These Moments

They Make Me Smile; They Make Me Laugh

Fifteen-year-old Tim on his report card: When you see these grades, we are SO going right to the permit office!

Eleven-year-old Kolbe quoting Famous Last Words: The fire extinguisher's empty; grab the hairspray.  Leave some food out; the bears will think we're their friends. This is the deep end, right? I'm sure the power's off. These are the good kind of mushrooms.

Five-year-old John sounding out a word: Buh Uh Ttt.  BUT! Bah, hah, hah, hah, hah!

I Know His Love Language

My friend Amy wrote a sweet reflection of the love of a young son as he darts off to school:

I am absolutely relishing in the complete warmth of this moment. This boy who is eight and in the second grade will be a sophomore in high school in the blink of an eye and I'm guessing, even though I'm hoping beyond all hope for this to be untrue, that boys at that age don't shout out, "I love you Mama!" anywhere ... at any time.

Good news, Amy! Teenage boys still say "I love you, Mama." They don't shout it out, and sometimes they use different words. If I've learned anything in the twenty-four months I have been a mother of a teenager, it's that a little translation is required to keep the lines of communication humming.

One recent morning found me screening my calls. When Caller I.D. alerted me that the kids' school was on the other end of the line, I quickly picked up.

It was Tim.

"Mom," he told me in his urgent voice, "Could you bring (fill in the blank with forgotten item). And while you're coming anyway, could you pick me up a Baconator?"

Adolescent boys speak a unique love language and it's called Food. Tim is fluent in a dialect called Bacon. He also speaks Electronics and is conversant in Cold, Hard Cash.

John, a boy ahead of his time, speaks Meat. From the time he could first form a complete sentence, "I want ma meat!" was a line we regularly heard at the dinner hour. The other night, in an earnest attempt to compliment me on my cooking, John declared with great gusto, "The grease makes this meat really good, Mama!"

Translation: I know you love me best!

I went at it with a nameless one of my progeny this morning. This boy -- this child of my heart, this kid I love more than I can say, more than I can say  -- was in rare form and, sadly, so was his mother.

My idea of a good start to the day is full of simple prayers and hot coffee, cheerful Good Mornings and maybe an I Love You, Mama or two. And we have those mornings. And nearly every morning is like that for some kids. But really life being what it is and challenging personalities (my own included) being what they are and with late nights crammed with homework and early morning piano lessons and the list goes on, we have bad mornings, too. Mornings punctuated with tense words and stomping feet. Mornings short on kindness and long on frustration.

Today was one of those days.

My boy darted off into school (mostly to avoid the tardy bell which has ramifications for older students). He didn't yell, "I love you, Mama," but I know he does. And long about noon time today, I just might show up in the courtyard of the school with a Mocha Frappuccino or a Baconator in hand. Last time I did this, Tim threw his arms around me and yelled, "You're the best!" Loud enough for God and his friends to hear.

I know his love language, and it's important to speak it.

A Hundred Small Annoyances

From Heather King, who blogs over at Shirt of Flame, a useful quote for a Tuesday morning that feels too much like a Monday morning because yesterday was a holiday:

There is no one who does not experience a hundred small annoyances every day, caused either by our own carelessness or inattention, or by the inconsideration or spite of other people, or by pure accident. Our whole lives are made up on incidents of this kind, occurring ceaselessly from one minute to another, and producing a host of involuntary feelings of dislike and aversion, envy, fear, and impatience to trouble the serenity of our minds … If we were careful to offer all these petty annoyances to God and accept them as being ordered by his providence, we would soon be in a position to support the greatest misfortunes that can happen to us, besides at the same time insensibly drawing close to intimate union with God.

St. Claude de la Colombière, 17th-century priest and confessor.

Read the rest of her piece here.

I just finished Heather's first book -- Parched, a searing, graphic description of addiction and redemption, a book I am sending to a friend who is right now fighting his way out of the living Hell Heather depicts.

Parched is not a light read. 

I am left with a few thoughts:

I don't know from true suffering.

I can count my blessings.

I can offer up my "hundred small annoyances" to God.

I can go hold my feverish son and spend a few minutes reading Charlotte's Web.

Easy Costumes

Laura the Carrot

Long about ten years ago, Tim made his theatrical debut as the back end of a camel.

I'm not even making that up.

If there was a bright spot in this otherwise inauspicious entry into the world of drama, it was this: The costume was provided.

For many mothers costumes are hmmm, a challenge? No, more like a cross to bear, the near occasion of a panic attic or a bout of swearing, the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

And why is this?

Costumes almost always come hand in hand with some other Big Event. A costume and a diorama. A costume and a speech. A costume and a major holiday. You're putting together Thanksgiving dinner solo . . . and now scrounging together something a Pilgrim might have worn, maybe.

Insert primal groan reminiscent of Lurch the Butler.

A long, long time ago, I produced a few really cool costumes. I had a sewing machine, not a fancy one, but a steady Eddie kind of machine that offered a wide variety of decorative stitches.  For All Saints one year, Tim was decked out as Pope John Paul II, and his costume flat rocked.

He was an only child at the time.

We then entered a dry season. My old, rugged machine went belly up, and I had three more children. When Tim played Prospero in The Tempest, I might have stapled his cape together.

Last year Santa brought me an updated version of my old machine, and the little people progressed from babies/toddlers to little people. Once again, we are fashioning costumes.

For those challenged in the craft department, for those kindred spirits who get a note home from school, and the note just happens to mention the dreaded word Costume, and maybe your stomach begins to churn, well, sister, just relax. Let me share a cheap and easy way out.

1. Scrounge up a paint stick.

2. Buy craft foam at Walmart, Michael's, Hobby Lobby, Joanne's etc..

3. Google the animal, character, etc. and click Image to get a vision of what you might like.

4. Cut and glue the craft foam pieces together.

5. Fasten the mask to the stick with packing tape.

These masks on a stick are especially helpful for little kids who a) might not like the elastic on a real mask or b) are expected to sing while in costume.

As for the rest of the costume, estimate the child's height (shoulder to ankle) and buy double the fabric. Fold it in half long ways. Cut a hole for the head. Scrounge a belt or rope to cinch the waist.

Done!

P.S. Above all, do not even think about checking Pinterest. Your child wont; why should you?

Seven Quick Takes

1. It's hot here in Georgia. As in the lower 70's. As in I ran the air conditioner twice this week. As in I cooked dinner in a tank top and shorts.

I try to tell myself, "Hey, it's just 73. If this were September, this would be a veritable cold front." Trouble is, there's no convincing myself that this is anything other than what it is, which is January for the love of Pete, and it's supposed to be, I don't know, 56 and cloudy. Not 73.

I just checked the forecast, and next Tuesday will supposedly be 47 (that's the high, not the low). Bring it on!

2. So my friend Rachel is putting a renewed effort into producing dinner. You go, girl! Yesterday afternoon I thought I'd make Tim's day by grilling hamburgers and serving them with corn on the cob and Aunt Karen's beloved cheesy hash brown casserole. I went out in the rain to pick up the burgers and a few more items. I came home and began assembling the meal. Buns? Check. Ketchup and mustard? Check. Cheese? Check. Hamburgers? Still at the store! How in the world can I go the store for hamburgers and manage to come home with toilet paper, chardonnay, sunflower seeds, etc., etc., and no blasted hamburgers? Back to the store in the rain once more.

I love you, Tim. I really, really love you.

3. Note to self:  If the piano teacher apologizes for the music she's just given to your son, best you go back to that blasted store and lay in a fresh supply of ear plugs and chardonnay.

Kolbe is in the process of mastering Axle F, otherwise known as the theme to Forty-Eight Hours, otherwise known as the most repetitive and annoying musical score Ever! Written! And this is coming from a mother who loves to hear her kids play the piano even when they play badly. Tim is ready to move out, I can't say that I blame him, and Kolbe just asked when he'll be allowed to watch Forty-Eight Hours. Answer? Neva!

4. So Sunday night means early bedtimes for the little people while the old folks enjoy Downton Abbey. A friend just told me about a show she had caught on NPR. Seems Hugh Bonneville, our beloved Lord Grantham, was recently interviewed. The newscaster apparently said something along the lines of, "Well, Hugh, we have a show here in American that, like Downton Abbey, provides a peek into a unique home. It's called Here Comes Honey Boo Boo."

Oh, the pain!

I first saw a commercial for Honey Boo Boo last summer when I watched my first (and only) episode of Toddlers and Tiaras. It seems Honey Boo Boo got her start on Toddlers and Tiaras. No surprise there! I recently learned that Honey Boo Boo hails from none other than the fine state of Georgia.

Oh, the pain!

By all accounts, Hugh was a good sport about the whole thing. But isn't it bad enough that we have this drivel on our airwaves? Must we parade it in front of visitors from abroad?

As a professor of mine once said, "Europe gives us Upstairs, Downstairs. We give them Dumb and Dumber."

Oh, the pain!

Honey Boo Boo. Carson's right on. We are staring into the chaos of Gomorrah.

5. Speaking of pain . . . If you see an exhausted Saint Anthony leaving my house wiping his brow on a weekday morning around, oh, 8:13 a.m., let me tell you, he's already put in a hard day's work. We are losing everything including my mind. John is down two shoes -- one each of two pairs. Argh!

6. Christmas is mostly put away. I cranked up Andy Williams and, as Ainsley put it, chopped down the Christmas tree. Oh, she made me feel like the Grinch. I waited until the Baptism of the Lord. We even had a  little gift exchange with friends Sunday night. Can't say we didn't embrace the whole season.

Among our favorite gifts was this little gem on the right.

Back in November I became determined to turn Ainsley's bed into something girly and John's bed into something boyish. I perused website after website in search of sheets or pillows in primary colors that would be cute and colorful and just the right degree of girlish or boyish. And you know what? Save for ladybug fabrics, no one really does primary colors. It's all brown and celery green, pink and raspberry.

I headed for Etsy and discovered Snuggles of Love and bought this. True confessions: It was crazy expensive. But it is soft and beautiful and Ainsley absolutely loves it.

Now all three boys want their names on a  pillow. I am ruminating on how I might pull this off (not gonna pay that price times four).

7. Continue to pray for Jen, the host of Quick Takes. She recently posted this:

I’ll never forget the powerful, soul-cleansing relief that poured over me when I learned that there really had been something wrong with me for all those weeks. Even though I had not begun to receive treatment and felt no better than before, I was suddenly inspired to do my best despite my circumstances. Almost immediately, I began to approach my situation with joy. Once I stopped lamenting sins I wasn’t really committing, I could take a clear look at the sins I was committing, and made a better confession than I had in months. Even sitting there in a hospital room, I felt closer to God and happier with my life than I had in a long, long time.

I feel like I’ve been given a divine permission slip to stop defaulting to self-blame for all of my little daily difficulties (not just as it related to my lungs, but in every area of life) and I want to share it with you. If you’re a mom and you’re struggling, let me just tell you that the problem is not you. Well, I suppose I can’t know that for sure; if you find that you’re regularly too drunk to put the Cheez Whiz on your kids’ cookies for dinner, then maybe the problem is you. But, short of that, my guess is that your suffering is due to your difficult circumstances far more than it is due to laziness or lack of holiness or ungratefulness on your part. What you’re doing is hard, harder in certain ways than what your grandmothers experienced, and don’t let the voices in your head tell you otherwise.

A beautiful pearl of wisdom we should all take to heart.

So pray for Jen and head on over to her place to add your Quick Takes.

Self-Mastery . . . For Them and For Us

I wrote this a long time ago, but never hit Publish. If you substitute Ainsley's name for John's, the situation is nearly identical. The good news is that John is in a far, far different (and better!) place today.


A friend of mine shared with her class a basic life truth: If you can't control yourself, someone else will control you.

- If you can't control your spending, there's a friendly repo man willing to abscond with your car or a bank willing to foreclose on your house.

- If you can't show up for work, there's likely a string of applicants ready to take your place.

- If you can't control your sexual appetites, a host of woes -- marital, legal, medical -- just may come your way.

- If you can't control your greed, your temper, your demand to get what you want when you want it, the United States has a vast penal system all too ready to apply the ultimate Time Out.

What is self-control? How do we exercise it as adults? How do we grow this fruit of the spirit in our children?

I look at my young children -- one of them in particular -- and wonder how we can best help him down the road to self-mastery. He is an imp, a total delight, a spontaneously affectionate boy, the child who once put his hands on my face, looked deep into my eyes and said, "I love your fullness!" When I asked what he meant, he added, "Of your heart." A priceless moment I will always, always remember.

He loves with intensity.

When he's tired, hungry, or simply doesn't get his way, he applies this same intensity to bad behavior. It tests a parent's mettle, let me tell you.  I'll spare you the particulars, but, believe me, his fits are nothing short of spectacular.

What's a mother to do? By this point, I'm sure we've tried it all.

With many children the best defense begins with a good offense, and for John this begins with food and rest. John is rail thin, and when he begins to dissemble, blood sugar is frequently the culprit. I'm all about protein, protein, protein. He has long since left napping behind him, but an early to bed, late to rise rhythm evens out his emotions.

Boredom is bad, very bad; constructive activity is good.

Begin discussing children and discipline and inevitably you meander onto the topic of spanking, and parents on both sides of the issue instantly become apoplectic. Let me just acknowledge the elephant in the room: We believe spanking can be a useful tool in raising children.

I enjoy reading Like Mother, Like Daughter. This is a blog chock-full of practical, real-life solutions to the challenges of marriage and family. I had to laugh at what she wrote about spanking:

If you can say that your child is well behaved without spanking, then all the best to you. You are doing a great job and why fix something that isn’t broken? But be honest. The people who advocate the soft, gentle, “Christ-centered”, or otherwise spank-free approach very often have children who are brats, have no children, or have extremely compliant children, few in number and female in sex.

My children are not few in number or extremely compliant, and only one is female in gender. We spank.

When John was just shy of two, he was in a pool and grew tired of his floaties. He pulled one off. I was standing a few feet away holding Ainsley who was an infant at the time. I said, "John, don't take your other floatie off." His brown eyes bore straight into mine. He ripped off his floatie, jumped back into deeper water, and sank like a stone.

I didn't ring my hands, consult a parenting manual, or poll the others mothers at the pool. I spanked him. Well, first I pulled him off the bottom of the pool. In my view, there is a time and a place for spanking.

But here we are two years later dealing with issues that (usually and thankfully) are not life and death or matters of direct defiance. What is my goal as a mother? Am I looking for mere external conformity? On our bad days, believe me, I would settle for it in skinny minute. External conformity? Ummm . . .  yeah.! I'll take it!

Lately, though, in dealing with some trying moments with my little brown-eyed wonder, I have come to the conclusion that a more effective tool to help someone who lacks self-control is to initiate action that demands self-control. Getting a swat on the rear end requires nothing of John. Sitting still does require something of him. When John has thrown fits, I've put him in time out -- no distractions, just a chair in the middle of the room. It's helping.

I've also thought back to Tim at this age. Tim was an only child until he was four. We painted, we read, we worked puzzles, we played board games all the time -- we invested in fun and engaging activities that also require sitting still, taking turns, waiting, i.e. self-control. Sadly, I do less of this with John and Ainsley than I did with Tim and Kolbe. Life with four kids is far busier.

The other individual who needs self-mastery would be me. Lazy, knee-jerk parenting doesn't require self-control, but it isn't effective parenting either. As we sat down to dinner the other night, Ainsley -- tired and hungry -- began to pitch a fit that was only matched by the fit her mother threw. I, too, was tired and cranky --  and weary of the single parent routine and sick of picking up after everyone and done, done, done with all the squabbling. I showed about as much self-control as two-year-old Ainsley.

What message does this send to my children?

The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance. Like all fruit, producing these virtues requires time -- time to cultivate, time to fertilize, time to harvest. And the time to start is now.

As I read this long after writing it, I was encouraged by how far John has come. Oh, how I would like to give all the credit to my fine parenting skills. Calm and consistent parenting is certainly helpful, particularly when we focus on a single behavior or two (cleaning up after yourself, good behavior at the dinner table, etc.). But I truly believe most of John's transformation has come from time --  he's just grown up a little. 

Sometimes we simply have to endure. Correct and tweak and address issues as we endure, but mostly just stay the course.