Best Fathers Ever!

Lazy Afternoons And Why Six-Year-Old Boys Rock

My friend and I recently agreed there are few more pleasant things than six-year-old boys.

They have lots of passions -- cars, Legos, money, spy stuff.

They're reasonably independent.

They're blessedly uncomplicated.

They love their Mamas.

Summer Favs

About three days before school let out -- when Tim was up to his eyeballs in chemistry and web design, when every morning demanded a permission slip, cash, and special equipment or clothing -- summer seemed a mirage, a hazy, unreal place slightly out of reach. About three days into vacation, I floated in the pool and remarked to a friend that school seemed two months ago.

It's been good to me so far.

We've had pesky little illnesses pop up, and a few squabbles, an "I'm bored" or two or twelve, but on balance it's been relaxing and enjoyable and not nearly as hot as it could be.

Two weeks in, I'm sharing a few of my favorites:


1. The Best Pool Bag Ever

Holds all the things. Mine's Lands End. L.L. Bean makes a great one as well. This looks the same as it did ten years ago.




2. Matt Maher


So we listen to this on the way to swim every morning, and it includes one of the loveliest litanies I've ever hear. Click here to listen to Matt's Litany.

John, it seems, doesn't quite get that this is a form of prayer.

"We listen to this every. single. day," he lamented this morning as I cranked it up.

"It's a litany of the saints," Ainsley informed him in her most self-righteousness voice ever.

(This from the girl who entertained the moms at the park belting out "Going off of the rails on the crazy train" this morning. Thank you, Megamind! Acid rock, Litany of Saints -- she's well rounded, my girl.)

Our litany began around the time I watched my children learn to dive in shallow water. Things can happen in a pool, and I'll take all the prayer coverage we can get.

Just one more element of Catholic prayer that I love, love, love, and I can get positively transported into the heavenly realms thinking about the Communion of saints and the beautiful link between the here and the hereafter and then Kolbe adopts a mock-baritone and starts singing, "Matt Maher, pray for us!"

And I just have to laugh.


3. Shoe Goop

Have you tossed perfectly good shoes that separated from the soles? You need never do it again. A squirt of Shoe Goo, a few  minutes with a clamp, and presto! Shoes restored to fine form. I bought this at Walmart and have seen it in Kroger as well. $4.

So now  you're wondering why I'd spend $4 saving these. They fit. They're comfy.

4. Solid Goggles

I would hate to calculate how much I have spent on various sorts of goggles through the years. I finally asked our swim coach for advice, and here it is: Buy a brand that is one solid piece across the bridge of the nose. A friend told me Costco offers a three pack of Speedo goggles for $15. You won''t find a better deal than that.


5. Sunscream

That's what Ainsley calls it. Call me paranoid, but I'll take the old-school greasy stuff over the spray any day of the week. If I'm not feeling slathered in slime just on the verge of breaking out, well, I can almost feel the sunburn spreading across my shoulders. Yes, this is from a fair-skinned Irish gal who's been tan once in her life. The kids, of course, love the spray. Thankfully, all but Ainsley have Dave's skin, so they're working with a whole lot more pigment than I have.

Good days. Very good days.

Head over to Hallie's to add your Five Favorites.

Summertime Is Here

Exactly what I envisioned during those hectic last days of school.

#summer2014

Time Out of Mind

So we have embarked on our humble attempts at "summer school" with predictable results. John rolled his and groaned. Ainsley finished her "work" and asked for more.

 #lovemygeekygirl

Then she stole one of John''s worksheets and constructed a clock.

Love it.

Hal -- The Device Formerly Known As Printer

Breathe, Kelly, breathe.

Inhale, exhale.

I think of myself as a realist, but sometimes I am the master of denial. I white-wash all manner of events, especially big events like pregnancy, childbirth, nursing.  I remember all the good about pregnancy. I overlook the exhaustion, the breathlessness, the waddling.  (Except for the nausea thing -- which I recall in technicolor detail).

I look at my friends' tiny babies and ooh and aah and remember those tiny, fuzzy heads and sweet cheeks and gurgly coos. And then Ainsley was dealing with her micro-bout of Croup (much less nerve-wracking than John's uber-bout). I sat on the edge of the bed at about 3:00 a.m. and kept repeating Advil, Advil, Advil and then I'd nod off and shake myself awake and mutter Advil, Advil, Advil. I no longer function in the dead of night. My nighttime parenting is limited to saying, "Come on in, Ainsley. Try not to kick Daddy."

So I was meandering through the grocery store picking up snacks for tonight's swim meet and thinking about how last year's meets were about the most exhausting thing ever and wondering why that was so and chuckling over me of a year ago and oh! how she does go on about things and what was the big deal anyway?

And I came home to tackle item # 1 on a long list of Things To Do Before a Swim Meet. This step was simple one: Print the heat sheets.

I may be a bit forgetful. I may be the master of denial. But, believe me, Printer, my old nemesis, is not.

Printer -- for purposes of this post, we'll just call him Hal -- remembers all too well how important the heat sheets are and how easy, how entertaining, oh, how fun, fun, fun, it is to gum up the whole works.

I've said it before it, and I'll say it again: These things should be easy. Oh, yes, they should. But where's the fun in that? Thirty-three pages and a few choice words later, I have heat sheets in hand. Our browser has a function that invites you to print selected pages. I'm pretty sure Printer, I mean Hal, dabbles in HTML in his spare time and coded these very instructions. Pages 1, 3, 5, and 7 printed so very nicely, oh so very nicely.

And then they printed again.

And again.

And again.

Hal, it seems, doesn't do even numbered pages.

Furthermore, Hal doesn't understand basic English commands: Cancel, Stop, Exit, Escape, Can't You See I Just Pulled Your Plug, Print the Bleeding Even-numbered Pages Before I Donate You to the Kindergarten For Take Apart. 

At one point Hal emitted a grinding noise reminiscent of death throes and then flashed an unreadable message on the badly lighted screen. The flashlight, naturally, was hiding in John and Ainsley's fort down the hall.

But it's all over, and I'm now breathing. Inhale, exhale. I'm sure we have a paper bag around here somewhere.

Thirty-three pages, one massive paper jam, the intervention of a smug -- oh, so very smug -- adolescent techno-wiz, and I have my heat sheets in hand. (And 25 spare sets of pages 1, 3, 5, and 7).

What I don't have in hand is John's bathing suit. While the heat sheets are important, John's bathing suit is critical.

And the time of departure is rapidly approaching. A friend called last night to ask if we really, truly, absolutely needed to be on site at 4:30 for a meet that starts at 6:00. No, no I told her. I'll be there at 5:00. But at this morning's practice I learned that the 4:30 arrival time is not, in fact, an urban legend, and since I'm sort of, kind of in charge of the girls ages six and under, I might need to arrive a few minutes before that.

Maybe we should have spent the night.

It's going to be fine.

Right?

Inhale, exhale.

Regularity

Over the summers I spent serving with The Missionaries of Charity, I logged many an hour in their chapels. Let me tell you, those women pray. And pray. And pray.

Their primary prayer is to radiate Jesus, to be so united to God that people look up and see no longer Sister Paul Jose or Sister Miriam, but Jesus.

One of their oddest prayers is for regularity.

Yes, regularity.

They're not talking about their personal habits, but rather about a life of rhythm and routine. They get up at the same time six days a week (that would early); they eat lunch at the same time; they have recreation at the same time.

They live a life of order.

Of course, I should point out that they are, in fact, an Order. Many of us who have served with the sisters returned to our lives and found ourselves frustrated that we couldn't maintain the rhythm of prayer and devotion that we had grown to love. But the lives of the laity are not structured around prayer and liturgy and service. Though many of us incorporated aspects of the sisters' spirituality into our lives, a simple fact remained: We were not Missionaries of Charity.

But lately I have been thinking about regularity -- to the avoid the giggles, we'll call it rhythm -- and pondering how to bring it into my life to a greater degree.

We have had seasons during which the only rhythm was no rhythm at all. When you have babies in the house, two things seem to be constant: a) inconsistent sleep patterns and b) sickness. Even if A is going swimmingly, if B rears its head, A goes right out the window.

Sometimes rhythm is foisted upon us. When my oldest started school, wow!, what a shock compared to the laid-back days of toddlers.

We have to be there by 8:30?

Like, everyday?

The lunch thing alone seemed daunting. And then there was vacation. You mean I can't up and head to the beach on a Wednesday morning? Not that I really ever did that. But when suddenly  I couldn't, well, I felt my wings had been clipped a little.

I laugh now looking back on all those constraints I felt when Tim started school. Making a lunch -- that would be one single lunch. -- seems pitiful compared to making considerably more lunches while proof-reading a son's newly programmed website and picking up lemons and galvanized nails to make a battery for chemistry class and shuttling people to and from swim team and getting home barely on time for a music festival and then rounding up uniforms for the next day.

A friend of mine asked if I look forward to the end of school.

Yes, oh yes, I do. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Mostly because I enjoy a change of pace. (And come Labor Day, I will be delighted to snap a photo of all four cherubs in their crisp uniforms and shiny new shoes heading off to start a new year).

But today, the first day of vacation, I am delighted that Kolbe's spending the night with a friend, that Tim is still sawing logs in the next room.

We attended a high school honors banquet last night, a neat event to cap off what has been, for the most part, a good year. The faculty recognizes achievement in a wide variety of areas -- academics, sports, fine arts, leadership, character, service.

Can I hear a shout out for my friend Rachel whose five boys (five!) all received perfect attendance awards? Forget the kids; I think they should have given Rachel a plaque. Believe me, that says as much about the mother as it does about the boys.

The principal began the evening with a prayer and a scripture passage. It may have been Proverbs 21:5: The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage.

The Bible says plenty about fortitude, about diligence. I love Saint Paul's admonition to run the race set before you and to run it to win.

Last night rewarded diligence: the boy who studied violin for twelve years, the MVP who logged innumerable hours practicing free throws, the girl who maintained a 99% average, the parent who has been a classroom volunteer for fifteen years.

On our recent trip to Disney, my niece was undone by the number of times we stopped by McDonald's on the way in and out of the parks. (Believe me, dear Hannah, I avoided the Golden Arches for about a month afterwards). But, really, it's not the three-day overload of fast food that clogs the arteries and devastates the waistline. Your bones don't grow brittle when you don't run for a day or a week or even a year. You don't become valedictorian by cramming off and on. You don't radiate Jesus by attending an amazing retreat once a year.

No, it's all about diligence, habits, rhythm. The sisters are right to pray for regularity.

1 Corinthians 9:24 -- Run in such a way as to win the prize.