The Humming Meadow

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i’ve been watching friday night lights like it’s my job. srsly. that show is so good. i even love the CREDITS. and matty saracen. and riggins. and smash. and landry. and the entire taylor family. and i love how much they pray on that show. in every episode, they pray. and i don’t care if it’s about football. they’re still praying. idk. i think it’s gorgeous.

aaand i also love heroes. and peter petrelli. oh oh. and i’ll admit my obsession w/the hills even though i’ll tell you flat-out that i think it’s ridiculous. i still love it.

i have a wicked sinus infection. it’s keeping me from going to yoga. i miss yoga. i’m hoping to get back into the swing of things next week. i’ve fallen in love w/ravelry. love it love it.

it’s october. october is my favorite month. but it’s hot. and i can’t remember the last time it rained. @ night…since i’ve been sick, loran and i have just been hanging out on the couch. watching tv on dvd. i’m knitting baby bibs and burpcloths for some pregnant girlfriends. i’ve been baking cookies and muffins. i’m trying to march myself back to wellness. i’m praying for wellness.

and i’m really looking fwd to when it starts to actually feel like october.

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i’ve tried to autumny up the house as much as possible. it’s still a bit warm out. but it feels like autumn in here. i put the fall quilt on the couch about a week ago. and hung the pumpkin wreath on the door. our front door is painted purple. a sorta deep-purple. and it wasn’t until i put the wreath on it that i realized how autumnal the purple was! i’m stoked. i love driving up the driveway and seeing the door. oh i love it.

our family is still battling a cold. all of us still have it. right now, i have absolutely no voice. i sound ridiculous. oh goodness.

i’ve been thinking about homemaking a lot lately. how much i love it. how important it is. how i can be better @ it. i wanna write more about it. but my brain is all foggy. soon. soon.

i’m hoping we all feel better and well enough to go apple-picking this weekend! and i wanna put chili in the crockpot before we leave. and that way, we’ll come back home to dinner. and we’ll come back home w/fresh bread and apples and apple butter. I GET WAY TOO EXCITED ABOUT AUTUMN. and everything, everything.

(my dear friend, amanda…put this in her journal today. i thought i’d pass it on. it’s lovely. and Amen to it.)

On Being a Mom
by Anna Quindlen

If not for the photographs, I might have a hard time believing they ever existed. The pensive infant with the swipe of dark bangs and the black button eyes of a Raggedy Andy doll. The placid baby with the yellow ringlets and the high piping voice. The sturdy toddler with the lower lip that curled into an apostrophe above her chin.

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves.
Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past. Everything in all the books I once pored over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories.

What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations –what they taught me was that they couldn’t really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout.

One boy is toilet trained at 3, his brother at 2. When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself. Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton’s wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month-old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to China. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. They have all been enshrined in the Remember-When-Mom-Did-Hall-of-Fame. The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, “What did you get wrong?” (She insisted I included that.) The time I ordered food at the McDonald’s drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I included that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less. Even today I’m not sure what worked and what didn’t, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I’d done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be. The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That’s what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

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& RIGHT NOW I REALLY MISS LOST.

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Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows._James 1:17
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1. “An Apple Dancing with a Banana” by ruby, age 3.
2. tonight. in the car. we gave ruby the camera. she took that picture.

the weather was so perfect today. almost frustratingly perfect. like we couldn’t look up enough. couldn’t be outside enough. couldn’t do enough. couldn’t appreciate it enough. couldn’t give enough thanks. it was amazing. & i made two batches of chocolate chip muffins. and i put up some halloween decorations. i need to get started knitting pumpkin hats for the babies!

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this morning it’s cool enough for me to wear a cowl and a tshirt. i made that cowl out of some gorgeous merino wool my friend, marisa, (who btw, makes really lovely little necklaces and other darling littles!) sent me last christmas. it’s so comforting. i wore it all during my jury duty in the spring. i was sitting on a murder trial and it was more exhausting and emotionally draining than i ever could’ve imagined. so, i prayed a lot and wore my cowl a lot, too.

we sectioned off a little part of the yard for Ruby’s Garden and i just tossed leftover seeds in there to see what would grow. to our surprise..there is a pumpkin growing in her little garden! a real pumpkin. also, some morning glories. and a tomato. she’s so stoked.

last night, after the babies were asleep, we looked through the LLBean christmas catalog and loran fell asleep on my shoulder. i’m finishing up his ravenclaw scarf. i watched the benihana christmas eppy of the office. it’s one of my v. favorites. no, really. the way michael looks @ the two waitresses (b/c he can’t figure out which one is which) while he and andy are singing “yr body is a wonderland”…it’s one of the funniest things i’ve ever seen in my life. ever and ever and ever.

i’m Emotional today. idk. just in a way that like..it’s so Gorgeous outside. and the cookies are so good. and ruby put on a dress and a tshirt and white tube socks and high heels this morning. and atticus started dancing around the room. and it’s September. and loran sends me the Best txtmsgs. and fall festivals will be starting soon! and i love Jesus. and i love my hair. and i love my husband. and i love my babies. and i love my church. and i love tacos, too.

know what else i LOVE? KIDDIE MUSIC. srsly. check out now the day is over by the innocence mission or you are my little bird by elizabeth mitchell or the curious george soundtrack by jack johnson and friends. those are some kiddo gems. they’re in constant rotation in our house. forreals. and all/any of the world music kiddo mixes. ruby and atticus love world music! smithsonian folkways recordings has a lot of great and old-timey compilations for kids. and woody guthrie and uncle willie nelson have a lot of great songs for kids too. so much muchness! & we have many dance parties in our little honda civic, fersure.

a new dress. becoming jane. lifting it up. plenty of tomatoes. my babies. & some cafe miele. (latte w/ honey and cinnamon)

handknit dishtowels for chrissie’s new house/birthday., originally uploaded by kitchenkisses.

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lately:
-knitting. dishcloths. scarves for the babies. and another cowl.
-listening. to gillian welch. and sojourn. and sufjan stevens. and patty griffin. and dmb. and iron & wine. mindy smith. and the newest be good tanyas album. and “vultures” by john mayer.
-feeling. happy. and good. and busy. and blessed.
-reading. c.s. lewis and ephesians and cottage living and feast by nigella lawson.
-watching. the office. 30 rock.
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when i was younger, i used to think that i was weird b/c i thought about God so much. i wondered if other people thought about God as much as i did. i don’t know. not much has changed.

i still think about God a lot. i’m amazed @ how much i can learn and how much i can grow..if i just Ask. and Listen.

& we really wanna live on a farm. maybe have some chickens and a little goat. and a wrap-around porch and a kitchen w/lots of windows. i think about that a lot, too.

ruby sings “i’ve got peace like a river” as “I’VE GOT PEAS BY THE RIVER.”
which sounds pretty peaceful to me, if you ask.
score all around.