The BOX

Have you read Christina Katerina and The Box? I loved that story as a child, and I still love it! About a month ago I noticed an offer on Freecycle for a "very large box". Of course I jumped at the chance! We barely got it home, it was so big, but oh it has been worth it. :)

The kids turned it into a fort.



A few weeks later, it became a cliff, off of which they took flying leaps of great daring. When the cliff collapsed, it became an slide (sometimes for penguins - headfirst).



Once the slide fell apart, they turned it into a chasm,



and then a new kind of fort.



Like Christina Katerina's mother, sometimes I would like my space back. But really, I love watching their creativity and active play, and it is worth giving up the living room. :)

Well earned pleasure

There's nothing like saving your allowance (for weeks and weeks and weeks!)

Sitting on Mom's lap and browsing amazon for lego sets.

Waiting patiently (well, trying, anyway) for the package to arrive.

Being happily surprised by an email saying it will come a day earlier than expected!

Watching for the mailman all morning, even though you know it probably won't come until the afternoon.

Going out to play after lunch and joyfully discovering that IT HAS ARRIVED!!!

Board games

All of my boys are fans of board games. I'm not (at all!) but I'm fans of my boys. So we play!

Dancing in the rain

I'm not sure how it happened, but all three of my boys think that they're going to melt if they go outside in the rain. I had encouraged them to go outside a few times today, but was always met with "no, it is too cold" or "no, it is too wet" or "no, I might get thundered" (that from Josiah). :)

I decided they needed some help seeing the proper potential of a rainy day! So I bundled them up in boots and coats, herded them outdoors against their will, and then surprised them all by running past them, dancing in circles like a crazy person, and splashing them with puddle water. Wheeeee!! That's what you do in the rain, boys!



Of course they forgot all about being "cold, wet, and miserable"*, and we caught raindrops on our tongues, and then had a grand water fight and I got entirely soaked.







Then when we were all tired and cold we came inside for hot chocolate.

Yep. That's what you're supposed to do on a rainy day.



*Jonathan is reading this over my shoulder and insists "I did not forget! Add 'except for Jonathan!' "

Art and projects

Jonathan has the day off school, so we have spent the morning enjoying art and projects and photography.

Josiah's passion is painting, of course, so those came out first thing after breakfast!




Jonathan received a model airplane for a birthday present, so we started working on that. That is definitely NOT SIMPLE. Trying to read the diagram makes my head spin. But we're making progress! :)

Jonathan took this picture:



And then since the camera was out and Jonathan enjoys taking photos, here are few portraits of the cat:



Jonathan says that this one makes him look like a lion:



It's been a nice start to the day. Who needs chores? ;)

Play Time

Playing with big-little boys is very different from playing with little-little boys or babies. With little ones, my days were full of small interactions. Read "Goodnight Moon" or "The Big Red Barn". Stack a tower of blocks for him to knock over. Build a train track out of Brio. Round up the cars and trucks and turn on the water for "car wash" time. Little boys have short attention spans, and my interactions with them were often comparably short.

It isn't that way anymore. Now we're reading chapter books with Jonathan, and Thomas asked to start his own chapter book this morning as well. "Mommy, will you help me build this lego set?" means nearly an hour spent hunched over an instruction manual, searching for miniscule pieces that (I'm assured) will eventually become something "really awesome!" Games are also longer: Josiah will play Candyland for 30+ minutes; Jonathan and Thomas will play Sorry for twice that long. I put my foot down when they wanted to start playing Risk - no five hour games for this mama, no thank you!

(Board games - even short ones - are a cross that I have to regularly offer to Jesus. I can't stand them.)

There are wonderful things that come with these growing-up playtimes. Snuggling while reading together can be one of the best parts of the day. And I love seeing the focus and the creativity that abounds during lego play. Yet there is difficulty for me in this change of daily pacing. It can be hard to turn away from whatever I'm doing (laundry, dishes, my own book!) when I know that it won't be a short interaction, but rather an hour devoted to something that probably wasn't on my mental agenda. Setting my plans aside to be really present with my boys for extended play is a new kind of sacrifice of self, and I'm not very good at it yet. But it feels like the kind of thing that God is using to grow me up, too.

Expedition!

On Tuesday, Jonathan stayed home from school. He wasn't sick any longer, but his school has a "24 hours without fever" policy (which I really appreciate!) Having spent the previous day lying on the couch, Jonathan was quite ready for an adventure. So we went on an expedition!



They brought nets and shovels and collecting containers and archeological brushes (you know, to dust off the dinosaur bones?)



We shouted "adventure is out there!" (a la UP) and off we went. :)







It was only an hour; a walk down the busy, noisy street to a small "creek" that passes next to the road. But we found a ladybug and a baby earwig, discovered a tiny pine tree growing next to an old pine cone, ran relay races, ate our expedition snack, and collected dozens of rocks. I think it was probably the best hour of the whole day.

December in SoCal

Mixed up scripts

We have a couple of "scripts" that we use around here, to simplify resolution of conflicts.

There's the "sorry" script:

Brother 1: I'm sorry for X, Y, Z.
Brother 2: I forgive you.

and the "bothering brothers" script:

Brother 1: Please stop doing X, Y, Z.
Brother 2: Ok, I'll stop.

Josiah is quite happy to play along with this, although I'm not entirely sure he understands anything he's saying. This is evidenced by the following conversation which I have been hearing on a fairly regular basis:

Brother 1: Please stop doing X, Y, Z.
Josiah: I forgive you! :)

Auntie Leila on Advent

We're finding ourselves in a very busy life season right now. This tends to leave me feeling rather frazzled, and that has only been heightened by the nagging worry that I "ought" to be doing more with the kids for Advent.

Today I read Auntie Leila's post on Advent, and I'm feeling a bit more peaceful now. Because you know what? As usual, she's right. ;)

The simple act of lighting a candle in the home, if done peacefully and attentively, can open the door to wonder. Wonder is at the heart of Advent.

We can get frazzled and feel that we're not doing enough, that our children don't understand enough. Really, their understanding will grow with each year that they experience the same beautiful, simple rituals at home and at Church. . . . What I think the children tire of, eventually, is our jangling attempts to elicit some response from them, which, in the end, comes to this: That we seek affirmation from them. When really, we should confidently offer them what we know to be good, and trust that the good will be accomplished.

I don't need to have a perfect advent craft or activity planned for every single day. What I do need to do is be mindful of the season myself, and then offer the basic reminders to my children as well. So we light the candles at dinner. We pray and we sing advent hymns. We read books about Jesus and St. Nicholas during our morning story time. We unwrap our creche with care and set the animals in their stable. Perhaps we bake cookies.

And that really is enough. I don't have to *make* Advent special; it already is. I just need to point the way toward Jesus in terms and symbols that little boys can start to understand.

Thankful

During dinner today, I asked everyone what they were thankful for. The responses were so much fun!

Jonathan: Jesus, because he's the most important. Our cat, chicken, and flowers.

Thomas: . . . *crickets* . . .

Josiah: I'm thank-you for Christmas!

Gabe: Five Iron Frenzy!

I'm thankful for my family of boys who make me laugh so often. :)

Vacation

There's nothing like a few months of school to make you appreciate the vacation that used to be normal life.

Drowsing in the morning while the children play together (honest, I think they play better when I'm not around!) Getting everyone dressed and doing chores without any rush. Morning playtime outside. Art and math at the kitchen table. Naptime without time constraints.

It is all perspective, isn't it?

Where did my hour go?

I swear I just sat down! And now the children are up and ready to be changed and read to and played with. And I haven't started the laundry, and I still have emails to answer, and I think I was supposed to pay a bill or something, but I can't remember, and did I mention that THE CHILDREN ARE UP! and I really did mean to spend part of quiet time reading a book.

Thus is proven the wisdom of beginning quiet time with the Bible and a cup of tea. At least I got that! :)

All Saints Day

Josiah was baptized on All Saints Day shortly after he was born, so we always make a point of celebrating both the day and his baptism. We chose to celebrate on Sunday this year instead of Tuesday because our Tuesday is incredibly busy this week, and that's no way to celebrate a baptismal day!

This year I wanted a fun (simple!) visual project that the boys could do, and I found it over at Catholic Icing. (In general, I've found that Catholics tend to be really good at including their children in the church year. Love it!)

I printed a pile of coloring pages of saints - Joseph, Mary, Anne, Francis, the Archangels, Paul, Peter, Augustine, etc. - and spread them across the table with lots of markers and crayons. I also made a huge heart on butcher paper, labeled it "Saints, Our Heavenly Family" and hung it on the wall. Then the boys (and a few of their friends from the neighborhood!) colored to their hearts' content while we talked about some of the different saints. When they were finished coloring, they cut out their pictures and taped them up on the heart on the wall. I was so pleased with how it turned out!



Everyone had fun, and the neighbor kids even took a couple of saint picture home to continue coloring. This might be a perfect All Saints project for young children - extremely hands-on throughout, low prep for Mom, with a great visual result at the end!

Redeeming a bad day

I had big plans for today. A list of errands that criss-crossed six cities, a list of chores at home, a list of phone calls and emails that needed to be attended to.

In other words, I had insane expectations.

I have those quite frequently, unfortunately. And when I try to live up to them, I stress myself out, and then stress my children out as I bark at them to "hurry up" and move at a stressed out grown-up's pace. It wasn't a good morning.

By the time I dropped Jonathan off at school (and I did remember to stop and kiss him, I'm glad of that) I was starting to realize that my plans for the day weren't really going to work out. Still, we headed off to the first errand on my list, the one that was supposed to take 20 minutes before driving across town to the next one. An hour later I shook my head at myself and scrapped my insane plans.

We went to the library. Thomas sat on my lap during story hour, and Josiah sat smack in the middle of the crowd of kids, and both enjoyed themselves thoroughly. I read a book, snuggled my son, and remembered that I like my kids. On the way home the boys asked to stop at a park, and since there no longer was a plan, we did just that. The sun came out. Thomas made friends with a little boy his age, all by himself (a first)! I taught Josiah how to climb up and down a tricky ladder, and then sat on a park bench and ate chocolate.

I still have a very long list. But you know what? I don't really care. I'm choosing to remember that I also have many, many days to run errands. There is always tomorrow, and the day after that, and maybe some of them don't really need to be done anyway. My kids are little and need their days filled with stories at the library and sunshine at the park. Come to think of it, I kind of prefer my days to be filled with stories and sunshine, too.

In about an hour we'll go pick up Jonathan from school. I will say "I'm sorry" for being a grouchy mama all morning. And perhaps we'll get ice cream cones on the way home.

Love

Thomas' timer rings and I meet him as he gets up off the "time out stool". Is he ready to apologize? Yes. He's sorry for disobeying. Then, unexpectedly, he throws his arms around me and hugs me tight. And I hear, whispered in my ear, "Mommy, I still love you from here to North Africa, even when you give me time outs."

I want to remember this forever.

Role playing

We have a dress up bin that the boys play with regularly. Usually they are knights, or star wars characters, or policemen, or firefighters. But this time? This time they recreated church! Jonathan dressed himself up as a priest, complete with vestments.



He arranged our table bench and piano bench into pews and an altar rail, invited the younger boys to come to church, and served them "communion" (crackers and water).



He was actually very good at it, too!

Thomas started out playing Josiah's Dad, keeping him in line on the pew! Later he switched roles, retrieved a bath toy boat, and installed himself as the boat boy. :)



In real life, Jonathan is scheduled to serve for the first time as an acolyte (in the position of boat boy!) on the first two Sundays of August. He is very excited.

Pretend play is a kind of practice for reality, a trying on of roles and experimenting with your place in the story of life. I love that the boys are exploring this role along with the others.

First concert

We took the boys to a concert last night: the five Brown siblings, all pianists, playing an outdoor concert that included Saint-Saens "Carnival of the Animals". This is one of the boys' favorite pieces of music. We have a cd and book that walks you through each part, and it has been an oft-requested piece during quiet time.

Tickets on the lawn at the top of the amphitheater were quite reasonable, and it really was a perfect introduction to live music for the kids. They could wiggle as much as they needed to on our picnic blanket, and I was pleased with how well they paid attention. Their favorite was definitely the Carnival, which brought home (to me) just how helpful it is to pre-expose kids to a piece of music before hearing it in concert. They were so pleased to recognize it! Jonathan could identify some of the movements by himself, and asked for help with the others. He wanted to know how certain sounds were made (Sarah, can you tell us how the jackass' signature sound is created on the violin?) and informed Gabe that the sounds of the "fossils" were meant to be "bones rattling, Daddy!"

Jonathan also really enjoyed watching the musicians. He was especially impressed with one of the girls, whom he pronounced "pretty" and "really good at the piano". He says he wants to learn to play like she does. Well then! Piano lessons, here we come. :)

We almost didn't bring Josiah, since he developed a fever a few hours before we left. But he did not want to be left behind, and to be honest, Gabe and I were really disappointed not to be able to go as a family. So at the last minute we decided to all go and hope for the best. Josiah spent the whole time in our arms, but it turns out that he had a great time. When the music ended, Gabe asked him, "what did you think, Josiah?"
"It was awesome!"
"So you liked it?"
"Yes I do!"

Thomas, as usual, didn't have much to say. But since he usually cares quite a lot about what music gets played at bedtime, I'm betting that he enjoyed himself.

I know that the kids will be tired and difficult today, but this was absolutely worth it. Live music, some of which they were familiar with, in a setting they could manage, played by engaging young people: it all added up to a pretty stellar first concert experience.

Why-ning

Josiah has brought a whole new level of amusement to toddler whining. His version? "Mommyyyy, why why why why why why why???"

Gardens

I spent some time working in my front garden today. It has truly horrible soil, riddled with roots from the neighboring tree, and it is difficult to get much of anything to grow in it. But it is in front of my house, in the area that *technically* is the HOA gardeners' domain, so I feel a need to try to keep it looking nice.

{I commandeered the space years ago, when we had a gardening service that didn't even pretend to garden, and the only thing growing in that space (in front of my window!) was a thorn bush.}

It looks better now. But what really made me smile today is what happened about an hour later. When my oldest excitedly called me out to see his garden. Two little patches of grass and weeds, carefully dug up and transplanted next to mine.