Lovely Living Rooms!
/Do stop by and visit Sarah at Plainsong today to see what a lovely job she's done giving us a tour of living spaces!
Loveliness in Family Living Spaces
/
Like in the bedrooms, all the furniture in the living spaces of our home has a history. Nothing in my living room and dining room was chosen by me. It was all "inherited." That means I have really lovely things, but that they're not quite what I would have chosen. They came from formal living spaces in other houses and we truly don't have those formal "no kids" rooms in our house. There are too many of us to designate that much square footage to adults only. My "loveliness decorating philosophy" is that children should live with and in love. That means we try hard to teach them to be good stewards of nice things. It also means that we accept with love the inevitable dings and dents and stains that go with the learning process. The same furniture that was in my mother's, my aunt's, and my grandmother's house sees a whole lot more action in my house!
When we first bought this house I was disappointed that the living room and dining room were really just one large room, divided visually by pillars. I wanted a traditional center hall colonial.
But then, I recognized that this floor plan suits the way we use the space very well. We have GIGANTIC gatherings for holidays and birthdays and, if we move the table from the kitchen, this space can lend itself to this:
On the other side of the kitchen is our family room. It sees quite a bit of family every day and night! The centerpiece of this room is the table. I think it's perfectly lovely. It was rather formal once upon a time and then it was "loved" a great deal by some rowdy little boys. Finally, it came full circle, when Michael re-created it for Mother's Day and it was lovelier for having been loved. That's kind of the way the whole house should be isn't it?
Blinking back tears
/It was time to wash the cover of the infant carseat. I'd procrastinated as long as I could, but knowing it was still on the task list was beginning to keep me up at night. So, I sat myself down on the floor with carseat in front of me and began to dissemble it, loosening straps in order to free the liner. I muttered something like, "I'm sure there are directions for how to put this together again on the web somewhere." I got that seat liner so very clean! And then I went to google. The carseat is too old. The directions are no where to be found. So, with my belly very much in the way, I wrestled that silly thing into submission all by myself. And as I was doing so, I remembered a column I wrote two years ago, when I really thought my carseat wrestling days were over for good. Tears came unbidden to my eyes. I am so very grateful for the chance to to do this all again.
For the first time in a very long time, I am neither pregnant nor mothering a baby. My "baby" is now two years old. And with a certainty that takes my breath away, I suddenly understand why wise women always told me that the time would go so quickly. To be sure, I’ve had more "baby time" than most women. My first baby will be 16 in a few days. I still think it’s over much too soon.
This column is for mothers of infants and toddlers. I am going to attempt to do something I never thought I’d do: I’m going to empathize while not in your situation. My hope is that it is all so fresh in my memory that I can have both perspective and relevance.
What you are doing, what you are living, is very difficult. It is physically exhausting. It is emotionally and spiritually challenging. An infant is dependent on you for everything. It doesn’t get much more daunting: there is another human being who needs you for his very life. Your life is not your own at all. You must answer the call (the cry) of that baby, regardless of what you have planned. This is dying to self in a very pure sense of the phrase. And you want to be with him. You ache for him. When he is not with you, a certain sense of restlessness edges its way into your consciousness, and you are not at complete peace.
If you are so blessed that you have a toddler at the same time, you wrestle with your emotions. Your former baby seems so big and, as you settle to nurse your baby and enjoy some quiet gazing time, you try desperately to push away the feeling that the great, lumbering toddler barreling her way toward you is an intruder. Your gaze shifts to her eyes, and there you see the baby she was and still is, and you know that you are being stretched in ways you never could have imagined.
This all might be challenge enough if you could just hunker down in your own home and take care of your children for the next three years; but society requires that you go out — at least into the marketplace. So you juggle nap schedules and feeding schedules and snowsuits and carseats. Just an aside about carseats: I have literally had nightmares about installing carseats. These were not dreams that I had done it wrong or that there had been some tragedy. In my dreams I am simply exhausted, struggling with getting the thing latched into the seat of the car and then getting my baby latched into the carseat. I’m fairly certain anyone else who has ever had four of these mechanical challenges lined up in her van has had similar dreams. It’s the details that overwhelm you, drain you, distract you from the nobility of it all. The devil is in the details.
You will survive. And here is the promise: if you pray your way through this time, if you implore the Lord at every turn, if you ask Him to take this day and this time and help you to give Him something beautiful, you will grow in ways unimagined. And the day will come when no one is under two years old. You will — with no one on your lap — look at your children playing contentedly together without you. And you will sigh. Maybe, like me, you will feel your arms are uncomfortably empty, and you will pray that you can hold a baby just once more. Or maybe, you will sense that you are ready to pass with your children to the next stage.
This is the place where nearly two decades of mothering babies grants me the indulgence of sharing what I would have done differently. I would have had far fewer obligations outside my home. Now, I see that there is plenty of time for those, and that it is much simpler to pursue outside interests without a baby at my breast. I wish I’d spent a little more time just sitting with that baby instead of trying to "do it all."
I wish I’d quieted the voices telling me that my house had to look a certain way. I look around now and I recognize that those houses that have "that look" don’t have these children. Rarely are there a perfectly-kept house and a baby and a toddler under one roof. Don’t listen to the voices that tell you that it can be done. It should not be done. I wish I hadn’t spent 16 years apologizing for the mess. Just shoot for "good enough." Cling to lower standards and higher goals.
I wish I’d taken more pictures, shot more video and kept better journals. I console myself with the knowledge that my children have these columns to read. They’ll know at least as much about their childhoods as you do.
I wish I could have recognized that I would not be so tired forever, that I would not be standing in the shallow end of the pool every summer for the rest of my life, that I would not always have a baby in my bed (or my bath or my lap). If I could have seen how short this season is (even if mine was relatively long), I would have savored it all the more.
And I wish I had thanked Him more. I prayed so hard. I asked for help. But I didn’t thank Him nearly enough. I didn’t thank Him often enough for the sweet smell of a newborn, for the dimples around pudgy elbows and wrists, for the softening of my heart, for the stretching of my patience, for the paradoxical simplicity of it all. A baby is a pure, innocent, beautiful embodiment of love. And his mother has the distinct privilege, the unparalleled joy, of watching love grow. Don’t blink. You’ll miss it.
Autumn Reading List--an antidote to burnout
/Truth be told, I'm too tired to write and contracting too much to sit here, so I dug up the autumn reading list I used a couple of years ago when I was battling bigtime burnout. We were just talking about what to do when you just can't make the plan happen. These books and lots of outside time (for both mom and children) are a great place to start.
Although nature study is to be pursued every day, every year, one fall I gave over at least twelve weeks to the intensive study of the world around us and to the study of nature-related literature and biographies. We did a little math and everything else revolved around nature. My goal was to acquaint my children intimately with the natural world near our home and to develop a love for natural history writing and illustrations. Perhaps more importantly, I wanted to embrace with them the world God created for us, to be inspired and to rest in the comfort and splendor there. My sense was that we would head for the hills (the woods, the pond, the river) and never return to doing school at home again! Here are some books we enjoyed that autumn and a smattering of samples from nature notebooks. We get these books out every year as the evening air starts to turn crisp. Now, they are familiar friends with whom to embrace the season!
Read Alouds for Everybody
Level Three Readers
Level Two
The Herriott Treasury for Children
Picture book biographies to share
Bug Watching with Charles Henry Turner
Bird Watching with Margaret Morse Nice
Flower Watching with Alice Eastwood
Fish Watching with Eugenie Clark
Exploring the Earth with John Wesley Powell
Wildlife Watching with Charles Eastman
(note: We enjoyed this last book, with inspiring stories of young scientists. But, as a homeschooling family, were surprised?there is a specific bit of information the author did not include. Miriam Rothschild, for instance, never went to school. Why didn't the authors mention that her family believed that school was a waste of time, and that it stifled scientific creativity? And what of the early education of other women naturalists? Be inspired to use this book as a starting place, as an inspiration for more in-depth research. --MacBeth Derham)
Picture Books
(but good enough for everyone to enjoy):
Give Her the River: A Father's Wish for His Daughter
Louisa May and Mr. Thoreau's Flute
More great picture books:
Joanne Ryder
Eric Carle
Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?
Cynthia Rylant
Not to be Missed
Salamander Rain: A Lake and Pond Journal
Crinkleroot's guide to Knowing the birds
Crinkleroot's Guide to Animal Habitats
Crinkleroot's Guide to Knowing the Trees
Resources and books for Mom and/or high schoolers
Golden Guides:
Pond Life, Insects, Birds
The Wild Out Your Window: Exploring Nature Near at Hand
The Curious Naturalist: Nature's Everyday Mysteries
Writing Naturally: A down to earth guide to nature writing
Fun With Nature Take Along Guide
More Fun with Nature Take Along Guide
Acorn Pancakes and Dandelion Salad and 38 Other Wild Recipes
Hurricane Reading
Peter Spier's Rain
Galveston's Summer of the Storm
Magic School Bus inside a Hurricane
Down Comes The Rain
One Morning in Maine
Picture Study
Poetry Friday: for the Birds
/We're stilll watching birds in the heart of my home. Goldfinches and hummingbirds are the favorite attractions, though the latter are certainly camera-shy. In honor of those tiny flitting, fleeting hummers, here are a few lines from Harry Hibbard Kemp:
The Humming Bird
The sunlight speaks, and its voice is a bird:
It glimmers half-guessed, half-seen, half-heard,
Above the flowerbed, over the lawn--
A flashing dip, and it is gone,
And all it lends to the eye is this--
A sunbeam giving the air a kiss.
