Learning to Leap

Tonight, I want to take a break from the usual subject of life with children. Instead, I want to detour a little and discuss life as a married person who also happens to have children. Today has been a stark reminder to me of how vastly different men and women really are. We are like night and day, east and west, Coke and Pepsi. The main reason I observed and remembered these differences so acutely is because today was project day around the house. A little DIY party, if you will. You see, in general, most wives around the world enjoy having our homes look warm, inviting, and well decorated. We thrive in an atmosphere of color coordinating curtains and throw pillows, decorative pottery, and creative uses of interesting accessories. To sum up, we like beauty. This is for the most part the single most painful consequence of the fall in the minds of your average husband. In general, husbands would be quite content to live in a home with white or tan walls, a couple leather lazy boys...

Earlier this week I accompanied my daughter and her fellow kindergarten classmates to their much anticipated and talked about field trip. No, we didn't go to the nearby bug museum. It wasn't the at Space and Rocket Center down the street. We didn't go see a play at the civic center downtown. Not even the Botanical Gardens to learn about nature and such. Nope. We went to Publix. Yes, the grocery store. You've heard of it. I have to admit I was a tad bit skeptical at first. I mean, it's a grocery store. I go there only when you can hear the wind whipping through the empty pantry or the fridge echoes like a cave when you drop a penny on the glass shelf because it's otherwise empty. But okay, here we go to Publix to see what we can see. Boy, was I ever wrong. That place is fantastic! The kids were totally mesmerized by the sights and sounds of the behind the scenes world of the grocery store. I learned a few things, too, not the least of which being do NOT ...

The last few weeks I've been struggling with some symptoms of stress. Twice now I've suddenly, for no apparent reason, started feeling very anxious and my heart feels like it's racing and my hands are shaking and I just want to lay on the floor in a dark room and breathe slowly. This is very unusual for me. So I began taking inventory of the sources of stress in my life during this season and began evaluating causes. The following are recent examples of things that may be having a teeny, tiny impact on my elevated anxiety... Exhibit A: Yesterday I had my annual dentist appointment (somehow I've managed to have really good teeth and only have to go once a year...yippee!). Anyway, my husband was out of town and I had no sitter, so three children tagged along with me. I loaded them down with a tupperware bin full of calico critters, gave strict instructions to refrain from biting, kicking, screaming, or letting their curiosity overcome them, and said a silent prayer. T...

They say life imitates art. This has never been more true at my house than today. Earlier today as I was going about my usual business of motherhood, homeschool teacher, part-time employee @ Michael's office, chaffeur, housekeeper, cook, piano teacher, and refining my skills of walking on water, I happened upon a drawing my oldest child had done. This kid LOVES art. REALLY loves it. For Christmas she got new blank canvases to paint and pretty much the best way to get her excited about schoolwork and lessons is to find some way to connect it to drawing or painting or sculpting or...you get it. Anyway, this is the picture she had most recently sketched: Hmm. It looks somewhat familiar to THIS, doesn't it? Or is it just my imagination that they are eerily alike? In case you can't see it well, my child has portrayed her baby sister as the miniature (and somewhat less hairy) version of Godzilla. She appears to be terrorizing the natives and in general leaving a path of d...

In keeping with the designing theme from last night and Leighanne's desitin creation, tonight we'll discuss my children's other artistic talents. Throughout the years, we've had multiple infractions involving markers, crayons, pens, and various "canvases" composed mostly of walls, baseboards, carpet, tables, bricks on the house, and the focus of tonight's blog: the human body. Olivia and I have been studying Michaelangelo and his amazing understanding of the human body. He actually went to a morgue and studied the bodies (inside and out...disgusting) in order to better sculpt every tendon, vein, and joint. I've kind of edited some of our studies of the sculpture, "David". Sometimes more detail is not a good thing. I am wondering if discussing the human body as art has been a bad idea. This afternoon, I was sitting on the couch in the playroom when in ran a giggling six-year-old holding a red dry erase marker in her hand. This is NEVER ...

*I have some awesome pictures for this blog, but since I really don't want to go to jail or have my blog shut down for indecent pictures of minors (and because I don't want her to hate me later), I cannot post them. I think you'll get the basic gist as you read the story.* You've heard of the show, "Designing on a Dime?" At our house last night, we featured a new show called, "Designing with Desitin". I guarantee you it has been cancelled after its pilot episode. All was quiet in the house. I heard no fussing, crying, shrieking, giggling, or playing of any kind. My heart began beating a little faster. You mothers understand this. It's just NEVER good, unless it's between the hours of 8pm and 7am, for the house to be this quiet. Something is amiss. You do, after all, live with little crazy people, capable of mass destruction of any kind in 30 seconds or less. These girls have a record, you see. Happily, the older they get, the less t...

You are fast asleep. Totally relaxed, the stress of the day just disappearing as you snuggle down in your warm, comfy bed. You stir just a little and adjust the blankets, relishing these blissful moments of much needed rest. Then that feeling that something isn't quite right overwhelms you. Someone is there, watching you, gazing down upon your vulnerable self. You feel the chill bumps begin to rise on your arms and all your senses are heightened as you continue to register the presence of another human being in close proximity. You can't stand it any longer, you just have to open your eyes. If a crazed murderer has managed to break into the house, your number is up, anyway, you may as well see who you're up against, right? And there, in the soft moonlight flowing in from the slits in the (very dusty, but let's not mention that) closed blinds on the window, you see something so startling you bolt upright and accidentally whack your sleeping husband in the nose in ...

Church. We love our church. It's been part of our lives for a decade. I have been privileged to get to know and work with the children's ministry folks there for several years now. Love them dearly. Believe they have been called by God to serve. Know they have the kids' best interest at heart. But honestly, sometimes I think they hate me or else just get a kick out of the weekly circus in our pew. You see, at our church (which is fantastic, don't get me wrong), children 'age out' of the kids' program after kindergarten. They still have Sunday School, but at the ripe old age of 6 or 7, they are supposed to sit in 'big church' with their parents. I have no problem with this, theoretically. I mean, what parent wouldn't want to share the experience of worship and edification through the Word with their children? What more important task do we have when it comes down to it? So theoretically, we are good. It's the practicality part I so...