As I drove home this evening, I decided to take the kids to the beach after picking them up. It has been a little while since we have been there, and while it was hot outside, it didn’t rival the heat we had last week. However, once I picked up the kids I found out that C had run outside in her bare feet and had cut the bottom of her foot. It certainly looks worse than it is, and it isn’t causing her too much pain, but the thought of her getting sand in it made me rethink our trip to the beach, so instead we went to the boardwalk and walked around for awhile.

The sunset was perfect this evening.

The big kids enjoyed running up and down the pier and climbing up to look over the edge to spot jellyfish while Baby E made friends with everyone he passed. At the first sign of a meltdown, I packed up the kids and we headed home.

After dinner, everyone was ready for bed, so after laying Baby E in his crib, I crawled into C’s bed for some much needed cuddle time. I loved having her arms around my neck and her face resting up against me. After some time with her, I moved over to Big E. He stroked my face and showered me with kissed while I laid next to him.

No matter what kind of day I am having, I can be assured that a few quiet moments with my loves can set just about anything right!

I took the kids for a walk on the boardwalk this evening, which lasted a total of 15 minutes before they started melting down, so we came home\. One of C’s favorite meals is french toast, so I decided to make that tonight. For my kids that usually don’t eat much for dinner they absolutely downed the french toast with the big kids eating three slices each. Hopefully their full bellies will give them a full night’s sleep!

 

No one ever warns you about how motherhood will change your friendships.

Before I became a mom, our group of friends was pretty varied. We hung out with men and women- some were single, some were married, and very few of them had kids. After C was born and the dust began to settle, I began to look around and realized that in the matter of a few months our entire social structure had altered. Our single friends started to disappear. Our married (without kids) friends started to fade as well. And since I didn’t know very many people with kids, our social circle got very small indeed.

Thankfully I was introduced to a group called MOPS (mothers of preschoolers), which is a group created specifically to address that demographic. At the meetings I began to meet a lot of women that were experiencing the same season of life as I was, and we could relate to each others stories about things like sleep schedules, car seats, and diaper creams. But more than that, they were women that I could connect to on a deeper level, that shared the same kind of joys and fears that I did.

Over the years I have drawn closer to these women and I am blessed to have them in my life. I’ve been fortunate enough to serve on the MOPS steering team for a few years and Retreat Weekend is always a highlight of my summer. We spend the weekend planning the coming year, divvying up jobs, and learning more about God and each other. Each of these women has had a positive impact on the way I parent my children, and the way I interact with other women. They are special in my life and I love them. I look forward to seeing what this year has in store!

And as much as I loved retreat, I really did get excited about getting back to these three!

 

MOPS steering retreat day 1 is complete and I have to tell you that I am very excited about our theme and the women that are working so hard to get it all together this year!!

Despite our town’s farmers’ market being mere blocks from our house, we hadn’t made it there at all since it opened at the beginning of May. So this evening I picked up the kids and we headed over. It was good to run into people that we knew and the kids really enjoyed the kettle corn and the italian ice. We took a walk to the end of the pier and then we headed home. Unfortunately it was way too hot to stay much longer than that!

The kids loved seeing the mural on one of the buildings (how long has it been there? I have no idea.) They took turns posing in front of it.

Do you know why my son is crying?

He wants a waffle.

Baby E is obsessed with waffles. In fact, he sees them everywhere. Holding a hash brown? He thinks its a waffle. The magnets that hold your shower curtain to the inside of your tub? Waffle.

He asks for waffles when he wakes up. He asks for more waffles after he has taken two bites of his first waffle. Has it been ten minutes since his last waffle? He’ll ask for another. Lunch? Waffle. Dinner? More Waffles. Even putting him in his crib at night he begs for one more waffle.

Now before you think that maybe he calls all foods waffles, I should tell you that this child knows his own mind and he knows that not all foods are created equal and when he wants a waffle, he will accept no substitute.

So tonight, when I gave him his dinner he begged for a waffle. I said no. His plate was covered in pasta, chicken, and veggies and he wanted a waffle. Sorry sir, not tonight. And so he did the only thing he knows how to do in the face of tragic disappointment, he screamed and shrieked and carried on in hopes it would change my mind. It didn’t. He never got a waffle tonight. He cried for one as I laid him down.

Tomorrow, son, tomorrow.

But it got me thinking… tonight my son cried like the world was ending over a waffle.  Oh that our problems were that simple. He has no idea that half a world away a man drove a huge truck into a crowd of people that had gathered to watch fireworks. He doesn’t know that dozens of people died senseless deaths and he doesn’t understand how much pain and heartbreak is going on in the world, and how as individuals, we are powerless to stop it. There are broken bodies and broken families going through hell right now, in the early stages of a lifetime of grief. My heart aches for them as the sun will soon rise on a wounded people and a wounded country.

Tonight I pray for Nice. I pray for comfort. I pray for relief. I pray for peace.

When I was 13 I had a friend, my best friend. She was everything that I was not- tall, blonde, beautiful (I was always referred to as ‘cute’ growing up, and as any 13 year old girl can tell you, that is not the same as beautiful.) I grew up in a conservative home and much to my embarrassment, I was always considerably behind when it came to pop culture references, (I never knew the latest bands or the newest movies.) But she had embraced them all. I was shy, she was confident. I was timid, she was carefree. I was terrified of boys, but she captivated them- and to my 13 year old mind, she was exotic.

We were practically inseparable.

We’d skip out on riding the bus after school sometimes and walk the four miles to my house. Every weekend we were together. We’d make up ridiculous dares for each other, and laugh as we did them. We listened to music. We explored in the woods. We even joined a beauty pageant because we thought it would be fun. It wasn’t. 

I remember her mother used to drive us to a lake where we would go camping on long weekends. Her mom drove a pick up truck with a cap over the bed and we would pile blankets and pillows into the back. Her mom would tell us to lie low so cops couldn’t see us and she would drive the 2-3 hours to the lake, all the while drinking a beer as she drove.

(At this point, I’m pretty sure my mother is having a heart attack, because like a typical teenage girl, I always left out a few details!) 

We certainly did our fair share of stupid, silly, crazy teenage things (which thankfully never included drinking or drugs) and also, thankfully did not involve social media and the internet. But she was my best friend and I loved her.

We grew apart a few years later, but I often think of her with fondness and wish her well.

I look at my own kids and wonder how they will navigate the difficult years of adolescence. What things will they do and hide from me? What will their rebellion look like? As a parent, I think the best you can hope for is that all of the teachable moments, all the lessons learned, and the time spent together will somehow sink into their little minds, and are quickly recalled when the time is right. You hope that your own shortcomings don’t sabotage your hard work and that your children will remember the better version of yourself. You feed into them the values and truths you hold dear, repeating them and practicing them in your daily life. But mostly, I think you pray and hold on for the ride.

My children will grow up and they will have to abide with the decisions they make, but I desperately pray that those decisions are rooted in something far more sturdy than their peers and their culture. I pray they learn that their value is greater than their appearance or their success, and that their worth is not determined but their weight, their grades, or whether or not they have a significant other. Their worth lies squarely on the outstretched arms of the One who made them and gave all for them. Only when they accept that will they be free to love without condition, risk failure, and handle heartbreak and rejection in a way that does not damage themselves or others.

The bay was angry tonight, the lapping waves replaced with crashing surf stretching the water high up on the shoreline. No sooner had the frothy whiteness receded back into the surf then it was once against thrust onto the waiting sand. The kids approached it gingerly, curious about what it contained. Baby E stared comfortably from a distance, unwilling to venture any closer.

The shoreline, normally riddled with shells and stones, had been smoothed over by the rushing water, refusing permission to anything that wanted to stay. Big E was the first to take a running leap into the crashing waves, water splashing as his feet dug into the mud. Not to be outdone by her little brother, C skipped in after him, much to his delight.

They lost interest quickly in the water, though, and instead scoured the beach for crab shells and horseshoe crabs, while Baby E, a stick in his hand, positioned himself on the edge of the water hollering at the waves as they crashed around him.

We stayed until the beach closed, the sun set casting long shadows on the turbulent waters. We cleaned off the sand before piling into the van to come home. We ate a quick dinner and I ushered them upstairs to bed with no complaints. Tonight they were definitely ready.

I had just sat down after finishing the dishes and sweeping up the remains of Baby E’s dinner that had mysteriously congregated on the floor beneath his high chair. The dishwasher was running in the background and a show was playing on my iPad. I was settling in to meet you here when I first heard and felt it… a banging sound and a slight shaking feeling. At first I thought it was the neighbors, but after a moment I realized it was coming from upstairs.

I jumped out of my chair and ran towards the stairs only to hear utter wailing from the big kids’ bedroom. I hurried up the stairs, convinced they were seconds away from waking up Baby E, and as I flew into their room C was standing next to her bed, stomping her feet, tears streaming down her face, her whole body trembling. Big E was lying in bed, covers up to his eyes, tears also soaking his sheets, loud cries barely muffled by his blanket.

What could possibly have caused this ghastly scene?!?

I shushed them as quickly as possible, still worried about the sleeping kid in the room next door, let alone our poor neighbors, and asked them what could possibly be so bad.

Big E woke me up, C cried as she crawled back into bed, pulling the covers up around her. It scared me!!

As I turned to Big E, I expected to hear about some harrowing dream he had just woken up from, or perhaps a strange noise he had heard, or maybe he had seen a bug. He looked at me, eyes peeking over his blanket, I have to use the potty.

Wait? Come again?

I just qualified for the Olympic sprinting team because you have to go to the potty?!?

I teetered between being mad and feeling sorry for him as I explained that even though he isn’t allowed to come out of his bedroom at night (even though he already had about a half hour previously and nearly gave me a heart attack when he snuck up on me and poked me in the bum), he is allowed to leave his room to use the bathroom. I got him out of bed, still trying to shush his whimpering as I pointed him toward the bathroom.

When he finished and got back into bed C asked me why I hadn’t heard them calling me. I explained about the very loud dishwasher. Then Big E proceeded to demonstrate how they had been calling for me (i.e once again screaming Mommy!!! at the top of his lungs while I’m sitting on the edge of his bed.) Seriously kid, I did not need an instant replay (remember the sleeping baby?!?!)

I tucked them in bed again and explained away all the things Big E was suddenly afraid of- The window in C’s dollhouse (that he can’t actually see from his bed, that he decided looked like a scary outline of a man) and the cut out construction paper flower that has been hanging on their window for weeks and weeks. Eventually I agreed to leave their door open if they promised to be quiet.

Finally the house is silent, bar the moth that keeps ramming itself against the kitchen window. I’ve had my share of adrenaline rushes this evening so I guess I should head to bed soon too!

 

 

 

Not much to report this evening.

The jellyfish have arrived at the beach, so now we are getting into the water with a little bit of trepidation.

Big E keeps having a reoccurring dream that Tim breaks his hand at work and it gets put back together with paint.

Baby E is officially obsessed with waffles. We’ve had to cut him back a bit. He cried himself to sleep tonight for want of a waffle. Poor baby.

The probability that my children will eat a dinner I have prepared goes exponentially down, the longer I spend in the kitchen. (Longer time = more interesting recipe = less chance of my kids eating  it. *sigh*)