there. One of these long winter weeks we need to take everything out of the upstairs and go through it and put back what we want up there and put the things that will belong in the store room where they go! But that’s for a week when we don’t have the store open. Also known as after Christmas! Meanwhile, it’s nice to have a bit more room in our house, we can walk around the couch again, and I’m typing at the desk!
Punkin’ has discovered the joy of raisins. Since Mommy didn’t want them on her cereal one morning, but she wanted to try Daddy’s Oatmeal Crisp cereal with raisins, she gave them to Pumpkin. And someone is hooked. She’s also been seen working her way along the couch, as in, holding onto the couch as she walks along the couch. And she is continually experimenting with letting go with both hands and seeing how many fractions of a second she stays standing up before she lands on her backside. Someone is growing up oh so fast! And she’s going to have a birthday this week. Wow. She also has been asked to be a flower girl! Don’t worry, she doesn’t have to walk down the aisle. She’s going to get pulled in a wagon. (By whom, it remains to be seen. Maybe we should have waited to agree until we knew exactly who the little man was going to be. In our family, pairings of ring bearers and flower girls are a very serious thing, right Robert and LeAnn?) Hopefully she’ll be her usual self who is thrilled with “rides” of any kind. Speaking of rides, this child doesn’t use her walker to walk in. When she’s in it, she eats raisins. It’s when she’s out of it that she pulls herself up on it and uses it as support to move around. That’s what old people do with walkers, Punkin. Not almost one-year-olds!
Considering that I have a YLCF post to finish editing, some soap label design to do for my sis-in-law, and some editing to do on the YLCF site, this update had better come to an end. Once the toys are picked up and Daddy and Mommy have gone through their displaced books, I’ll take pictures for you to see our “rearrange.” Better yet, come visit us…and while you’re at it, we might even let you have a book or two!
Guess who slept through the night again?
Guess who slept so much better due to having three messies yesterday?
Guess who likes sourdough waffles?
Guess who likes sourdough bread?
Guess who has started raising her arms up to Mommy again the second she’s been set down?
Guess who likes chocolate chips (that mysteriously ended up in an empty cup in the Sees candy box that someone so badly wanted something out of)?
Guess who is pulling herself up on everything?
Guess who is going to be one year old in a week?Okay, so in all honesty, my first thought is not always one of thankfulness. I’m usually feeling a little stressed, combined with the frustration that I’m the only one who works at our store that does not usually walk in to a warm dinner and clean kitchen when I get home.
But then as my hubby starts up the barbeque and I chop potatoes while singing “If you’re happy and you know it…” with my little girl who’s sitting on the potty… Then I remember that it’s a family business we’re all part of. And because it’s a family business is the reason I actually get to eat lunch with my husband quite often. It’s the reason I get to see him through the day. And because he is the one who puts in the most hours at the store, when I work there I’m giving him a break to do things he needs to do–like clean our chicken coop and finish up the storage room he’s made for me in our shed.
So I toss the chopped potatoes with olive oil, fresh ground pepper and sea salt, and some parsley, stick them in the microwave for 6 minutes (gritting my teeth at the “working mom” use of a microwave to make, not just re-heat, dinner!), then broil them to perfection while my hubby gets the pork chops barbequed to just the right temperature. Ruth needs Mommy, so she sits in my lap during dinner and rips a few of my salad leaves into little teeny tiny pieces. Salad from Costco this time of year (their organic salad mix is pretty nearly as good as our lettuce). No more lettuce from the garden in November. Then Merritt does the dishes, I give Ruth a bath, and Merritt makes warm eggnog for him and me while I give Ruth her bottle.
It’s a warm evening, so I put Ruth in bed and go out to take my count of the chickens. Merritt killed a few of the old hens when he cleaned the chicken coop. The question was if he had gotten them all. (Chickens are impossible to count when anywhere but the roost. Even then…best 10 out of 20 counts is probably right.) He brought the egg nog out (mine sprinkled with cocoa and extra nutmeg, just as I’d requested) as I was coming back with my count of 28, rather than the 26 we thought we should be down to. We sat outside and drank our eggnog before showering and collapsing into bed. Ruth was awake at midnight, acting as though she was in a lot of pain or the world was coming to an end. I finally got her settled back down, but it happened again at around 5. I think tummy troubles must do that to her, because sure enough, this morning she didn’t have a messy first thing. But later when she was playing it was suddenly an emergency. But we made it just in time. Poor Pumpkin.
Merritt got up early to go deer hunting, just about the time I finally got Ruth settled back down and we got a few more winks. And we get to do it all over again today. But Merritt barbequed hamburgers last night as well, so at least we won’t be supperless when we get home. (I know I have a crock pot. I just don’t always have 24 hours’ warning that I’m going to be working until dinnertime!)
I guess that’s why just when we think it’s going to slow down, it never really feels like it does. Especially this week, since Dad and Mason are gone working on a project for some friends. We’re spread a bit more thin around here.
We’re still without a radio in our house. We found an under-the-cabinet model for a steal at Sears, but brought it home and it was more fuzz than music. (Not that we have great radio reception around here…it takes a good radio, unfortunately.) But when I got in the car the other day and news came on, that Obama is already preparing to make good on his promise to make abortion more legal and readily available by getting rid of all the bans on embryonic stem cell research and abortion that President Bush had put into place… Well, I decided I was rather glad I wasn’t waking up to the news every morning. Not a good way to start your day these days! (I’m doing my best to refrain from comments about somebody and his pay grade. Not to mention the fact that he’s not even in office yet.) Merritt finally took down our McCain-Palin yard sign yesterday. It was kinda like admitting defeat all over again. But he said he didn’t want to leave it up way after we’d lost the election like some other candidates’ fans do around here.
I’ve been reliving every step and shot of elk hunting this week, knowing my Dad, Mom, sister, youngest brother, and cousin are all over there spike hunting where Merritt and I were big bull hunting with Daddy just two years ago. Sounds like they had just about as beautiful weather as we did. Though we didn’t quite have rivers running through our tent–just everything but! Mom and Jess got off easy, though. Only five days between showers, not ten like we had. It makes for lots of fun memories, though. Especially after you’re back home and have had a few hot showers. And I must say that hunting has sure grown on my hubby since then… Never woulda guessed that making him track elk while hobbling around on a cane would get him hooked.
One Big Piece of News around here is that our Pumpkin stayed dry all night long two nights ago. She went potty at about 8:30 p.m. at Nanna’s house, drank close to 8 ounces, went night night, slept all night long without waking up, slept in until 8 a.m., and after I fed her a morning bottle I went to put her on the potty and found a very dry diaper. Wow. I’m a-thinking that one of the reasons she cries out and wakes herself up in the night is that she has to go potty. Reason number two in our top ten list of why not to potty train your children early. But the benefits are still outweighing the negatives around here, we think.
Monday I attempted to find diaper covers and training pants. Ha! Apparently training pants are pretty much a thing of the past. The choices are either panties, or pull-ups with Disney princesses that fade when the pull-up gets wet. Yup. There were a few stores that had training pants. But only Babies R Us had diaper covers. And those were the scary crinkly plastic kind. The kind a certain sister-in-law was wearing when she fell in the creek and came home and was stripped of all her wet clothes…and the diaper was still dry inside the plastic pants! Yeah, those unbreathable kind. So, methinks I’ll be ordering them online. I love the Bummis Super Whisper Wraps we got from Megs, but size small just doesn’t fit over those huge diapers. They fit over the training pants we finally found (I knew Meg had given us some a long time ago, and looked everywhere, only to find out they were in Mom’s attic storage area!). But training pants don’t contain everything if we get excited and forget to tell Daddy and Mommy we have to go. Nor do Bummis wraps hold it all in then, either. So. Size medium pull-up wraps it will be. Coupled with diapers or training pants, depending on how our day is going! But yes, it was ridiculous…because most every store sells pre-fold diapers, but never covers. I’m guessing people just use the pre-folds for burp rags, and thus never bought any covers that were stocked? Craziness.
But now I need to fold that load of laundry (silent as a mouse, of course, because Baby is sleeping). And then I must get ready to feed my hubby lunch and go work at the store. He and Mom are going to go through the antique storage, and Marlys has her babysitting job today. At least, they will go through the antiques as long as the weather stays like it is. The sun is out again… Despite the crazy wind and rain that whipped up for an hour this morning, it looks like it might be a beautiful day after all. But you never know, these days…
Have you seen the new sink mats they have these days? I’m now the proud owner of one. I think it was my favorite purchase of the day yesterday! Ever since I’d seen my mom’s clear sink mat that looked like little chips of ice were coating the bottom of her sink, I’d been coveting one. But with a stainless steel sink (which is the greatest thing ever, let me tell you), I didn’t exactly need it for protecting my sink. But after washing dozens upon dozens of eggs and fighting them as they rolled their way toward the drain and clunked against each other and the drain, I decided I had a use for a sink mat after all! It looks so very pretty in my sink (it’s what looks like large spots of water, with the smaller spots of water on it, under the eggs) . And it protects my eggs so very nicely. What happiness!
And after my eggs are all washed clean, they air dry on the chicken towel my hubby bought me at the little feed store in the town where I grew up. Now how cute is that?
