Out with the old...

Dear Reade,

It's New Year's Eve. 2010 has been quite the year. Full of fun. Full of frustration. Full of...okay, it's a good thing that I have written records of some of the many things that happened this year or I fear I mightn't remember.

The year our little girl turned one. Learned to walk. Started talking. Today she said, "Sit in box. Boat." The year she had her first salon haircut. Her first pee on the potty. She's a perpetual helper, adorable and funny and lisp-y and wonderful. And she removes my keys from my purse most everyday and puts them somewhere clever.

The year our boy turned four. Started practicing on an Early Rider for his two wheeler days. Started pre-school. Wanted to sleep over at someone's house without us. Started saying how much we didn't love him because we wouldn't give in to his demands. And this very day sat on my lap facing me, wrapped his arms around my neck, ran his fingers through my hair and let me enjoy the sun beaming on him and I as we rested at the table after lunch.

This year you finished your final full time semester of your degree. Wow. I'm so proud of you. Amazed at the work you've done to get through courses and assignments and exams while still being present to the kids. And to me. While still being in touch with your friends and keeping up on assignments at Springboard and taking out the trash. You've been swamped so many times and come up for air and kept going. I'm proud. And grateful. And glad to celebrate being done this phase of our family life.

This year I resigned my position at First. Fourteen years of being on staff at one church or another and I'm so glad not to have to juggle all of that with parenting our children and being a hub for our family life. I'm glad to be able to be with our kids day by day. To be here to send you off in the morning and welcome you home at night.

What a year. What a life. I'm in love. With you. With our kids. With our lives right now.

Love, Jenn

He's four!

Dear Reade,

It's hard for me to believe that four years ago at this time we had never met Adoniram face to face.

Here we are, four years into his life and he's wrapped around my heart and yours and evidence of his presence is everywhere...

He's four. He says he feels different today. Taller. And he spotted a contrail this morning out the bathroom window. A great start to his fifth year.

Love you,

Jenn

Still

Dear Reade,

It's the middle of the night and I'm awake again. For a few weeks now I run out of energy and the ability to be awake by the children's bedtime and fall asleep in that process. And there's a great deal of delight in being snuggled up with one or the other or both of our kids.

The corollary to falling asleep at 7 p.m. is that by the wee hours of the morning I am awake.

By the time our children awaken at 5 a.m. I am sure I will be more than ready for sleep. :)

As I sit quietly in these morning hours I read and look and dream. Cooking and baking ideas. Crafting. Beautiful knitting projects. Emails from our family and friends. These still moments are so needful for me. I crave quiet and still and so I am grateful for this space.

Rest well my love,
Jenn

Permission

Dear Reade,

A quiet Sunday afternoon consisting of chocolate chip cookies, milk, sumo wrestling practice, book reading and tower building. Boy-o just asked "Can Daddy have permission to come feed the fish with me?"

Yup.

Hope it was fun.

Love, Jenn

perfect...

Dear Reade,

I am a one woman comedy fest of errors right now. A perfect storm of shit and spills and chaos. I know parenting life isn't primarily consumed by these kinds of days, but the last few days have been...

Perfect.

Really.

Really?

Really.

After washing blueberry smoothie off the floor, myself and then the ceiling I went racing downstairs to deal with Boy-o's "catastrophe." "Mama, it's really bad." And I found the unplugged telephone (the one I leave unplugged so that the kids don't cut us off from the outside world) off the hook. Girlie followed us downstairs leaving a trail of liquid poop in her wake. All over the plastic straws the children spilled earlier. All over the single carpeted space in our entire home. After I cleaned her up and washed the carpet and cleaned up the kitchen floor and threw away the straws -- with the help of my very helpful children...ugh -- I asked Boy-o to come wash his hands. Instead he picked up the organic dehydrated cane sugar and stuck his hand in the bag.

We're out of laundry detergent. Ditto eggs, black tea, and straws. :) Also dehydrated cane sugar now.

We seem to have no shortage of shit though.

It took a good hour into the movie I was watching tonight before I realized that I was clenching my teeth. Do you think? Am I a little tense?

I'm working on relaxing. It has been a crazy few days. Boy-o got sick in the night on Thursday. You had day surgery on Friday. The car inexplicably stopped working while you were out running errands. You headed off to class. Girlie and I got sick by lunch time on Saturday. I was supposed to preach Sunday for the first time in more than a year and a half and had to cancel (guilt free!) on account of puke-and-pooping-sickness. Last night in the middle of the night you got sick. And then today with the blueberries, straws, poop, laundry and the normal spills of milk and water and tea.

Today's episodes are just more in a long line of crazy things all coming together perfectly at the same time.

And I'm about to eat my first meal (aside from broth, apple sauce and water) since Friday. Just the thought simultaneously makes me salivate and want to throw up. Having carefully prepared this bit of leftovers I took one bite and lost my spoon in the bottom of the pot.

I'm getting another spoon. I'm eating some soup. Then I'm going to bed.

Our next scheduled "perfect" weekend is three years from now. Once it gets closer I might be feeling wistful. Without recording this in an archive I might crazily decide to bump up the next occurrence of a weekend of perfection. Who knows?

:)

Love to you,
Jenn

P.S. This is the reality of our day on only one level. People who I could not have got along without talked to me a various points throughout the day and made the difference between me being a slave in the midst of a crumby day and being able to laugh at the craziness of it all. I am so grateful for friends, for family (and that laundry detergent!) and for being in an entirely different head space than I was a year ago. Raise a piece of toast or a wine glass (depending on which end of the day you are at) to grace and the grandness of life.

To life!

Cold

Dear Reade,

When our little girl went outside to get in the car this morning, all she could say was "Cold. Cold. Cold." And it occurred to me that last winter she always got bundled in a bucket car seat with a blanket and all the coziness we could muster. When we went out to "play" she was always snuggled right next to my body, wrapped up in a sling inside my coat.

Poor thing. I know that given a few weeks she'll decide that she would rather go ice skating than hide her head under her wing, but I'm feeling sympathy for her in these days of adjustment.

Love, Jenn

A lickin'

Dear Reade,

The smile on my face spread from ear to ear as I watched you play with our children while I made supper. "Give us a lickin' Daddy!" they trilled with delight, running away, shrieking. With no fear, total openness to playing run, chase, and a wet sloppy lick as the high point, they seek you out and delight in your presence.

I am so grateful that our children are not afraid of physical punishment in the regular everyday moments of their lives. "Lickings" and "being beaten" are a part of their physical play, not of punitive action. They love to be licked. They love to race and especially to have mama and daddy be beaten. They have no sense that there might be sadness in those words for other children. That other children, asking for "lickings" or tickling to stop might not find their request respected. Might not find themselves respected.

Thank you for being the kind of daddy who respects your children, who respects me, your wife.

I am so grateful for you.

Love, Jenn