Non-conformity.

I didn't set out to have a lot of children. I never sat down with my husband and talked about exceeding the world's boundaries for what's normal in the world of having a family. I never dreamed of the perfect number... but it certainly didn't exceed societal norms of maybe three, perhaps four children. Responsibility dictates you stop when you aren't ridiculously outnumbered, before chaos reigns, before the chances of getting in a minivan become nil.

Now, it's funny to write that. I knew all of those things... perhaps even embraced them, before I'd given birth to even one of my children. Before I knew the joy of holding my child for the first time. Before I'd taught anyone how to hold a spoon, use a glass, pet a dog, figure out what addition and subtraction meant. Before I'd held my frightened child as they realized it was just a dream, taught them to read, taught them why Jesus had to die.

It was all before.

Then, I had my first child. Loving her more than life itself and forgetting the horrors of pregnancy and labor, I longed for another. Two sent me reeling, and I started to understand why two is plenty for many. But time passed, and again I longed to meet another child, a part of my husband and I, a blessing from God. We had a third, a fourth, a fifth. I started seeing how the world reacts to non-conformity. It's not always pleasant. Surely these children weren't ALL mine. Surely I didn't CHOOSE this. Our sixth quickly followed the fifth, we officially outgrew our normal sized minivan with our normal sized gas bill, and the questions began in earnest. Are you done NOW? Are you happy now that you got two boys in the mix? (Of course, that's why I chose this.) The lovely intrusion, don't you know what causes that? And the most awkward, are you supermom? Or my least favorite tactic... start asking my children any of the above questions.

So now, realizing I'm thoroughly enjoying mothering these children, that I love being there to see them learn new things, that I hate pregnancy but find the babies entirely worth my agony, and we've completely tipped the scales into not normal anyhow, we chose to have a seventh. I'm in the bitter end of another pregnancy, counting the weeks until I get to meet this little person. I don't know if we'll be done after that. I do know I'm so, so thankful I didn't stop at two or three, that I didn't conform to some unwritten rule about what's considered normal, that I didn't see my children as anything but blessings. Sinful children, in need of teaching and training and of a Savior, but such blessings, every one of them.

Pierce and the snarling tiger

Pierce found the latest zoo magazine, and kept looking at the photo of the tiger on the front. He pretended it bit him, and was having fun pretending many scenarios with the photo. The boy has a vivid imagination. I pulled up tiger photos on a computer search to show him more tigers, and we were having a great time going through all the photos we'd found. Then, I found this photo:

 

from here:  Snarling Tiger

and I started asking Pierce what THAT tiger was saying.

Pierce didn't miss a beat.

"Num nummy."

All in a day: my Monday.

We made snow ice cream yesterday. Ruby decided we should never buy regular ice cream again. I reminded her of the abundance of snow in July. Liberty thinks we ought to fill up the freezer with snow to solve the problem. I’m skeptical. Charlotte loved the ice cream, but asked if I could get her something to warm up her tongue. Pierce shook and shook from the cold and finally gave up. The problem with snow ice cream: snowy weather and ice cream just don’t go together.

Liberty proclaimed she’s going to pour a can of sweetened condensed milk and a bag of chocolate chips together in a bowl and eat it when she’s a grown up. High ambitions.

Sterling walked past me rubbing his mouth, muttering, “My lips still hurt!” I questioned him about it… and laughed. “I zipped up my mouth in my coat zipper.” Well then.

Sterling’s new to Spelling in school this year. He’s doing quite well, and has grown accustomed to his 100% tests. I test on Thursday, and a 100% earns no test on Friday. Any wrong means another test on Friday. Sterling got two wrong on his last test: learn and pearl. Frustrated, he wrote the words a bunch of times. And then rewrote learn because he’d written it wrong all those times. As he numbered his paper for his Friday test that was moved to Monday due to our short school week last week, he muttered “ea… ea… ea” over and over. Then, he came up with a request. “Can you give me learn and pearl first so I can write them down before I forget how to spell them?” Umm… no. How does that prove you’ve learned anything?! He got 100% on the test, in spite of those words coming towards the end of his test.

I’m a big fan of letting my kids make mistakes – and then figure out how to fix them, hopefully learning something in the process. I set one dear daughter to making syrup for our pancakes. “Put two cups of water and four cups of sugar in a pan. Bring them to a boil.” This particular child struggles with following through, so I opted to put the maple flavoring in myself, later, to keep my instructions ultra simple. She came back moments later, wanting me to repeat instructions. I refused, knowing a lesson might actually be learned in this. You know, that lesson about paying attention. A few minutes later, she returned, announcing there were four cups of water and two of sugar in the pan. Um… no. Too much water, not enough sugar. Now we have to compensate, and instead of making a double batch, we’ve got the makings of a quadruple batch. She figured it out, we have three quarts of syrup in the fridge… and yesterday, we ran out of sugar. Something about putting eight cups into the syrup might have something to do with that. I’m not certain any lessons were learned – but we have syrup made up for a month or two.

I made deer stew last night for supper. Charlotte protested, saying she likes deer on her plate but not in her bowl. I’m assuming this means she liked the breaded/fried deer I made this summer… but not so much the stew I’ve been making lately. She fought me on eating it, but in the end, ate enough to satisfy me. When I went to scrape her bowl, I found all veggies and no meat. Turns out, the deer in her bowl isn’t the problem. It’s the broth and vegetables that come with it.

Today was the due date for the baby I lost shortly before conceiving the one I now carry. Strange moments. If that baby had lived, the baby I now feel kicking inside of me wouldn’t have been.

I would never have chosen to endure a loss like that.

So glad that His ways are higher than ours, and it’s not up to us. God’s purpose is far greater than we can see. I mourn one child, rejoice over another, and look forward to meeting the babies I lost someday when we worship at Christ’s feet together.

That would have been embarrassing… but now it’s just funny.

My new Kindle has Swype. I’ve had fun playing with this “draw the line from one letter to the next for the word you want” technology.

Sometimes, however, technology fails.

I was Swyping away trying to send an email to a friend, and when I Swyped her husband’s name, it automatically corrected it to “Sexy.” Of course, I was busy Swyping and not looking at what was in the email and as my finger hovered over send, the word jumped out to me like it was on fire. Hello, mortification. I jerked my hand back with amazing speed and edited my email… and proofread the rest. And then I laughed. And my kids tried to figure out what was so funny. How do you explain that?!

Proofreading. Proofreading is important.

It snowed again. The high temp for one day next week is hovering just above 0 degrees F. It’s starting to feel like home… but really, I didn’t miss the ridiculously low temps. Wood heat is a wonderful thing. I think we’ll hibernate.

Up for today: Wrapping up our short school week, making some orange cranberry bread, folding and putting away the five loads of laundry I washed and dried but didn’t fold yet, and putting Pierce’s car seat back together after having washed it. It was overdue… but have you tried to take one of those things apart lately?! Awful, I tell you. Putting it back together will likely be worse. I lose skin over these things.

Strong willed child vs. Tired Moma

After a hard day of mothering children who were refusing to conform to my will, I got out a few of my favorite parenting books. Skimming the pages, I vowed to do things differently, better, more consistently. My consistency flies out the window to a large extent when I’m pregnant. I’m tired. I’m sore. I don’t feel like it.

Feeling encouraged, I determined it was starting with bedtime. Five of my children march off to bed and go to sleep without issue.

One, not so much.

I bet you can guess which one.

So I give the dear boy a stern talking to, march him off to bed with a warning, and minutes later, hear from him again. After a brief conversation, he’s back in bed. All is quiet.

Wow! I should have done that a long time ago! That was too easy. Half an hour passes – silence.

And then. He got up. And got up. And got up. And got up. And it was 10pm, two hours past the time I’d laid him down, and I was losing my patience. I put him in my bed instead of his, shut the door, and went back to my relaxing. And he got up. And up. And he begged for his own bed. Really? One stern talking to later, I tucked him into his own bed, and didn’t hear from him until… the wee hours of the morning when he apparently bumped his head on something. And so he sleeps… in my bed.

I’m determined. I’ll persist. But after all of that… I’m starting to understand why I’ve often giving up fighting the fight as consistently as I ought. I. Am. Exhausted.

Pierce: 1. Momma: 0. For today.

Happy new year!

I. Am. Tired.

We went to a “party” last night. It consisted of three families, getting together. Six adults, twenty one children. Seven adults, I suppose, since one of those children has reached age eighteen, I think. There was hayrides and food and games and we managed to stay up until midnight, and then 1am, and finally left just before 2am. I hadn’t seen 2am in a long, long time. I don’t think any of my children had ever seen it. All six made it, meltdown free except for a moment with Charlotte that had nothing to do with tired, and had a great time. It’s now 11:36am and Eden, Charlotte, and Ruby are awake. The other three still sleep. Pierce is still in the same position as when I put him in his bed after we got home last night: flat on his back, in his jeans and button down. He hasn’t moved. He’s never slept this late in his life. Some strange part of me is hoping he sleeps until noon… just because.

We were serenaded on the way to the party by Charlotte, singing “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego” over and over at the top of her lungs. The girl has learned to yell. Why she chooses to yell the names of these three characters, recently learned about in Sunday School, remains a mystery. There was no other story, no other words. Just major excitement at the names.

The van was strangely quiet on the way home.

Experiencing a new year is odd when you watch it through the eyes of a child. Sterling and Ruby have been answering “What month is it? What year is it? What’s the date?” all year long. They’d mastered 2013. Now, to learn another. The littlest ones don’t know what it all means – but the abundance of sweets and sparkling juice made for a fabulous evening for them.

All this, followed by pumpkin pie for breakfast. Turns out, when you put the Christmas pies in the basement refrigerator they get forgotten. Ruby’s comment: “I didn’t know we could have dessert first, and THEN protein…” Someone has heard my cry for eating protein at mealtimes.

Pierce didn’t make noon. 11:51. Liberty got up just after noon. No one has heard from Sterling yet…