Chocolate chip ridiculous...

To reveal a glimpse of your silliness is kind of endearing and even scores you some humility points, or it would if you weren't, you know, too super-humble to care about such things. For obvious reasons, however, I rarely reveal on the world wide web the heights to which my ridiculosity can soar.  An exception...

This week our small group served at Church Under the Bridge, a ministry that does a church service and feeds about 200 homeless folks nightly in Houston.  We brought pizza and cookies.  When we were working out the logistics, I threw down the gauntlet and demanded that the cookies everyone brought be homemade because...

1. I do think it's meaningful to bring good food that you would serve at your own home to these things.
2. Seriously, I rock out at homemade chocolate chip cookies.  If you leave out people I love, my cookies rank second only to books I've read in areas of personal pride.

So, I threw down my homemade demand and then sat for an uncomfortable interval in the silence and guarded discussion that followed and realized that

1. I was one of two people in the room that had access to a kitchen for most of every day.
2. There's really no better way to squelch a serving opportunity than to demand that everyone do it your way, playing to your talents and ideas.

I retracted my demand.  

Fast forward to the evening of the event.  At 5:00 I remembered that HOMEMADE COOKIES banner I'd been flying the week before and noticed that

1. I had to get three kids to karate in 45 minutes.
2. I needed to leave for the service in an hour.
3. There were not 4 dozen homemade chocolate chip cookies in my house.

Now, if I had been mature, I would have recognized the chastening of the Lord and humbly bought some cookies and calmly taken my people to karate.  If I had had a taser gun, I would have tased the children and whipped out those cookies in uninterrupted silence without a problem.  But I do not own a taser gun and there is no way in hell I'm showing up without homemade cookies after the fuss I raised.  It was frantic.  In the end, I could only pull it off by putting the kids in the car, slapping the last batch in the oven, sprinting to the car, driving, ahem, briskly to karate while explaining the meaning of "tuck and roll," drop-kicking the children out of the car and racing back home, where I found

The event was a blessing to me, and you know what?  In the end, I think just hanging out and listening to people who needed to talk is what I was actually supposed to do there - not march at the front of a parade of browbeaten people carrying homemade cookies.  Who knew?

Six years old...

I love this little guy.  So much about him makes me smile.  He's a curious mix of spunk, humor, narcolepsy, affection and braininess.  He has an irresistible crooked smile.

Bryan in bullet points

• He maintains a count on how many kisses on the lips Chris and I each get so he can keep it fair.  If Chris is out of town, no kisses on the lips for me.
• He's fascinated with numbers.  The book he got for his birthday says it has 63 pages, but that's wrong.  It actually has 72.  He knows.  He counted.
• He writes stories.  He's kind of limited by his repertoire of spellable words.  He just learned to spell "thief" and is really excited about the new possibilities for his writing.
• We spent the night at the zoo for his birthday.  A line of older kids all took turns touching elephant poop.  When it was his turn he said, "No thank you."  I hope that trend extrapolates.
• An hour or so later, he tried to lay down on the floor of the reptile house and go to sleep.  He combines his father's talent for knowing when he's tired with my talent for being able to sleep anywhere, which I think could qualify him for some kind of sleeping Olympics.
• He's obsessed with Legos.  He has his Lego birthday requests planned out through his tenth birthday.
• He's going to invent a spaceship that travels faster than the universe is expanding.  It has to go faster than the universe is expanding or else you could always be traveling right at the edge and never break out.  He will then travel outside the universe and see what's there.  He expects to find:
• More universes - probably there are 5 or 6 altogether.
• God.  He will see his body but not his face because if you look at his face, you die.
• Side note, the verse in the Bible that says "For you brought nothing into the world (Bryan translates world as universe here), and you will take nothing out of it" does not have to be true - your spaceship.
• He gave Rand a chess lesson, fully expecting to then play a game of chess with him.
• He figures that in the summer, Earth is close to the sun, so it's hot.  In winter, Earth is far from the sun, which must imply it's close to Pluto because Pluto is also far from the sun.  Snow on Earth comes from snowballs shot at us by Pluto.

Someday I may get homeschool credit I don't deserve for his love of learning.  The truth is, I just have to not beat it out of him.  I think I could put him in room with paper, pencil and an assortment of decent books, and he would educate himself.  

Happy birthday, little man.  Save me a seat in your spaceship.

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween from a ninja, a couple of commandos and Elmo packing heat. Because of his recent potty training adventures, Elmo was a little confused when we explained trick-or-treating to him.

Me: You knock on the door and say "Trick or treat!" and they give you candy.
Rand: "I go poo-poo they house?"

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Matt Damon and inertia...

We did an awesome science experiment today.  Fill a glass with water, place a pie tin on top with an egg balanced on an empty toilet paper roll like this.

Be sure to center the toilet paper roll over the glass.  Now in a smooth, horizontal motion, knock the pie tin away.  This should happen.

This might happen.

Just try again.

Now, where does Matt Damon come in?  He's actually the key to a successful egg drop.  Have you seen We Bought a Zoo?  Remember this awesome line,

Matt Damon:  "You know, sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage.  Literally, 20 seconds of embarrassing bravery, and I promise you, something great will come of it."

As applied to this experiment, you need half a second of insane courage.  You have to go all in on this.  If you just sort of tap the pie tin, you might as well just throw the egg on the ground.  True, you could look like a fool and splatter an egg all over your patio, OR you could successfully smack an egg into a glass of water without breaking it, and that, my friend, is something great.  (You can deduce from my exuberance in the video how I expected round 1 to come out.)

While thrilled that they all made the egg drop, the boys were a little disappointed that this experiment wasn't the eggy mess they expected, so with the exception of Rand, after each child successfully explained why the experiment works, he got to smash an egg into a tupperware.

Rand, of course, just grabbed an egg and smashed it when the mood seized him, but he earned his smashed egg.  He actually got the egg drop on the first try as I was mentally calculating how many eggs were to be sacrificed to his toddler dignity.

Saturday...

Chris is at the Aggie game today, so with pretty fierce commitment to not taking four boys to the grocery store, this is what HEB looked like this morning when I left.


Now it's 10:30. The groceries are stowed, the laundry is running, and my house is clean... ish. I'm pretending it's a pre-2003 Saturday for 30 minutes.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Manna vs. management

I was talking homeschool with some women new to the beautiful chaos that is spending all day with your children along with a somewhat nebulous list of tasks on which their entire future depends.  One of the things we talked about was how to do school with a toddler.  I told them some things that work well for us like

1. Stack blocks, line up Matchbox cars or roll a ball with Rand while doing lessons with the older guys. It's not possible with every subject but it works well for some.
2. Have the big boys take individual breaks to play with Rand.  David puts him in the bike trailer and rides around the block.  They read to him, push him on the swing, build towers for him to destroy, serve as fellow restaurateurs, ...
3. Take advantage of the time when the boys are doing independent work to play with Rand.  Sometimes just spending five minutes with him recharges his little batteries.
4. Play-Doh.  It's messy but keeps him occupied for 20 minutes.
5. Include him in the schoolwork when it's possible and he's interested.  He scribbles in coloring books, cuts paper, plays with math manipulatives, scribbles on small dry erase boards and sharpens pencils (don't judge).
6. Bring a favorite outside toy in the house.  I let him (and no one else) drive his little red car in the house.  In the interest of honesty, though, this happened as a result when an older kid broke my rule.  When guests ask what happened, I say, "Traffic accident."
   
7. Let him fingerpaint with yogurt on a cookie sheet.
8. I hold him while I teach when he's in a snuggly mood.
9. We do schoolwork out on the patio sometimes, so Rand can dig in the dirt, pour water into cups, look for lizards, ...
10. Do school in the bathroom while he plays in the bathtub.
11. Keep toys in the schoolroom.  Someone more organized than me would rotate these regularly.
12. Let Rand and Bryan help make lunch as they are the most neglected during school time.
13. I have a Dora/Dinosaur Train silver bullet.  I save it for when a) the other boys are not available to play with Rand, b) it's the end of our school time and he's done with toddler-puttering for the day, and, most importantly, c) I've exhausted my daily supply of energy for being a good toddler mama and must focus on ONE thing.  Normally I'm rabidly opposed to TV during the week, but as a friend recently said, "Praise Jesus for TV."  Seriously there are some times (like when the alternative is me screaming at everyone) when TV is just awesome.

So, that's my homeschooling with a toddler list.  I've read similar ones.  They're helpful, but when I read them I put all this pressure on myself to come up with a plan to keep Rand occupied and stimulated all day.  Something like 8:00 - 8:20 Play Doh, 8:30 - 8:40 Read to Rand, ...  The thought of trying to maintain a schedule like that while also making sure the big boys get through all their work makes me want to send them all to boarding school.  Seriously, just writing the sentence raised my blood pressure.

The way this plays out for me in real life is like the Israelites wandering in the desert.  God provides daily manna and I have nothing to store for the next day.  Each night I go to bed having only a vague idea how I'm going to do school with a toddler the next day.  In the morning, I pray something along the lines of

God, please help me to love and enjoy Rand and teach the big boys with excellence 

in a way that's fair to Rand,

without yelling at anyone, 

so that I'm not tossing back a couple of glasses of wine at 2:00 in the afternoon.*

And God doesn't zap me when I forget to pray this, but when I start depending on my own resources to live out my days well, I stop being sensitive to Rand's needs, and I forget how short-lived his toddler days are.  I try to just plow through our list as quickly as possible.  My fuse gets shorter and shorter until I realize where I am again and remember that I can't do this without God's daily help.  I simply don't have what it takes to do school, house and toddler well on my own.  Then I go back to praying for help.  I don't really understand how it works, but it does.  On a good day, Rand usually plays independently when we start school.  Eventually, I notice that he's getting bored or decide he's been on his own long enough.  Then I pull something from the list above depending on my mood, his mood and what the other boys are doing.  Once I've reached my toddler limit (usually right before lunch), I let him watch a Dora/Dinosaur Train while we finish up.  Having the discipline to pull from that list instead of just shooing him away or throwing up my hands and yelling at everyone or rushing through our schoolwork and feeling guilty because I know I haven't done things well is simply not in me.  I need help.  I used to pray most often out of guilt and obligation.  Now my prayers are overwhelmingly inspired by desperation

With your help I can advance against a troop;

    with my God I can scale a wall.

It is God who arms me with strength
    and keeps my way secure.
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer;
    he causes me to stand on the heights.
He trains my hands for battle;
    my arms can bend a bow of bronze.
You make your saving help my shield,
    and your right hand sustains me;
    your help has made me great.
You provide a broad path for my feet,
    so that my ankles do not give way.
Psalm 18:29, 32-36

These verses can seem melodramatic and silly as applied to daily life, but they're really not.  Ladies, we do a lot of care taking, and it's just hard to do that well - with joy and with gracious hearts.  So whether you have children or not; whether they're in school or at home, you're going to face situations that feel as desperate and intimidating as scaling a wall (personally, I can't even do monkey bars) or single-handedly fighting an army (can I get an "Amen!" from anyone who's dealt with vomiting children recently?).  It is God who arms you with strength and makes your way perfect.  May he sustain you with his right hand this week.

* Unfortunately not hyperbole.

Potty training operating principles...

I started potty training Rand this week.  It's a family adventure.  Everybody gets pretzels when he pees.  Everybody gets Skittles when he poops.  He hands them out with dignified toddler pride.

So when I started with David, two friends gave me advice that formed my potty training philosophy.  You need realistic expectations and hope.

1.  (From Janice)  Just accept that your house will be covered in pee for awhile.
2.  (From Melissa, who was starting the potty adventure for the first time at the same time I was.)  I keep telling myself that even the children of crack addicts are potty trained by kindergarten.

Thanks, friends.