Head ’em Up, Move ’em Out

My son and daughter were together. They faced me at the dinner table.
“Mom,” my daughter started, “When we are done with our dinner, can we have a popsicle?”
“No, you already had one today,” I said and continued to eat my steak.
*****I should mention that when I eat steak, I turn into a rabid hound dog. When I brought my husband home to meet the family, my Dad grilled steak. Why? Why would he do that? I think because he’s seen me EAT steak and he wanted to make sure my boyfriend knew what he was getting into. You can tell a lot about a woman by the way she eats her steak. Reference: Miss Congeniality*****
The kids leaned in and whispered to each other.
“We will give you two dollars,” my son said.
“No,” I said. “Too many popsicles in one day is bad for your body. Would I be a good mom if I let you be bad to your body?”
The kids leaned in again and whispered to each other, trying to decide what direction to take next.

“We want to move,” my daughter announced.

How’s that for an ultimatum?

And let me just say: adjusting to three kids was total cake at first. But now? I mean, I’m not frazzled or going totally crazy, but my house is probably the dirtiest it’s been since, well, the boy was a baby. Alice Michelle can’t walk yet. She can barely roll over but my house is a travesty of epic proportions.
And no. I’m not being dramatic.
The only thing that keeps me sane is this face:

OOOOPS.
I mean THIS face:

Well, that. And fun little tender mercies like old men in thick boots and kilts, sporting long white bears and canes and tattoos while they buy ice:

And trips out west of town where I can throw rocks into puddles and click my tongue at Dad’s hosses and convince my kids that there’s small people living in the brush.
Naked Brush people?

In other news, I’ve come through a head cold (the house hasn’t come through yet), and Spatsy the Catsy has been taken extremely ill with pneumonia.
Which I didn’t know cats could get.
But they can.
He’s on the mend now (resting on a blanket in the kids’ tub), and our kitty is safely out of critical kitty condition. Soon enough, he’ll be back to doing his duty as half of The Welcoming Committee:

Today’s Post is Brought To You By the Letter “N”

“Ugh,” my daughter presses the pencil’s eraser onto her homework and rubs her frustration out on a misshapen letter ‘n’, “Why am I so dumb?”

Such a small phrase, uttered so many times by her mother.

But hearing it come from her lips, her tiny, precious, perfect lips… is heartbreaking.  I immediately reach out to her.

“You’re awesome.  You’re the best.  You’re so smart, and I love you.  I made you and I would never make anything dumb,” I say.

“Okay,” her cheeks flush.  She doesn’t doesn’t really understand why Mom is being so serious.

I think of a recently issued challenge to stop using language that undermines ME.

I think of Martha, of Mary and Martha (and Lazarus, while we’re at it).

The Lord has prodded me to study Martha.  He has done this in the past.

“Yes,” I say to Him, “I know, I get it.  I’m Martha.  I’m Martha, period.  Careful, encumbered about… busy, busy, busy, too busy to sit at the Lord’s feet… but I’ll study it again.”  I turn to the passage in Luke and read the words I know so well.

“The Better Part.”

Mary chooses it.  Martha does not.  tsk, tsk, and shame-I-know-your-name.

But the Lord prompts me again -read more, read more about Martha.

I flip to the book of John, and I read about Martha.  Jesus loved Martha.  Martha went out to meet Him.  She speaks freely to Him.  She tells Him, “If you had been here, my brother had not died.  But you’re here now, and I know you can do anything.”
Jesus weeps.

The account of Martha in Luke is NOT the period to the end of Martha’s sentence.

One experience does not a Martha make.  There’s no such thing as “Martha, period.”

I’m not “a” Martha.  In fact, there’s no such thing as “a Martha.”

Martha is like unto me -a sister, loved by Jesus and our Heavenly Father.  We’re busy, Martha and I, we’re worried, we have on occasion put our busyness ahead of sitting at the Lord’s feet, but we’ve received the Lord in our homes, we’ve gone out to meet him when all seemed lost.

It took courage.

Martha and I -we understand one another.

{ I PLEAD with you at this point to not read any farther until you have clicked HERE and read this small passage.}

And, Lord, I am sorry for speaking down to your daughter for so many years.  For a brief moment over a misshapen letter N, I saw me as you see me.

I am not what I believe I am.  I am a sacred creation, valiant, brave, beautiful in the ways of the heavens, unique, vibrant, soft and hard at the same time, powerless and empowered, wise and clueless, helpless but capable.

I am YOURS.

You made me, and today you took my chin in your hand, stretched forth Thy hand and held Thy creation.  You tilted my eyes up to meet Yours as You spoke the truth that went straight to my hardened, soft soul.
“I would never make anything dumb.”

One experience does not a mortal make.

A culmination of choices, trials, afflictions, and consequences does a masterpiece make.

Courage, sisters.  Courage.

Little Girl

She came to me after our nightly Family Prayer. She was in tears.
“What is bothering you?” I asked.
“This boy at school just called me Little Girl!!!!!!!” Her words were nearly unintelligible.
“Tell me more about it,” I prodded.
“I was just trying to be his friend and we were at recess and it was my turn to go down the slide and he said…” her voice was mounting, “Go ahead, LITTLE GIIIIIIRL.”
Her sobs were slowing freely, tears coursing down her now-tanned cheeks.
“And that makes you sad because you aren’t little?” I asked, a little more than lost.
“NO! I was trying so hard to be his friend and he didn’t even say ‘LACY’ he just said ‘LITTLE GIRL’ and that makes me saaaaaaaaaaaad.”
Oh!
He didn’t know her NAME. That made her sad. She was reaching out to him and he didn’t even know her name.
“He didn’t know your name?”
“No, even though Kelly was trying to tell him.”
“I understand you feel sad,” I said, “It does feel bad when people don’t remember us or our names.”
“Yeah,” her sobs were calming down.
“What is his name?” I asked.
“I dunno,” she shrugged.

Oh, ho. Lacy Gayle. I hope you never know how hard Mommy was laughing when you were sobbing in her shoulder.

“You should just tell him your name at school tomorrow,” I said.
“NO! I’m so very scared about that!”
“Why?” I asked.
“His face is strange.”

Oh, HO! LACY GAYLE!

This reminded me of a few weeks ago when she was begging me to please give her rides to and from school and not let her take the bus.
“Okay,” I said, “We can do that…” I only signed her up to ride the bus because it was what LACY wanted, “But why?”
“I always think about Blue (the dead parakeet) on the bus.”
I’ve since learned that “thinking about Blue” is always code for something else bothering her. Even last night, when I first asked her what was wrong her told me, “I was thinking about Blue!” When I pressed her, the whole “Little Girl” story came out.
“What else makes you feel bad about the bus?” I asked.
“There’s this ugly boy on it, and he says ‘hi’ to me all the time!”

LACY GAYLE.

There’s only one of you. Darn it.

Keep On the Sunny Side -or Keep the Sunny Side On, Whichever…

So I guess I quit blogging.

I didn’t mean to -honestly I didn’t. Blogging, to me, isn’t really blogging at all. I don’t think of it as Blogging. I think of it as “writing” and if a day goes by that I don’t WRITE, I don’t touch base with myself. I start to feel stressed and unbalanced.
Like the biblical Martha of Old, I start to feel careful and encumbered about with many things.
Basically, I hate life.

I have been writing other places which has been good. HOWEVER, the other places I have been writing have been heavy places, and I’ve written about heavy topics, and I’ve felt heavy about the whole thing.
And I know it didn’t help that I was medicating with dark chocolate covered blueberries.
The were packaged to look healthy, but I have a screaming baby that is sending another message… it sounds a lot like, “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME MOTHER?!?!”
But anyway.

I’m still grappling with some heavy issues, but it’s time for me to look on my lighter side.
I mean, after all I am the proud mother of three daaaaaahling egg heads:

Who each have gone through a certain phase of constant SHOCK that lasted the entirety of their infant-hood (until their heads grew to match the size of their eyes):

There’s a big SUNNY side of life, and this blog is my Sunny Corner. I shouldn’t let it be for very long. I should always bask in my Sunny Corner.

My Sunny Corner is full of pictures that make you feel good inside:

And it’s the place where I record daily activities I believe will be indispensable to posterity.

Like how on Monday night we taught a Family Home Evening lesson on the meaning of Easter and then Trenton called his sister a sucker… only he changed up the word “sucker” a little bit. It’s a fun thing he likes to do -take root words and silly ’em up a little, Trentify them, if you will… and Monday night he thought it would be super silly to substitute the letter “s” in “sucker” with an “f.”
“Lace, you *$%#@*!”
And I said, “um, what?”
And Lacy said, “Oh, he’s making sucker sound silly…”
And I said, “um, what did you say to make it silly?”
“*$%#@*” he said.

“Okay, kids. Let’s talk about words we shouldn’t say before we say the closing prayer…”

We’re still working on his pronunciation of the suffix “est.”
He pronounces it “assed.”
As in, “That’s the green-assed egg I ever saw!”
Or, my husband’s favorite, “My Dad is the smart-assed!”

*sigh*

See? These things are important. I need to write them down.
And here’s the man of the day with this dye-assed hands.

Hope your Easter was as happy as ours!