Conditions

I had forgotten how absolutely, absolutely, absolutely blissful air conditioning can be.

It is a marvelous invention.

For this one brief moment, I would like to pause and say, "Bravo, Technology!"

Bravo.

Every year we debate getting central air conditioning. But 1) the hefty price and 2) our conviction that a vacation (even of the most primitive sort) is a definite necessity for our sanity, mean that every year we (read: Ethan) lug the window units out of the shed and install them into our windows. Four upstairs, one mega-one downstairs. Truly, it makes me sweat to watch him.

And yesterday's installation was especially cumbersome. Two of the units needed a thorough cleaning, the sort that involves unscrewing everything and getting out the shop vac and the heavy-duty cleaner and the vibrating toothbrush.

At least, I think that's what was involved. It was hard to see from my position behind the screen door. I didn't want my popsicle to drip on the unit.

And my poor husband, with his burning eyes and stinging throat and tickling cough, he man-handled those units and got them in order and installed.

(Lest you think I was doing nothing, let me assure you that I was fighting my own fight. I absolutely could not get the tins of tuna fish opened, and it turned out that it was not my incompetence that was the problem. When I had Ethan pause his back-breaking labor to join in mine, he pointed out that the can opener was bent and would not be, in fact, opening any cans. So see? We all have our battlegrounds.)

When I got back from my trek to the local pizza carry-out (Never fear! When the tuna will not open, Mama has a plan!), precariously balancing three boxes of pizza over my not-boxed-shape belly, I found that the first unit was cleaned and ready to go. "Hurrah!" I cheered. (Or maybe it was more like, "Why are you starting with that unit? I thought you would start with the other unit?" because I am so quick to think and speak and be helpful like that.)

But by the end of the evening, all five units were installed. Ethan showered upstairs to get the blood, sweat, and tears (but no popsicle stains!) off of him, and I showered downstairs to get the pizza sauce off of me.

And oh, the bliss. I love me my air conditioning. As much of an eyesore as I suppose they are, to me those units are beautiful. There is something so solid and ever-present about the plastic and ???steel??? (Is that steel?) taking up the lower half of the window. "I am here! I am blowing! I am cool air!"

I like the noise that comes with it. It's a steady blowing. You hear the coolness as much as feel it.

I'd forgotten how it slightly changes the dynamics of the house. Children the next room over seem quieter, more at ease. The din seems dimmer under the hum of The Machine.

It's so delicious. I'm almost grateful we don't have central air. First of all, I notice and appreciate the air so much more when there's the whole rigamarole to getting it put in; and second of all, there's something so totally nostalgic about it. It takes me back to being seven years old and coming in from a swimming lesson with my damp suit on and plopping in front of the air conditioner until I was frozen.

BUT! On to today's {Pretty, Funny, Happy, Real} post.

PRETTY:



Well, admittedly, this is a blurry, weird-angle picture. But these two yellow chairs, bought second-hand from a friend who is downsizing, bring me so much happiness. First, I've been discovering over the last few years that yellow is a favorite color of mine. And second, two chairs that go together? Is this MY house? That's pretty!

FUNNY:



Ada, enjoying a popsicle yesterday. It's funny only because she is so clueless about how to eat the thing. She gums the plastic at the top to death, hollers at me to push the popsicle up, then grabs the tip that comes up and breaks it off and shoves it in her mouth.

(She does seem to have made a full recovery from earlier this week. Yeah!)

HAPPY:



A peek into the family room, where half of the children don't notice me (this is nothing new). Ignore ugly pillow. That came with ugly (but so comfortable!) couch and loveseat, which we slipcovered. But we keep the pillows to remind us of how far they came (or because we're too lazy to do anything else with them).

REAL:

Well, it's all "real," because I know nothing else, but here's a picture of "unwanted," which I suppose is the true meaning of "real."



This is what I saw and heard this morning as I was out the door to have coffee with a friend. This is our septic pump electrical box. This is our septic pump box saying, "Uh-oh. See me not work. See me not run. See you not flushing nor draining nor doing laundry nor washing dishes."

I silenced the alarm, yelled, "ETHAN!" then went to check the outside box and see what needed to be done (Keys? Check. Phone? Check. Wallet, sunglasses, lip gloss? Check.). Ethan also headed to the outside box to see what needed to be done (he had a screwdriver). I called my friend to tell her I was running late, and then asked if he needed my help. "My specialties are air conditioners and septic tanks," I offered.

"Go have your coffee," he prodded. (Or maybe "grumbled" would technically be the better word.)

"Anything to help!" I lightly sang out and made sure to carefully back the car down the driveway, so as not to hit the pump. (I'm all helpful like that, too.)

And on the way to the bakery, I pondered the pump. Was it all the laundry I did in the last two days? All the sick laundry? All the regular laundry? The winter coats? The diapers? Was it the extra showers at night? Did I do this? That would be bad.

When I got back, he had decided to try installing a new switch. He installed it only to find it still not working. Fortunately, a tiny, 1/8" piece of curved metal on the ground caught his eye. He wrapped that around one of the wires, and ... VOILA!!! ... our pump is running and happy, and we are flushing and draining and laundering and dishwashing and happy.

And it's not my fault.

And the air is cool.

And I suppose that's not my fault, either.

And I sit here, in this yellow chair, with the air blasting and the children quietly doing whatever they are doing the next room over, and it's all just very, very good.


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Pretty, Funny, Happy, Real

Pretty:

Flowers gathered and styled by our 4-yr. old son. Blinds styled by him, also.

Funny:

The familial resemblance is astounding.

Happy:

So when we asked the kids what their favorite part of our vacation was (Popham Beach? Reid State Park? Common Ground Country Fair? The eight lobsters your father and I bought, cooked, and then spent an hour and a half cracking?), their answer was twofold: 1) getting to bike-ride without parents, and 2) visiting the Hollens.

I agree. We just can't get enough of the Hollens (although I do have to forgive Kendra for ruining my self-consolation that no one actually styles their house as nicely as the magazines...). 

Real:

These were the toilets at the Common Ground Country Fair. We visited them twice. 

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Annual Pep Talk

I've decided I'll take a minute, while the Littles are napping and the Bigs are watching "The A-Team," to switch the laundry, sip my latte, and sit down a minute. (Little-known fact, via Jon-Jon [4]: the B.A. in B.A. Baracus's name stands for "Bad AttiDUDE.")

 My life is so hard.



Lately, homeschooling has been on my mind. It's August, the Back to School sales abound, there are crayons and Post-it Notes and lunchboxes for sale. It's that time of year when I urgently phone my husband: "I need a lesson planner! With a grader thingy!" and start quoting "You've Got Mail" to my friend Kendra: "Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils..."

I'm not positive she has even seen the movie (but pretty sure), but it doesn't matter. Every year we talk about sniffing scotch tape and I give the sharpened pencil quote.

It is so easy to join the frenzy surrounding school, even (or perhaps, especially) homeschool. Parents are talking about schedules and curricula and co-ops and soccer, and I'm still trying to figure out what grade you're in when you're ten years old, eleven come November.

Sometimes I'm not up for the fight and I just want to stomp off and forget it all.

But it won't do to hide under the kitchen table and suck my thumb in protest. That floor is filthy, and there's no room, anyway.

So I take a deep breath, and move on to the next thing. (You do realize that when I say "take a deep breath," I mean "stress out completely, clean obscure things [the laundry room cupboards?] in a panic, bark orders to multiple stunned, worthless children, and neglect dinner altogether until Ethan tells me everything will be just fine if I take a nap while he makes the world's best scrambled eggs," right?)

Deep breath.

And Ethan's right. Some rest and some food, and I'm ready for rational thinking.

And these are the rational thoughts I am now having: the most important things, the MOST important things, whether using a boxed curriculum or piecing one together myself or what have you or what have me...

are Consistency and Constancy.

Constancy and Consistency.

Being consistent and constant.

Or, to put it another way, constant and consistent.

Because what it all boils down to is this: In the end, learning must get done. It must. Just like the dishes and the diapers and the laundry. In order to survive in this world, in order to make it to the next, you must learn.

And anyway, you are learning, no matter what. You are learning what kinds of food you like and what you must dramatically gag over, how many chores you can neglect without anyone else caring enough to make you care, and exactly what looks Mama gives Papa that mean you should probably make yourself scarce before you have to deal with his serious face.

But, of course, this learning only gets you so far. Mostly it gets you straight to your bed, no dessert for you.

And the kind of learning that gets you out of your bed, out of this house, out into the world with two firm feet to stand on? That's the kind of learning I agonize over, comparing scopes and sequences and spreadsheets and graphs until I remember.

Constancy and Consistency.

Constancy: every day, you are learning. My job is to ensure that what you are learning is profitable for your soul, and that what isn't is removed. What we do under the guise of "SCHOOL" is fairly incidental.  I am to teach you diligently, when we sit at our house, when we walk by the way, when we lie down, and when we rise (see Dt. 6:6-9). All of the time, you are learning. And all of the time, I am learning.

Miriam, three years ago

This is actually more freeing than burdensome. Seeing that you are already constantly learning, my job is to orchestrate and structure your environment in a way that is conducive to that learning.

Consistent: the way in which I teach you must be true to the Truth, and it must be done with the kind of regularity and priority that we give things true to the Truth.

BUT! It needn't be complicated. And? It probably SHOULDN'T be complicated.

I think we parent/teachers like to have graphs and spreadsheets and multi-page lesson plans so that we can show each other. Maybe the other parent will think, "Ah! That is a lot of writing! There are a lot of arrows. There are many steps to teach that. You must be very smart to use such a complicated system with your child. I wish I was that smart.  I think I will get some graphs and spreadsheets and multi-page lesson plans."

And really? That's pretty silly.

Aunt Becca (my BABY sister - GULP!) and Ada

So what do Constancy and Consistency mean for our homeschooling?

Well, it means everything we do contributes in one way or another, and it should contribute in a positive, appropriate manner.

It means we are purposeful in our living. We are careful with how we learn and how we practice what we learn.

If we feel that teaching you history is important (and it is), I should find a way to teach it that 1) I can do and 2) you can do.

And that's it! I needn't stress about you making timeline cards or cooking cakes in the shape of countries or singing songs that list all the Presidents and their dates of service. I mean, if we decide that we want to do that and can do that, that's fine. But let's call it what it is (fun) and leave it at that. 

(Well, you call it that. I'll call it a real drag.)

So as this new school year begins, I'll pull out the texts and divvy up the units into weeks and the weeks into days and the days into lessons.

But all of that is really secondary. Even Solomon called all of this a "striving after the wind" (see Ecclesiastes).

More important is that we strive for truth, real Truth, every day and in the right way.

Let them have their timeline cards and cakes and songs. I'll show you a Timeline book and a globe. The presidential singing?

Well, nobody likes a showoff anyway.

And the next time someone asks me what we're doing for school this year? I'll say, "Oh, a bit of this and a bit of that, and all of life."

Only, maybe I'll just say, "A bit of this and a bit of that."

Because no one likes a showoff.

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"The heart of man plans his way,

but the LORD establishes his steps" (Prov. 16:9, ESV).

Being mother to a large family comes with its share of paradoxes. There is joy in the exasperation, love in the frustration, and wealth in the empty wallets. There are nights when you sit, shell-shocked, in front of "Frasier" on Netflix and wonder, "How are we going to survive all these children?" or even "How are all these children going to survive us?" and nights when tears are shooting out of your eyes in laughter over the day's antics. There are times when you wonder if it's even worth it to make that trip to buy milk/cheese/meat/lip shimmer if it means loading everyone into the van, and times when the only remedy to the chaos in this house is to load everyone up and get the heck out of Dodge for a spell.

There are times when it's all you can do not to smack the mother in the organic baby aisle extolling the virtues of jars of pronounceable ingredients as her chubby cherub looks innocently from his spot in the Ergo carrier.

It's not that she's doing anything wrong. It's just that she's skinny and pretty and doesn't have varicose veins and can afford trendiness and doesn't have seven other children touching everything on the shelf and picking their noses and squirming to go potty and complaining that she never lets them get anything and why couldn't they just stay home.

I love my lot in life. I didn't set goals or plan towards having a large family. I did, as a little girl, say I wanted a dozen children but that was before I got married and therefore gets lumped in with saying I wanted to be a jockey and an actress when I grew up. We didn't examine our bank account and then plot children on a graph of years to come. We simply loved, and from that love came one child, and then two, and then four, and then five, and then six, and then eight.

This is math at its finest.

I hear newlyweds discussing their family plans...how many years they are planning to wait, how many debts they are planning to pay off before dealing with children. I hear parents instructing their grown offspring in the virtues of having this-that-and-the-other completed before dealing with children.

I hear it. Sort of.

Mostly I hear my mother's premarital advice: "Get married and stay married!" and her prenatal advice: "You're afraid you won't have enough love? That's how love works! It multiplies with each recipient, not divides!"

And she's so right.

And daily I fail at this trial called motherhood. Daily I scold and sigh and sometimes even cry. But even in the midst of the mayhem, I know I am severely blessed.  I know all of this does more than define me. It refines me, and it's not all by fire.

Some of it's by diaper changes and math corrections and grammar lessons and room cleanings and piano practice and sheet changings and cat vomit and the 3-yr. old watching "The Waltons" and then asking, "Is that WHISKEY?" when he sees you and your husband chugging down a root beer. Some of it's by sweet cards to Mama and Pupu and the sway of 2-yr. old hips to a Sesame Street/Feist video and children listening closely enough to a sermon to quote portions of it verbatim on the way home.

I'm glad we were thrust into this craziness. I don't think, had I been given full disclosure, I would have chosen this path. And that would have been my mistake.

I can't imagine a way in which priorities would have been forced more clearly than they are now. Life in a large family is fast-paced. There's always the next meal to prepare, the next load of laundry to change over, and the next room to clean. There is not the luxury of deliberating over non-issues. Only the important things earn time. You learn that for this family the popular magazine mommy debates are moot and not even entertaining.

I can't imagine a way in which I would have been forced more often or more brokenly to the cross and the empty tomb.

I'm not sure what my point here is, except to say that we didn't purpose to be a large family but we are and that is a blessing not to be taken lightly. We aren't here because we know what we're doing. We aren't here because we do more things right than others. In fact, we may be here because we do more wrong. But we are here, and it is good. It is right, and I am sure of this.

Our children have been entrusted to us. Sometimes it's so easy and convenient to forget that there are souls involved and not just smart-mouths. Sometimes it's so easy and convenient to forget that there is a God involved. If all I had to do was ensure that they reached the age of eighteen with few broken bones and a full belly...

I'm not sure I could do even that.

And I know this soul-growing business is not mine. It is God's, and I have to get myself out of the way. I am to love on them and pray for them and read the Bible to them and apologize and correct and thank the Lord always.

And then? We can garden, or not; we can travel, or not; we can host a family movie night, or not.

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When life runs out of gin, make gingerbread

...or something along those lines.


Yesterday was a particularly grey day. Rainy and drippy, muddy and slippery, there hadn't been much cheer going on outside.

When I was growing up, rainy days were gingerbread days. I'm sure there was some scientific reasoning behind it, like the humidity helping the gingerbread. Or maybe there wasn't. Maybe it just felt right.


Whatever the reason (or lack thereof), rainy days make me want to do two things: smell gingerbread and go camping.


Rainy days make my children want to get out the art supplies. Oh, all right, EVERY day makes my children want to get out the art supplies.


So yesterday, bolstered by two cups of delicious caffeine (well, one-and-a-half, really, since Gideon drank half of my cuppa joe) and a notice from the library saying there were FOUR eagerly-awaited books ready for us, we got to work. The children painted and drew, and I stirred.


Some of the children photographed.

(And let me just pause and say right now that you really feel you've arrived as an adult when you spontaneously decide to put on a scarf, because "What today needs is a spot of color, and what I need is my hair out of my face" only to have a child find you in your scarf and declare loudly, "Everyone! Come see Mama! She looks ridicleee-us!"; and yet you find yourself leaving the scarf on long enough for all seven others to parade into the kitchen, pronounce [in varying degrees of vocabulary], "You look hysterical!" and also "Can I help?" and you even allow the first offensive child to grab your camera and document how incredibly silly you look. I feel so mature I can hardly stand it.)


And because two pans of gingerbread are just as easy to make as one, and because two batches truly make the kitchen smell twice as nice, and because I have a friend whose sick little ones have caused me to catch her for only five minutes in the past two weeks and surely they wouldn't mind a bit of gingerbread and some paintings, and the library gave me the perfect excuse to HAVE to get out so we might as well swing by and drop off some goodies...


We headed out. Out to deliver some love and sweets and, hopefully, cheer (I kept my scarf on ... according to my children, THAT was sure to get some smiles).

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{pretty, happy, funny, real}: Nov. 17

So, yes. I'm joining in on yesterday's linky. I'm a day behind. However, I am also a dollar short, so at least I am keeping the old sayings going.


But here I am.


Confession: this post is picture-heavy. I don't scrapbook, so I'm afraid that if I didn't post these, I would lose them forever. And I probably would.


PRETTY:

The newly EIGHT-year old, enjoying a card from a gracious churchmember.

The backyard, in the snow of Oct. 29. (What? So what if I'm just posting this...

it hasn't even been a month since then!)

Moss among the fall leaves on a recent mountain walk.

HAPPY:

Miriam, crafting

Gideon and Lily

Let me tell you what is so happy about the previous two pictures. This: where was I? Napping. Where was Ethan? Running errands. All by themselves, these four five (oops, forgot to count the photographers!) found coats and shoes (although they are not all wearing them in these pics), built a snowman, outfitted a snowman, found my camera, and took pictures just in case the snowman melted before I woke (!!!). A snow outing that did not involve me??!! GLORIOUS!!!

FUNNY:

Gideon peering into Ethan's coffee mug. Also, Gideon drooling into Ethan's mug. I think that's funny.

Ben and Lily enjoying Calvin and Hobbes. Lily's page was a little funnier than Ben's.

Miriam on the ramp the kids built. Catch some air, Mimi! Quick!

REAL:

Today was Lily's birthday (and I was on time for that). This is Salem (21 mos.) enjoying Lily opening her presents. (There is a video embedded in this post. Email subscribers may have to click over.)

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