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Take a visit to my other blog, A is for Anteater, to read My Best Kept Secret about why I teach our children at home.

Things to Do if You’re a Sassy, Swaying Skirt

Don’t hibernate in the corner of the closet any longer,

It’s time to jump hangers, you deserve it,

you’re a sassy, swaying skirt!

Display your fanciful colors as proudly

as the dandiest peacock.

Tempt her away from those winter jeans.

(they’ve got the blues anyway).

Recline on a picnic blanket, edges grazing the dirt

and who can stop you, you’re a skirt!

Billow comfortably on the couch,

Legs and books loosely crossed.

Encourage a twirl for natural air conditioning,

your person’s calves flash pink, but you can do it

you’re a skirt!

Help her skip a little more than step,

a secret smile, just you and her.

Now, stick around a while.

I stood at the sink rinsing dishes from lunch.  Behind me the kids were working on school, a simple project that I had not thought of specifically as an art project.  But an hour later they were still drawing, detailing and eventually I had to stop them so we could move on to the next assignment.

Jokingly I said, “You guys have to stop liking art so much.”

Mookie, our ten year old, shot back, “Mommy, that would be like telling us we have to stop eating!”

She’s mostly serious.  And my delight at this shared passion in our family re-forms itself into thankfulness.

I’ve been noticing the gift of enjoying each other’s company this week. On sunday we were piled in the church service, not like individual dominoes, but more like 5 that had already been tipped with a finger(the baby was in her class, hence, the five). Mr. Darcy and I squished together with a Jellybean leaning on one side of me, a drummer boy piled onto Mr. Darcy lap, and Mookie reaching around her dad to hold my hand.

I’m not trying to create this ingratiatingly sweet picture of perfect family love. The moment came at the end of the week that included yelling(me), crying(some of them), sickness, a baby’s new skill at screaming, and the general challenges that come with six sinful people under one roof. Even as I write this I can hear Mr. Darcy working out a problem amongst the older three, with serious protest from the 8 year old. Which confirms my suspicion that the love that binds our family together has little to do with a problem free life or perfect parenting(as if either even existed).

Regardless of the daily challenges, it seems we really like each other. The kids get me all day and still they complain when I leave the house for an errand or coffee in the evening. On the days that doesn’t drive me crazy, I’m floored that they actually want to spend more time with me.

I think the biggest attributes to this gift have nothing to do with anything we’ve done to earn it. I see God’s hand of design in this thing called family and in the individuals who compose it. And I see His Holy Spirit constantly at work to bring forgiveness and acceptance.

From our end I hope they also feel their own value in our larger group of six. Seriously loved and secure even on the days that go wrong, wrong, wrong.

And this week, like the comment from my daughter at the top, I’ve noticed shared experiences and passions drawing us together.

Usually within a day or two you’ll find us:

Working on an art project(while Mr. Darcy is at work doing his own graphic design art).

Reading, Reading, Reading. Mama reading to kids for school. Kids reading on their own during rest time. Drummer boy reading to us so that he can read on his own. And the baby walking around demanding books to be read that very moment.

Inventing stories. Mama writing them, kids writing and telling them.

Delving into history(which has not always been a shared joy by yours truly, so I suppose we’ve also influenced each other). That’s right, the kids always call for another round of whatever chapter book we’re reading in history, but we’re now that family that watches Documentaries for fun.

Sharing God’s word in the evening. The girls sharing their proverbs study. The boy sharing his devotional. Dad sharing a good missionary read aloud.

I didn’t imagine what my family might be like when I had one of my own. But I don’t think I would have dared to imagine this gift.

This is love made up of holding hands, kisses from the boy, “Oh please stay!” from his sister, “Mommy!” our littlest one names me and rubs my face, and the pans of hot water added to my bath each night from Mr. Darcy.

With four children, we get four times the personality, the laughter, the unique talents, the joy.  We also get four times the germs.  A friend once said to me that when one child gets sick, she’s tempted to make all of the kids lick each other so that they all get sick at the same time.  I’ll admit I can see the advantages.  You can let me know at the end of this story if you think I should have tried that strategy seven days ago.

It’s good that I didn’t get to write this blog post on day one or day three or even day five of the last seven days.  I might have seemed smug, “We’ve had sickness before and it was bad, but look how we handle it now.” You would have been annoyed at me during your own snot covered days of survival with sick kids.  Now I can tell the whole story, with the last bit of smugness washed away by day five and a half.

It started with the flu.

No let me go back.

It started with winter. That’s another prideful blog post that I might have written a few weeks ago, after the first few unusual bouts of snow. I was a little cocky way back then thinking how much better I was doing then last winter, when the long, bleak days drained all my patience and joy away by early January.

It’s this last stretch, when a few warm days taunt you, and then winter leaves you in the meat locker for another six weeks, that really tests your durability. The walls are smaller, tempers shorter, and the germs are having germ babies.

The setting is bleak winter.  Enter the video camera.

The video camera?

The one the I dropped on my foot, which cut through my sock, which left a 3 x 2 bruise and my big toe wouldn’t touch the ground anymore because of the swelling.  (Old school video camera, don’t picture a pocket camera.)  It hurt, but we were laughing.

Enter the flu for child number 1. The first year in ten years that we hadn’t gotten flu shots. Eyes shiny and sunken, she was sicker than I’d seen her in about 6 years.

Enter the coughing, sick sister without flu symptoms but with a spurting, bloody nose. It was gross, still we laughed.

Mama hobbles around with a toe that won’t touch the ground. School anyone? We homeschool, if you didn’t know this, but at the moment the school teacher was doubling as the school nurse.

Enter the high fever for baby not yet two. Does she have the flu of her oldest sister or the coughy-but non flu symptomatic illness of other sister?

Fever sticks to her like a tongue to a frozen pole for about 3 days, around the clock.

Enter worry and sleep deprivation for Mama and Mr. darcy.

By day 5, the flu is resolving itself, the sun is shining and the big sisters are out playing after the germ-infected blah week. Baby still has the fever. Mama and Mr. Darcy need a serious nap.

“Jellybean’s nose is bleeding everywhere!” the boy rushes into the house. The same nose bleeder from earlier in the week has fallen and smashed her nose on the concrete and there’s a level two nose bleed. Blood on the face, the clothes, the concrete.

Still, after she’s mopped up, we laugh. She goes back into the sun.

Enter the boy, he’s left the perfect day to come inside, “I’m done playing. I’m going to go lay down.” The boy doesn’t ever come inside on a warm day without being coerced.

Mama gets a phone call on her way to the grocery story. “The boy’s temperature is 100.”

Is it the flu? Is it the coughy but non flu-symptomatic illness? Is it the myserious unknown fever of his baby sister?

Then he projectile vomits hard boil egg and accompanying fluids all over himself, his sisters, anything in an eight foot radius. Several times. Are you getting me? Chunks. Flying. Girls screaming.

Since I didn’t have to clean it up-I don’t like egg in it’s natural form much less airborne, I was still able to smile, a little. Mr. Darcy had taken on a slightly traumatized appearance.

An entirely new sickness? After 8 more episodes(thankfully not projectile, and thankfully less egg each time) encompassing the entire night of would be sleep, we’re pretty sure we have a new beast in the mix.

By five that morning, nobody was laughing. I’d stayed up from 3 to 7 without a hint of sleep. The baby still had a fever.

Enter the zombie period. The grocery shopping hadn’t been done. The attempt to vacuum the house that hadn’t been vacuumed in a month was abandoned and the goal was resized to wiping off the door handles with disinfectant.

School planning? If I could do it in my sleep.

Ouch, the baby just stepped on my sore foot.

How did it get to be day seven? Monday. The sun had taunted and left for the week. Mr. Darcy was home from work trying to pull us together for the week. I was in the doctor’s office for two hours to get a two minute swab for strep. I hadn’t mentioned the headaches or sore throat to you, I didn’t want to overwhelm you.

Enter Tuesday. 90% chance of rain. The four different illnesses have left just enough germs to sprinkle a cough and a runny nose to each of them. School is happening by the seat of our pants.

There has been some sleep. There has been some laughter. Some serious yelling. And hopefully some more sleep tonight.

So there’s the whole story. Cocky pride at how well we can handle a round of sickness abandoned on day five.

Oh, I did forget to mention the call to poison control?

disclaimer: truly, the Lord was working and healing and strengthening.  this is less a story of complaint, than an invitation to squeeze each other’s shoulders and say, “yeah, i’ve been there.”  an invitation to laugh.

To enter the real life of other moms, head over here:

(The following story was told by my pastor from first person point of view, his daughter’s name has been changed)

I can still picture my grown daughters when they were just knee high.  Looking upon their sweet, sweet faces, I delighted in them 99 percent of the time.  This one night, something different was going on in our house.  Our then two foot, 35 pound little girl had a steak run through her.

My wife called, “Ellie, go put your pink nightgown on.”

Sweet angelic girl, “No.”

Again my wife said, “Go put your pink nightgown on.”

Sweet, angelic girl, “No!”

From the other room, I could her the no’s building to crescendo.

“I don’t want to where my pink nightgown!”

If she had asked, “Can I please where my purple one?” Or Cinderalla, or any other nightgown, we might have relented.

But with the “No!”, all other possibilities evaporated.  This was a battle, she was wearing that pink nightgown.

The “No’s” had now turned into one long wail and I knew it was time.  Daddy needed to step in.

I walked up to my very small and determined daughter and I began to hum a hymn.  As a hummed, I firmly took my little girl in my arms and proceeded to put the nightgown over her head. I pushed and hummed, she pulled and yanked and reached new notes.

As her red, sweating, tear-streaked face emerged through the pink satin nightgown it was like she was being born all over again.

I was still humming, louder now.  Finally, nightgown on, she pulled away from me, backed against the wall, began stomping her feet and yelled, “I don’t want to where my pink nightgown!”

After that, the Daddy fell down onto his knees and starting praying in front of his daughter, for his daughter, and she was so shocked by the pecular behavior of her father, that she stopped crying and eventually, she did sleep in that pink nightgown.

But it’s the image of her face emerging through the nightgown, fighting, resisting the whole time, that’s remained with me all morning.

I can easily picture it, since our little two year old has taken to screaming so loudly that her whole body shakes. And I can picture seeing her face just after being born, a similiar look on her face.  Until she pressed against my skin, safe, submissive, contented.

What the pastor was really getting to was our own hearts that hold a pocket of resistance to submitting to the Lord.  The S word. My resistance doesn’t look quite like my daughter’s fit, but it might to the Lord.  There is less screaming, and more silence.  As I occupy my heart with other things, as I fill it up with lesser things.  Right now there is one specific area that I’m standing with my feet planted, determined, shaking my head “no”.   Thinking, in time, God will finally see it my way.

I’ve also known those sweet moments when, tired and yielding, the resistance is finally over.  When I move into His love, safe, submissive, contented.

It was one of those kind of days.

It was the kind of day when you let the almost two year old run around with the permanent markers, caps off, because you’re trying to defrost the the block of ground beef with a metal fork and frying pan while you burn the taco shells and the oldest child yells, “Grab your blankets and start waving them near the vents” as the smoke pours out of the oven.

The kind of day when you wonder whether you should even make goals for yourself if it means  you’ll turn into a super bug-eyed yelling mama when your kids interrupt your efforts for the 43rd time even though no ones bleeding or missing a limb.

It was the kind of day when you’re glad you did decide to start the goal of sneaking off for twenty minutes to exercise in your room(dance and jump to The Kooks) so that when you emerge slightly revitilized you might be able to face the 8 year old who says, “Mommy, do you think we’ll have a better day tomorrow?”

The kind of rare day when your other three children are squared away and just you and your almost two year old head out for a jaunt at Traders Joe’s and you decide she should try out one of those cute little carts and you both squeal all the way through the store as she tries to pile six bags of cheese puffs, dried prunes, and seaweed into the cart.  You realize most people in the store probably think you’re a poor first time mom who isn’t very good at the parenting thing yet and you get a warning from the cashier, “Now you know these Super Chocolate Covered Powdered Berries are adult candy not for children” and you realize he thinks you’ve been slipping them to the pint size person by your side and that’s why she’s been squealing.

It was the kind of day when everything seems funnier, later, after a brownie, and fours hours after the kids have been in bed.

Did you have that kind of day?

I’ve particularly avoiding reading any posts that start or end with the word Resolutions.  The whole idea leaves me slightly nauseous as I think back to an excerpt from my 5th grade diary.

“Exercise.  Diet.  Lose Weight.”

I was not overweight and I was only 9.

Since finding that excerpt, the whole ritual seems to me it could be equally titled, “Things That I feel Guilty About.  Huge Goals That Will Make Me Feel Like a Failure in a Few Weeks.”  Or, “Things I Think I Should Change Because That’s What My Best Friend is Doing or What the Magazine Article Said.”

Does that mean I should rebel against any changes at all, out of my annoyance at resolutions?

In my pastor’s exhortation for the New Year, he suggested(strongly) that some of the struggles each of us were dealing with might not have a giant, spiritual answer that begins with “Thou art burdened unto death” or some similiar sentiment.  He went on to say that a person might need to sleep 8 hours, eat better food, create and apply a budget.  Not the most popular advice that he gives out in counseling, he admitted.

“But, Pastor, that’s not very spiritual.  I want God to do something great.”

“He will, when you carry out some of the very practical wisdom He placed in his Word.”

Around that same time we chose Proverbs as the next book of study for our children’s daily quiet time.  Five chapters in, we’ve all gotten the theme wonderfully.  ”Don’t turn away from God’s wisdom.  Don’t walk in the way of the wicked.  Apply his wisdom everyday.”

When daily issues come up with disrespect, or for a completely hypothetical example, when one sticks staples into one’s mouth, we’ve turned them right back to their verses from the day.  ”Did you apply your parent’s wisdom? The Lord and your parents don’t give you wisdom so that you can have a big list of rules to follow.  We want to keep you safe.  We want to give you what’s best. The Lord disciplines those He loves.”

I’ve begun working on a few daily habits, and thinking about a few others.  If I’m trying to make new habits, is that the same thing as those old, guilt rendering new year’s resolutions?  I’m sure they could be, but habits brings out something different in the undertaking.  It doesn’t feel like a giant lunge that will end in a crash.  It’s smaller, it’s daily, it’s forgiving, it’s getting back to the habit again the next day.  It’s an act that will carry out the practical wisdom in my own, personal walk with the Lord.  It’s individual.  It’s based not on guilt, but hope for what life the new habits will bring.

I found myself attracted to the idea of recording these habits when I saw Ann Voskamp’s 100 day Calender.  The same 3 habits recorded and checked off for 100 days.  A habit started, a habit kept.  I’m expecting to leave some boxes unchecked, but just keep going the next day, looking back encouraged by the days before.

Here’s my list.

1)Creative Writing

My blog is most certainly an outlet, but if I were honest with myself, I really want to write a novel, some plays, some stories for my kids.  My friend doesn’t know yet (but this seems like a good way to tell her now) that we’re going to start spending 10 minutes a day writing creatively.  Sending each other prompts, sharing our writing for accountability and inspirations, but not for the sake of criticism or reaching a product.  Practically speaking, if I hope to write any of the projects above, I have to, well, start.

2)Quiet devotion

We pray together as  family, we listen to the girls share their proverbs at night, I read my son’s daily devotion.  My own prayers are caught on the wind as I go about consuming daily tasks.  I’m sure their heard by the Lord amidst the yelling, the school books, the cries for lunch.  But nothing about my spirit is quiet in those times.  I’m hoping for a habit of being still(without a novel with my hands).  Practically speaking, if I want to quiet with the Lord, I have to, well, stop.  Everything.

3)Exer-I mean, 20 Minutes to Get Fit

It was incredibly hard to admit this was on my list after all my complaining up above.  Forever, exercise has been a means to eating.  Like going out the next day after a food hangover to fix my mistake.  I tell the kids it’s about being healthy, but secretly it’s meant being thin.  Last month the Lord gave me the gift of a new habit of sleep.  And now He’s working powerfully in the nighttime eating habits that accompanied my lack of sleep.  I wake up rested.  I wake up, on most days, without the shame of my nocturmal eating actvities.  Now I’ve been grabbing twenty minutes in my room with an exercise routine.  I feel stronger. Literally, measurably, stronger. I’ve gone from one pitful push up to almost 5. Practically speaking, if I want my kids to value moving their bodies, I have to do it myself, daily.

While resolutions always felt connected to the expectations of the world, these habits, in their best form, feel more like an extension of prayer. Practically, speaking.

Here in the land of blogs, most writers have taken a keen look at the past year, reconciled gains and losses, and even named the new year.

Turning to my own retired year of abundant life(always in the making) has been a slower process for this mama.

I’ve had a serious case of memory loss, the last year appearing as an over-exposed photo, areas in the image too dark or white to make out the details.

I flipped back through these blog pages, surprised to find that I had provided myself with a record, the developer fluid doing it’s job, the truer image revealed.

It began with the the dark winter, endless in it’s persistance.  Dark in the skies, and dark in the helplessness I felt toward my friends and family who were hurting.  Shadows merging to a deep twilight as my heart hardened against acceptance.

Emerging into spring, finally thin patches of  light broke through to my heart as the Lord opened it to obedience. Now the path was dim but passable.

Summer arrived and even though it excluded frequent trips to the pool, the light unfurled itself as responsibilities lifted.

Autumn brought new reasons to cry out for help, but also the sorrowfully, sweet echo carried over from our lessons of obedience.  An echo that ripples outward, a headlight.

He called us through the holiday months to find joy in the simple-in food, in the faces that sit at our table, in mercy.

Winter arrives today as a cloak between me and that great, glowing ball in the sky that I love and fear hovers as I remember back to last winter.

Looking back, I can see the distance from last winter to the end of this day. Measured in months on a calender it seems ordinary. Measured by the miles traversed in my  heart, it’s countless.

And that’s something.

It can’t be easy arriving into this family as the third child.  But man, it’s gotta be even tougher to be the third child and the only boy. (that’s him peeking through the girls who are crowding him out)

He watches his big sisters get all the privileges first.

He sits in the audience as they get awards.

He compares his drawing, reading, everything skills to their own.

He gets angry looks from the sisters just for being the loving, kiss sharing boy that God made him to be.

“Jesus, thanks for mommy and her kisses.”

Angry stares and rolling of the eyes.  Don’t worry Mama gets in the middle of that.

But as the calender moves quickly toward his sixth birthday, he’s coming into his own.  In spurts.

He’s drawing his own way.

He’s got a keen sense of style with corduroys.

He’s wielding his own set of real tools.

“Drummer boy, can we borrow one of your screw drivers?”

He’s having fun being a big brother.

He’s got four wheels instead of two now so he’s catching up.

He’s finding his own interest in science.

And this conversation occurred the other day when he accidentally shot his foam rocket onto the neighbors roof.

The biggest sister got really dramatic and doomsday, “Oh no, now it’s lost for good.  We’ll never get it back.  If you try to climb up to get it you’ll probably die.”

Drummer boy didn’t bite this time.  He remained calm.

“Mookie, your beliefs don’t usually come true,” he stared her right in the face.

For the record, I first thought he said, “Your bullies never come true.” Which would have been a true word as well!

We all stopped and just laughed and laughed.  And big sister laughed too.

The boy’s getting smarter.  He’s realized the endless threats from the big girls are usually just a good bit of making it up to keep their little brother in line.

I’m personally hoping that as the boy gets bigger and wiser, the kisses stick around.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m terrible at book reviews.

Sure I can read and locate the strengths and weaknesses in a piece of bound writing, but I mean more specifically that I’m completely untrustworthy.

For a while now I’ve been a part of Goodreads, a site that sends out nice, tidy emails full of book reviews from friends(and strangers).  I think I review 1 out of every 20 books I read.  Disadvantage one of adding me to your Goodreads team.

Around a year ago my mom mentioned she’d picked up a cooking memoir from Borders, based on my review.  I thought hard, I remembered the particular book, and then thought despairingly that it was probably the last book on my list I would have picked for her.

Another dear friend keeps reading books from my list and I cringe with each one, thinking, “Did I really like that one a lot? Would I ever read it again? Surely I would never pick any of those for her.”

Completely unreliable, that’s me.

Is it just that I’m so in love with the sound of myself as a composer of words that I make these reviews up for the sake of my own enjoyment, discarding truth for a better ebb and flow?

I pondered that one for a few days.

It was then that I realized my true diagnosis: emotional reader.

The cookbook memoir came into my life just after I began enjoying food after a five month alien baby pregnancy sickness, at the time I cared much less about the author’s personal life(affairs, shallowness, other sordid details) than her rapturous descriptions of entrees.

And in dark, more painful moments I vacillate between two extremes. During the first weeks of my Dad’s mental illness I read the entire Little House on the Prairie series, an antithesis of my own situation.  In other difficult seasons I’ve found solace(escape) in children’s science fiction and books like The Thirteenth Tale-a rather twisted story, dark keeping company with dark.  Most of the books that fall into the latter category were fitting and comfortable only for the briefest moment.

“I was really surprised you liked that book,” my friend and voracious consumer of books mentioned about my review of Wicked.  Was it a four(or five) star book in my review?  It’s only in context later that I remember again the five months of nausea that only paused for sleep(of which there was little), the me shaped cushions that now belonged on our couch while the kids expected normal things like food and water.  Wicked came in the middle of those months and dark as the book may be it was extremely light in my head because it wasn’t my life!  Since then it’s sat on the shelf and I haven’t had any desire to pick it up again.

That’s it, I’m an emotional, completely untrustworthy girl with a lot of opinions about books.  So I’ve pondered what books remain even when the drama in my life settles down?  What stays on my shelf past all of the trips to sell at the used bookstore?  A precious handful.

Non-fiction and fiction by Madeleine L’Engle, Tolkein, Jane Eyre, Gone with the Wind, and the most modern on the list, The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

Their mine, excuses and apology free.

You might like them, but I wouldn’t take my word for it.

As to anything else I recommend, you might ask me what mood I was in before you try it.