What goes around...

When I was a little girl, my sister and I played house all the time.  Before we played, however, I think we might have done something unique to our family. We sat down with the Ethan Allen catalog and made a list of what all the rooms in our house looked like.  Looking back, it makes sense: one of our aunts is a very successful designer, the other a reowned collector of fine art, and my mother had a knack known to few military wives: she could transform any house into a beautifully decorated home in 48 hours flat. "The way it looked" was in our blood.

The weekend before I was married, my fiance and I went furniture shopping.  We didn't go to Ethan Allen. This outing was my first understanding of household budget.  We bought a living room set.  The couch and loveseat were mediocre, but we both agreed that the tables were heirlooms.  One was a sofa table, lovely cherry with graceful legs--I could just imagine a collection of baby pictures displayed upon it. The other table was a coffee table with drop leaves. I'd always wanted a dropleaf table and this one made me feel as if I was indeed moving from playing house to being a real grownup.

I set about decorating that first house, with some help from the experts in my family and the cheerful willingness of my new husband. I remember my mother-in-law commenting that it looked like a little dollhouse. All that first year, as my belly swelled with life, we feathered that little nest just so.

Then the baby was born, a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who charmed us from the very first moment and still charms us every day. I remember the first time I put him in the stroller to go for a walk.  We went with my friend Mary and her baby girl, born just few days after Michael. As we left the little dollhouse and set off down the street, I couldn't shake that feeling of playing house. Everything looked just perfect.

The baby grew.  He loved to draw. He loved to paint.  He loved a little motorcycle given to him by Uncle David.  He was just one baby and his impact on the dollhouse aesthetically was all positive.  There was a beautifully decorated nursery where he never slept (he much preferred our bed), but it looked good. And how things looked was still really important to me.

One day, the angel boy took that precious motorcycle and vroomed it across the living room table.  The scratches were deep and ugly.  I stood there, in that moment, faced with making a decision which would shape my life in our home.  Would I yell and cry and banish him from that room (this would have been nearly impossible since the room stood between the front door and rest of the house)?  What was I going to do with my expectation that all things look perfect and the reality of life with children? I knelt beside him, told him how much I liked that table, how much I loved him, and how we weren't going to play with the motorcycle on the table again. Together, we moved outside to the deck with the motorcycle. While out there, I consciously resolved to encourage him.  Not to encourage him to destroy, but certainly to encourage his expression.  With this particular child, that encouragement has meant baskets and baskets of pastels and colored pencils and even a little paint.  And there have been reams of paper devoted to his exuberance. Every once in awhile, it has meant scrubbing stray marks from furniture and walls ('though less so as he's grown:-).

The episode clearly made an impression on me.  It was nearly eighteen years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.  There have been six more toddlers to follow Michael and several of them have left their impressions on our house. That table has seen more abuse, more scratches, and even a Sharpie illlustration (easily removed with Magic Eraser). The truth is, my house looks nothing like the house of the designer, the art collector, my mother or my sister.  But I have more children than all of them put together and my reality is not the Ethan Allen catalog. Every day, I have to consciously decide that people are more important than things. 

I still shoot for beautiful, but I'm learning to accept that there is much more to beautiful than the way things look.  For instance, I think seven pairs of muddy boots in the mudroom after a day in the bluebells is beautiful.  I think that two blond toddlers in the tub with fingerpaint is darling beyond words.  I think that a general mess in the kitchen when we all cook together brings the concept of a dollhouse to a whole new level.  I want things to look well.  But more importantly, I want them to truly be well.

And what of the little boy?  He might just have a greater appreciation for beauty than his mom.  He's a gifted artist with an eye for style (and a perpetually messy bedroom).  He remembers the motorcycle.  And he knows my soul.  This year, a couple of weeks before Mother's Day, he spirited that old dropleaf table away.  He returned it last night. He had stripped that table and then poured his heart into it and painted on the table in an altogether grown up way, making it more beautiful than it ever was in the furniture showroom or the early dollhouse. And, as children often do, he taught his mother a very valuable lesson about what's really important in life.

The table, today, with sunflowers, and bluebells, and busy bees:

And Mary Beth chose these coasters to go with it. Please click on the pictures to see more detail:

It has begun...

Even though I still feel rather like I'm in the first trimester, my growing belly and the handy dandy spinning wheel calendar are calling incessantly that "we're halfway there!"  My head is most certainly reminding me that it's time to feather my nest.  There is much to be accomplished and only twenty weeks left to do it, ten of which will be encumbered by a belly so large that I will only be able to point and beg that it be done.

So, we begin with the most physical tasks keeping me awake at night. 

• Our learning room needs to be ruthlessly purged and re-organized (again). 
• Our mudroom, which made a surprise appearance at Kitchen Comforts, must be tamed. 
• The craft room, which has somehow taken on the appearance of a dumping ground, must be restored to its former glory.
• Fifteen years of photos need to be scrapbooked (I'm beginning to resign myself to the fact that this is how I'll spend my golden years, but I keep putting it on the list).
• The freezer meals must be cooked and stored but first the freezer is to be defrosted in anticipation of a side of beef.
• The pantries must be stocked (why is it that I approach having a baby the same way I approach natural disasters: bottled water, batteries, fully stocked dry goods, plenty of books?).
• I need to make sure there is nothing under beds or couches.  Why?  I don't know; it just keeps me up at night.
• I've already enlisted my seven-year-old to wash walls and baseboards with me, a task which will be revisited several times before the stork comes.
• Window washing is another ongoing task.
• The spring gardens are nearly in, but fall bulbs must be purchased so that the children can plant during the babymoon.
• One of these weeks, I suppose we should clean out the garage.
• And then there is the fact that I had given up on ever being so blessed again:  I gave away all my baby things.

And on and on the list goes; I know that one key to a peaceful postpartum for me is to leave for the hospital with the house in very good order.  If the underpinnings of organization are in place, the rest will work much more smoothly.  I will share details as we go.

This time will have some unique challenges.  This baby is due days before his/her brother's eighteenth birthday.  This time, my biggest task is to pull together homeschooling transcripts/portfolios for college applications before September.  I don't want to be learning this new skill while sleep-deprived and nursing, so it must be nearly finished before I go into labor. That's where my computer time will go this summer.

That means it won't go into what I usually do before a baby comes:  lesson plan overdrive.  Usually, I write pages and pages of detailed plans to take us through the first few months.  And then we follow them, more or less (often less). It's been four years since the last baby, so I think I'll just recycle the old plans.  They are written for multiple levels and everyone can just move up a level. We'll study ancient Greece and then Colonial America with a heavy dose of fall nature study and nature books.  Yes, it's eclectic, but it's also proven and I'm looking for guaranteed successes this time around. This plan will make my dear husband very happy since that means there will be no pre-baby book buying binge. We have about nine linear feet of books on these topics. Some people buy layettes.  I buy living books. Many of them.

Since we are well-stocked in the living books department for the plans I will pursue, I'll just update the workbook stash, move the living books for the units I've chosen to the forefront, and see where that takes us.Of course, Catholic Mosaic is due to arrive in my mailbox in a couple of weeks.  I reserve the right to revise the plans and the budget.

But back to the household.  I've noticed during my can't-hold-my-head up stage, that this house doesn't really run very well without my direct involvement.  Could be a problem...

Before we hit the bullet points, I need to dust off and update the daily plan.  Yes indeed, it's time to re-establish the chore chart. 

The pegboard is from Family Tools, but I don't use it the way they intended.  I'm not into complicated reward/punishment systems.  We expect children to do chores cheerfully because that's how they serve God--just like we are expected to do our duties cheerfully and so fulfill the duties of our vocations. One of my duties is to clearly outline my expectations.  I've fallen short here in the last couple of years or so.  Slowly, I slipped into just doing it myself rather than requiring someone else to do it, teaching her to do it properly, and inspecting the job when finished.This became woefully apparent when I was out of commission.  We've begun an intensive training period in housekeeping.  Everyone needs the refresher course or they need to be taught for the first time. This is not your usual "curriculum."  But it is real. And it's oh-so-necessary, both now and later. My children will leave my home knowing everything they need to know to run their own homes. It will make their young adulthoods much more fruitful and harmonious. Their spouses will rise up and call me blessed.  At least that's the idea.

Blog no more?

My daughter reminded me last night that I had not blogged here or on Kitchen Comforts since "way back in April."  So, have I given up blogging so soon into the adventure? No, but I have learned that I can't keep up the pace of reading and writing inspired by my first foray into blogdom. 

It's been a rough week here--a real week.  There have been real challenges and real chores and real arguments and real work and real learning.  Nothing earth-shattering, just the important everyday things that call us to our knees and remind us that we can't do this holy thing by ourselves. There has been plenty of time to think, as I go about my daily round, trying to right the wrongs and smooth the edges, but precious little time to write. That's okay, after years and years of writing for publication, I've learned that when God wants me to be read, He provides the time to write.  So, that's the writing rhythm of this blog--all in His time.