Love and Marriage

We went for a walk this afternoon and talk of the "birds and bees" was the main conversation.

Piper: You can't marry your brother or your sister.

me: and you can't marry your cousins.

Piper: can you marry your friends?

me: which friends would you want to marry?

piper:well, who are your friends? is Daddy your friend?

me: Yes, Daddy is my friend and I fell in love with him.

Finley: YOU FELL ON DADDY AND THEN YOU LOVED HIM? HOW IS THAT EVEN A POSSIBILTY?

Christmas Cards

Finley Claire is 4!!!!

Happy Birthday  Love!

Crock Pot Tuesday

The girls have gymnastics on Tuesdays, so I have been using my crock pot for dinners since we are out of the house from about 4:30-6pm. It's great to come home to dinner already made even if the sentiments about the dinner are less than positive. Most of the time Finley will help me chop up and fill the crock pot in the morning usually commenting that "I am not going to eat that." Nice.

So, today we are making pot roast in the crock pot. I get most of my recipes here, can you believe that she has used her crock pot everyday this year?

other things I have made:

Autumn Sausage Casserole

Chicken and Dumplings - I added a whole bunch of veggies and used whole wheat biscuits

Turkey Chili

I want to try this applesauce, but I need to find my smaller crock pot for that... and Finley's birthday party is this weekend and I will be making caramel apples as party favors (that makes even me laugh in anxiety).

Like I said, most of the time the kids were less than satisfied with these meals. They are going through that weird don't-like-my-food-to-mix thing that is really annoying. Oh well, there are starving kids all over the world who wouldn't care if the veggies and rice are actually *GASP* touching.

This Message brought to you by the "NO Sleep Solution."

Jonas has a few things he wants to tell you:

1. Dude, I can sit up.

2. I totally faked my mom out by sleeping those 6 hours straight for 2 nights in a row. I brought her back to reality last night. Parents are so fun to screw with!

and

C.

Kindergarten

We woke up at what we thought would give us enough time to ease our way to her first day of school. It turns out it wasn't enough time, so all these plans I had made in my head about starting traditions and making sure she was going to be ok were pushed out of the way as we rushed out the door to load our family of five up in the car.

"I'm a little bit nervous, Mom."

As I'm driving towards the school I keep glancing back in my rearview mirror trying to capture this moment to tuck away inside my memory. Her first day of school, first day of Kindergarten. We read some books the night before about what kindergarten was going to be like, we've read them through the whole summer preparing her but more importantly preparing me to let her go. 

"Do you have any questions about school?"

"Nope!"

"Are you feeling scared or nervous about anything?"

"Nope!"

"When I was five, I loved school and I know you will too. You will learn so many new things and make so many friends."

"I know, Mom."

I tucked her in that night and I was filled with so many different and conflicting emotions. It had been difficult to stay excited about the start of school due to the Tropical storm that cancelled the first 2 days. I had such anticipation up until then and then we were left wondering would we have school today? Would the flooding recede? Would I survive letting her go?

All summer long she had been asking me when kindergarten was going to start. She was so ready. I was not. I figure it's our jobs as parents to keep letting them go one piece at a time. When they are ready for that, it means your have succeeded, however heavy it makes your heart.

My fears are rooted in the unknown. My school age years were spent in the cozy cover of private school. I only had not so pleasant experiences with "public school" kids. Prayer has eased so many of my worries, God certainly has a plan. I keep running the same thoughts through my head, "Be anxious for nothing."  He knows the numbers of hairs on my child's head, He walks beside her and holds her hand when I am not there. Her classroom theme is frogs because her teacher loves frogs. I learn later that to her teacher the frog is a symbol to "Fully Rely On God." I find comfort and relief from my worries. God is so good to put this teacher in her life...His plan is perfect.

She hands me the doodle pad that she's been drawing on in the back of the car on the way to school. It's only about a 7 minute drive but she has managed to trace her hand and draw a heart next to it,

"Here Mom. Here is my hand so you can remember how big I am right now and you can look at this when you miss me while I'm at school. And I drew a heart next to the hand so you know that I love you."

She walks in the classroom and with her is my heart beating with her steps away from me. I remember, "Making the decision to have a child - it's momentous. it is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body" and never have I felt it more true than that moment. She finds her name-tag. Her teacher is wearing a frog costume. Parents are buzzing around taking pictures, comforting tears, easing fears. She is not afraid, I am not needed, I've done my job. 

I wonder what she's doing at different times during the day. i made sure to fill that first day with many errands, a doctor's appointment, a playdate...so that I wouldn't have time to give into my sadness about my little one growing up in what literally seems like a blink of an eye. Finley asks me numerous times during the day when it will be time to pick Piper up from school? She has suddenly lost her best playmate, her best friend.  

She gets in the car in a flurry, the look on her face of a bit of confusion, fatigue, but mostly joy. 

"Piper! Piper! Look at me back here. Look at me Piper!"

"What is it, Finley?"

"Did you like your first day of school?"

"It was good."

"Did you make any new friends?"

"Yes!"

"I missed you, Piper."

"I missed you too, Finley."

We make it home eventually and settle in together playing and talking and laughing. It is a new season in our family. She loves school and I am so relieved and I pack her lunch that night and slip in a note, "I love you."

Finley vocab

As Finley was filling her glass with water tonight I told her that the other day i wasn't paying attention and my glass "overflowed" with water.

"Well, mom, I was watching my glass so it wasn't outer-sploded with water."

From the backseat

Piper to Finley:

"Finley, did you know that Grammy and Grandpaw are old? They are old, old friends of our's and we are old, old friends of their's."

Piper Speak

"Mama, I think Jonas must be the cutest baby in the whole wide world. I mean, we never had a baby boy like this before, you know, with blue eyes and a round head and everything. Right, mama?"

Finley Speak

" Mama, if I was like you , I would be different."

birth announcement

Front:

Back:

so my question is: is it tacky to send these out now that he's almost 3 months old and the third child?

these were inspired by MightyGirl.

Bicycle Bicycle

my niece has a blog and she's awesome! That is all.

Overheard from the backseat:

"But, I'm not pregnant, I just ate too much nuts!" said the "stuffed" squirrel.

I don't even know where to start with that one...

For Sweet Baby Jonas

So, each of my girls has a song that I sing to them from when they were new: Piper's is "The Water is Wide" (also sang at our wedding) and Finley's is "Wildflowers" by Tom Petty, random, I know, but whenever they were upset I could without fail calm them by singing them their "song."

Well, Jonas needed a song, although I am singing to him all the time ranging from Bob Marley to the Indiana Jones theme. But here is his song:

Nothing that I Can Do
- Ben Taylor

First morning ever to have seen the sun
Must have run the other way
Until she found that it was only getting earlier that way
When she spun one-hundred eighty degrees
And beheld the sweet light rising through the trees
She fell to her knees and she began to smile, because
She had been in darkness for a long long while,
She said...

There is nothing that I can do but belong to you
Heaven and Earth and I find myself
Sining this song for you
As luck would have it, it just so happens that there's
Nothing I'd Rather do

And the first lesson ever to have learned its way
Must've been suprised
All i can say is im just glad that i survived,
And the first river to have met the sea,
I beleive he must've sighed, said
All this rambling I'm glad to finally find, that
After all I haven't just been wasting my time.

There is nothing that i can do but belong to you
Heaven and Earth and I find myself
Singing this song for you
As luck would have it, it just so happens that there's
Nothing I'd Rather do.

Just so long as your flying around high
Whatever you find out in the sky
dont forget to fall down sometimes
I'm easy to find, look around you
It's a good thing that I finally found you.

There is nothing that I can do but belong to you
Heaven and Earth and I find myself
Singing this song for you
As luck would have it, it just so happens that there's
Nothing I'd Rather do.

Car talk

Piper: What's the name of this song, mom?

Me: 4 minutes to save the world.

Piper: what are the names of the people singing the song?

Me: Madonna, Justin Timberlake, and Tim-Ba-Land

Piper: well, those are interesting names.

Jonas Michael Grimm

"At one glance I love you with a thousand hearts."

- Mihri Hatun

born Wednesday, April 23rd

7:11 in the morning

8 pounds 1 ounce

20 1/2 inches

39 weeks

I would never want to live more than 5 minutes from a beach. It is all I have ever known growing up here and now growing my own family here. There is just something about living in a place where the air is salty and the breeze is constant. Sometimes it takes my breath away when I walk up over the boardwalk and have the first glimpse of the waves rolling into the shore.

I squint because the sun reflects off of the water, my favorite time of the day at the beach is the early morning or early evening. Both times of day, the beach is relatively empty and waiting for discovery. I feel the breeze rushing through my hair, I breath in the salt, I sink into the sand. I feel my shoulders relax, my face soften.

Our playground. The girls run and jump. They spread their arms as wings and pretend to fly. I believe they could take flight. They search for shells with natural holes to make a necklace. The others, well, they are treasure.

"Here, mama, can you hold these? I don't want to lose them because they are so special."

They skip down to the water's edge to tip toe into the waves, like they are sneaking up on a friend playing hide and seek. The waves rolls in to catch them, they scream in delight and run run run away, "Don't let the water get your toes, toes, toes."

They build elaborate stories around even more elaborate sand creations. Their cheeks are pink, they smell of sunscreen, my favorite. The warmth of the sun on my skin, the warmth of the joy in my soul. We dig and we bury. They are mermaids with tails made of sand, scales from seashells, seaweed hair. Their smiles are wide and my cup, it runs over.

We pack up to leave, we thank the beach for a beautiful day. Tired and sandy, happy and content we go home, but never far from that magical place. It holds so much for me and though it is long and open to anyone and everyone, it is mine and holds my thoughts and secrets. My stress and my elation.

It has been a stressful week but at the same time a week in which I had to consciously calm myself and take it in before our family changes. Change.

babymoon

Piper is 5!

Happy Birthday Bug!

Piper's 5th Birthday Party

more here