Deep and Shallow: February 16 - 22

I remember your ancient laws, O Lord, and I find comfort in them. 
Ps. 119:52

TUESDAY
Let's get one thing straight: Being a mom is hard work. Whether you're getting up every 3 hours to breastfeed (or bottlefeed) an infant, preventing a new crawler from doing somersaults down the stairs, relocating every object in your living room for the safety of your toddler, or washing your highchair cover for the second time in a week after a diaper leaked all over it, it's hard. Whether you're pumping breastmilk at work, or folding the same just-washed onesies you washed and folded two days ago, or filling your cart with Gerber baby food jars, or trying (again!) to get your baby to sign "please," it's never-ending, it's attention-swallowing, it's emotion-sucking, and it's always changing.

Like some of you, I am a working mom. I spend mornings in the office and come home to care for my son in the afternoons. As a Christian mom, with friends who spend their entire days at home with their kids, I can feel like a failure being only a "part-time mother." Have I bought culture's ideal of the working woman? Am I refusing to give my son the complete mom he should have? Am I being stubborn to keep working when my place should be with my child? Am I to be pitied because we're obviously so poor that I have to keep going to work every day?

To all of these, no.

Do I expect to someday be a "stay-at-home mom?"

I'm not sure. 

The days I spend at home with Henry are few and usually they're special. But I just had three of them in a row, and it was exhausting. I'm looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow. I know I wouldn't have felt this when he was a few months old, but now that he's one, I find that I can love him better when I get a break. For me, right now, the mom life I'm living is perfect. I enjoy my job and I enjoy having obligations other than washing diapers and making toddler food and picking up wooden blocks. I love my little boy and I love the time I spend with him. And I think I do it better when part of my day is spent doing something else.

There's no perfect formula for being a perfect mom. If you're a mom who spends your days at home - whether that includes working from home, homeschooling, or just keeping things afloat - that's good. If you're a mom who works half-days or full-days or nights or weekends or some tailor-made schedule - that's good. If you've been in one camp and are now in the other one - that's good too.

Being a mom is hard, but the hardest part is the comparison. "I'm doing it better than you." Or, "She's doing it way better than me." Cloth diapers, disposable diapers. Formula, breastmilk. Babywise, demand-feeding. Home-pureed organic vegetables, Up&Up squeezey tubes from Target. Spanking, not spanking. Working mom, stay-at-home mom. We judge and we feel judged.

Because I'm feeling the importance of this - or because maybe I'm the only one who struggles with this - here's a call to rejoice in the path you're walking. I want to learn from moms who are doing it differently and be open to them learning from me, if they'd like to. I want to stop pitying moms who are "making mistakes" and stop pitying myself for "failing." Without going all Similac-commercial on you, I suggest we recognize that what we're doing is hard and that we're each finding the way through this jungle that works best for us. Keep washing those onesies, keep mashing up those bananas, keep gating those staircases. I'm done judging you and judging myself. And tomorrow, I'm going to work.

Here's a mom moment you can judge me for, if you want. I fed my one-year-old a popsicle today.

He loved it.

WEDNESDAY
Today was going to be packed. Babysitting for a friend. Multiple evening obligations, back to back. An errand to run. Dinner to make, dinner to eat (in some miraculously appearing moments), somewhere else to go, and then dinner prep to do for tomorrow's crockpot meal.

But in a perfect storm of last-minute changes, nothing went as planned.

My babysitting gig got cancelled. We ended up sharing a pizzas with a few friends, leaving the dinner I'd made to be stowed away in the fridge for tomorrow. My evening Bible Study was cancelled, and I had the whole night free to work on some projects that had been piling up.

It was perfect. 

"The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps." What am I planning right now? For tomorrow? For next fall? For my next five years? What do I think is going to happen? With certainty, I can say that those things will not be the story I tell after that time has passed. Tonight, on a tiny scale, shows who's in charge. And it's not me. And when everything that happens is completely counter to my expectations, and it turns out far better than my plans were, I'm reminded that the best Planner is not me after all.

FRIDAY
Let's remember how this week went. Monday, no school for President's Day. Tuesday, Snow day. Wednesday, day of ultimate plan upheaval. Thursday, Open House at school keeps Pete out late. Today, two hour delay due to extreme cold. No single day of this week was "normal."

In keeping with that theme, I got home today and discovered there was a bat in my basement. A very active bat. A bat that was fluttering angrily against the door between the basement and the kitchen. You should know that in my married life we have had no fewer than three real-live bat experiences in our living space. And Pete had several notable encounters before we were married. So as unusual as a bat situation should be, I was disappointingly unsurprised. When Pete came home, I had an errand to run, so I took Henry and left Pete to battle the villain alone. But when I was on my way home and texted him to ask if the coast was clear, he replied "Not necessarily. I haven't found your adversary."

Great.

As I pulled into the driveway and got myself and Henry out of the car, I heard a creature in flight banging into windows inside the sunporch. My bat! But it wasn't a bat. It was a starling. A better outcome than a rabid bat, but still a less than desirable basement pet. We let it out of the porch into the freedom of the great big world and he joined a large flock on the tree next door. Pete said they must have been waiting for him. Maybe so.

SATURDAY
I'm back where I was some 11 hours ago, sitting with propped feet in the living room while H sleeps upstairs. But this time I don't have the ever-escalating heart rate as his nap's-end draws near and my "free time" comes to a close. Now he's down for the night and I have the house to myself. We're snowed in. Pete's at the Men's Retreat and hopefully on his way home soon. I'm wanting to worry, but I'm choosing peace.

At the beginning of the week I was feeling worn out by long days with my son. Today, though, I enjoyed him. We snuggled in bed when he woke up too early. I chased him in endless circles around the dining room table. We read books (and ate scones!) with Nannie and Pops who came over to keep us company. I managed - finally - to find a toy of his that was missing. He shared grape halves with me. We went for walks in the snow. We shared a dinner of pesto tilapia with penne and roasted broccoli. I gave him a bath and sang him his bedtime hymn and he snuggled down in his airplane jammies with Bunny's arm in his mouth. We didn't manage to get out today like I'd hoped, but I relished the day with my little boy.

Now, to battle the worry about Pete's safety that's nipping at my mind, I'm going to bake. If it's any good, maybe you'll see the recipe here!

Grateful this week for: 
disrupted plans
coffee
more coffee
snow glitter
little boy smiles
little boy laughs
little boy babbles
guests
Italian Delite
baking
more baking

Be Mine: February 9 - 15

"I will walk about in freedom, for I have sought out your precepts."
Ps. 119: 45

MONDAY
Remember when you were a kid and you were just itching for a snow day? Or a delay? Or an early dismissal? It's magical. It's exciting. It's edge-of-your-seat drama. But when you work the front desk at a school, it's none of this. It's exhausting. It's busy. It's phone-ringing-of-the-hook drama. Today was one of these days.

Since we're a private school, we receive kids from about 14 districts. If they call an early dismissal - or a morning delay - the kids in that district are transported by bus on that district's schedule. Today at 9:00 one of our schools called an early dismissal. We were hoping it would only be that one and we could proceed as normal for the rest of the day. No such luck. One by one, all of our schools (except one) called early dismissals and gave us their dismissal times, which were stretched over a two-hour period.

Then parents started calling. "When will my child be dismissed?" "I was going to pick her up. Should I still do that?" "Can you tell my kids to be sure to get on the bus?" "What about the basketball game tonight?" "Will there still be play practice?" We've had enough practice at this that we are able to answer most questions. And they're valid, understandable questions! But it's wearying.

The irony today was that there wasn't a flake of snow in sight. Or a drop of rain. Temperatures were really low and freezing rain was predicted for the afternoon, but it's a little humorous to dismiss a whole school full of kids not into a blizzard, or even the beginnings of a blizzard, but into... a cold and gloomy February day.

My husband - who's retained more 'kid' than I have - thought today's dismissal was wonderful. And a coworker thought the "command central" of the office was awesome. In a way, they're both right. A change in the normal routine is refreshing, even if it means answering the phone every 30 seconds and setting aside my to-do list for the day to manage the closings. On days like this one, I can handle the whirlwind gracefully and with an eye to eternity, or I can become consumed by the whirlwind and completely lose focus. It's a choice every day, but more noticeably on days when things seem out of control. The truth is, every day is wildly out of control - out of my control, anyway - and only being at peace with the One who is in control makes it possible to find the magic in any ordinary day.

WEDNESDAY
I've been reading When People are Big and God is Small, which we will hopefully be doing in my Bible Study sometime in the next year or so. The chapter on "growing in the fear of the Lord" suggests reading regularly the last few chapters of Job. "It is a speech intended to cause Job to grow even more in knowing God's greatness. If you read these chapters every day for a month you will find that they are a treatment for almost anything." I have been reading them for 3 days, and this is already true. My heart is so humbled to think on the greatness of God and it really changes my perspective on things when I consider the absolute control God has over everything. Who am I to question him? To try to turn things in my favor? To complain? To be annoyed? It's humbling, but not depressing. I feel awed at God's power and grateful to be in His hands. Add Job 38-41 to your devotions this week. It's pretty powerful.

THURSDAY

When I was a little girl, my dad would bring home a special Valentine's Day gift for my sister and me every year, nearly always a stuffed animal. I had a stash of pink, white, and red critters and the new bear or monkey or rabbit was added delightfully to the collection. The dead-center of February, the dead-center of a cold winter, was warm and bright and cheerful in the supermarket aisles of shimmery pink and glimmery red. By middle school, I had made a tradition of wearing red and pink every day from February 1st through the 14th. I didn't have a boyfriend, but I didn't need one. I was blissfully happy with Valentine's Day as a single girl, drenched in sappiness and not the least bit embarrassed about it.

Valentine's Days while I was in college cemented the day as my favorite holiday. On February 14th of my freshman year, the boys who lived on the top floor of my building bought a rose for each of the girls on the other three floors. The next year on Valentine's Day, snow blanketed the campus forcing an unprecedented cancellation of all classes. I spent the next Valentine's Day in Oxford, England with a houseful of American students. We made a fantastic feast, topped off by layered chocolate heart-shaped brownie cakes and chocolate covered strawberries, and the next day some of us left for a weekend in Rome. 

By the next Valentine's Day, I had met my true love (who is now my husband) and though this should have been the Valentine's Day I'd been waiting for all my life, the glow of a blossoming genuine love had dimmed the shimmer I'd found in all the Valentine's Days that had gone before. When it was just me and my candy heart earrings and my girlfriends and my glittery garlands and chocolates and stuffed animals, falling in love with love was easy. When February 14th - or any day of the year - brought the reality of a serious relationship, none of that glitzy stuff meant anything. It didn't work anymore. Though I kept decorating and pulling out my collection of Valentine's socks each winter, the excitement had worn off. I suppose it's the same phenomenon that causes the drive to the beach to actually be more exciting than the vacation week itself, or the anticipation of Christmas morning to be more magical than those few hours ever actually are. I'd been glorifying "love" for all those years, and now here it was. Not a let-down, just the end of the anticipation.

Since then, for the past 6 Valentine's Days, there's been less pink, fewer decorations, and a decreasing collection of heart earrings in my jewelry box. This year I got out my box of Valentine's Day decorations, but couldn't bring myself to put any of them up. I've outgrown them. I made some simple heart garlands out of scrapbook paper in deep reds and browns instead. Grown-up V-day decorations. I miss the glitz a little bit, but it's been replaced by the deep and lasting love of a committed husband. That's something you can't box up with chocolate truffles, can't put on a conversation heart, can't spell out with x's and o's. And finally, I'm OK with that.

FRIDAY
Valentine's present from my love.

And I got him a 1-gallon jar of dill pickles.

That's true love.

SATURDAY
I spent the whole day baking. Creme brulee first, which had to chill for 6 hours, then a devil's food cake with strawberry cream filling, chocolate ganache, and chocolate curls. I'm not really good at this kind of thing - I'm not a chef - but it completely absorbed me all day. (Along with Love Songs Radio on Pandora.) Life's not about me and what satisfies or fulfills me, so I want to be really careful not to go in that direction. But I was very content spending the whole day in the kitchen and when I served the desserts at our Brother Sister Valentine's Dinner (with Pete and his three brothers, and all four wives) I felt reassured that my day had been well-spent. Even though the creme brulee was a little runny and the cake was a little dry.

Pete spent the day working with his brother and dad on the new bathroom. Progress is slow, but steady. I love what's happening up there and I'm so excited for the finished project!

SUNDAY
Sick mama and sick baby boy today. Skipped church, wiped runny noses (mine and his) all day, and snuggled for the three hymns (instead of the usual one) before bedtime. Glad the weekend's extended by one day this time. Thank you, Lord, for Presidents Day.

Grateful this week for:
kitchen counter lamp
2 hour delay
H's attempts with a fork!
eggs and sweet potato hashbrowns
errands with my boys
birds in winter
emoji texts
wooden animal toys
nail makeover
pink
chocolate
sappy love songs
coworkers who are friends
sunshine
orchid
Peter
baking
Charlotte snuggles
three bonus sisters
snow plows and salt trucks
smile cheeks
avocado and oatmeal facial mask
2nd cup of coffee
honesty
hymns
leftover stromboli

PS:  A couple new recipes will be posting here in the next week or so.

Time Management: February 2 - 8

Teach me..., give me..., direct me..., turn me..., preserve me..., fulfill your promise... in your righteousness. 
Ps. 119:33-40

THURSDAY
My dear sister-in-law offered to bring us dinner tonight out of the blue. What a blessing! I used the extra time to catch up on overdue chores. I washed some windows (yes, in February), cleaned out my toaster oven, and vacuumed and dusted the living room. I folded clean diapers, entered receipts into my budget spreadsheet, organized the books on each bookshelf by color, and did a load of laundry. When one task (making dinner) is lifted, a whole armload of extra time and energy is suddenly available for other things.

I read somewhere that you don't need extra time in your life for the things you wish you could do. You just need to put down your iphone and you'll probably find that you have the time you thought you lacked. I like to think I don't get wrapped up in social media - or anything else frivolous - so much that it precludes doing other things in a given day. But if I'm honest, many of my minutes each day are misspent. In the course of composing this paragraph, I stopped to order books, look up baked oatmeal recipes, stalk old college friends, change my Pandora station, and read a blog post about yoga pants. And those are just my internet distractions. I seem incapable of shutting down the dozens of newsfeeds running in my head at once.

My one year old has a short attention span, but when he's doing something, he can be pretty intent. I love watching him play, dumping blocks out of the bin, then putting them all back in. Or pulling each book from the shelf one at a time. After 27 years I've lost the skill of doing just one thing. I'm aiming to get that back.

FRIDAY
I needed milk today, so Henry and I went to pick some up.

Here:

It's one of my top five favorite places on the planet. The smell, the smallness, the homeyness, the twisty-tied bags of cereal on shelves, local produce, fresh ground coffee, and the best chocolate milk you've ever tasted in your life. It's just a mile or so from our first apartment, which is about 25 minutes from where we live now. A bit of a drive for milk, you might think, but it's worth every mile.

I feel like I fit there, like it waits for me. It doesn't, of course. The Farm Store wouldn't know if I moved to Alaska and never came back. But like any place where you once belonged, any place that once felt like home, it draws me.

Nostalgia is a powerful thing. That ache for a place, the way the heart puts down anchors all over the globe. It's not just the Farm Store itself that I love. It's the narrow roads that take me there, the cemetery on the corner, the old farmhouses, the post office, every tree and creek and bridge, all reminding me of that chapter of life when these were part of my daily landscape.

Too much nostalgia for a place from the past is unwise. But an occasional drive out to Kolb's for a few gallons of farm fresh milk seems a healthy way to satisfy the ache. And a 45-cent half pint of chocolate milk to drink on the way home is a nice consolation prize to make up for moving away.

I thought a lot about my five favorite places. The other four winners are: 
- 426 Chatam Dr, Cape May NJ
- Flanders Hotel, Ocean City NJ
- 8 Crick Road, Oxford England
- Teach's Lair Marina, Cape Hatteras NC
- Honorable Mention: the walking trail outside Holley Ross Pottery, Cresco PA

SATURDAY
Why does it seem like my days revolve around food? As I try to map out how my day has gone, nearly every item is food-related. Breakfast with P and H, devotions with coffee, meal-planning, preparing H's lunch, grocery shopping, leftovers for my own lunch, dinner prep, cooking sweet potato hashbrowns to try this week. I do love a good afternoon in the kitchen, and today was extra relaxing after Mom and Dad took Henry for the afternoon. He got a visit with Nannie and Pops (and MomMom and PopPop!) and I got some uninterrupted cooking time. As far as doing one thing at a time goes, this was a successful afternoon.

Now, as night blues the sky outside and Pete works upstairs with his brother and dad on our new bathroom, I'm sipping lemon water and looking forward to sharing some Homestyle Potato Soup with Jon and Kim before we binge on a few episodes of Downton Abbey. 

Saturday is bliss. 

Grateful this week for: 
two hour delay
coffee
blue jeans
pink sunrise
toddler toys
H's tower of blocks
Little Blue Truck book 
jamberry nail wraps
hot tea
H's long afternoon nap
houseplant
Advil
Admin Team
lemon salt scrub
hot crusty bread
nieces
the built-in seats for kids in shopping carts
the search for joy

One of those weeks: Jan 26 - Feb 1

I am laid low in the dust; preserve my life according to your Word. 
Ps. 119: 25
(I'm meditating each week on one section of Psalm 119 and including a selected verse at the top of each post. This verse, the first of the 'daleth' section, was appropriate to read each morning this week as I frequently felt 'in the dust.' Some weeks are like that.)

TUESDAY
Productivity. I crave it. Double-tasking, triple-tasking. I told a coworker today that I don't think I know how to do just one thing anymore. Though it sounds like an accomplishment - and maybe in my workplace it sometimes is - I actually grieve the loss of simplicity that doing just one thing brings. Yesterday we had a snow day. A day off. A rest. Or it should have been. I got a few little tasks done (mostly while H took his naps), but spent much of the day in internal monologues with myself about how I should be spending my one precious snow day and feeling disappointed in myself as the minutes ticked by. Becoming addicted to getting a lot done can cripple the ability to relax.

One of my goals for 2015 is to learn to do one thing at a time. And coupled with that, to embrace rest, rather than scrambling after achievements. So tonight, rather than cooking batches of baby food, doing laundry, or sweeping the floors (or all three at once), I took my laptop upstairs, snuggled in some blankets, and watched a movie. OK, I ate ice cream too. That was multi-tasking, but just barely.

THURSDAY
There are work days when you want to scream. When every little thing falls apart and every extra task gets dumped on top of your already-long morning list and it's all urgent. When it's January and the heat's not working and you're shivering. It's not fair, but it's your day and you can either swallow your anger, or you can bleed out your stress onto everybody else. When it's over at 12:00, you just want to come home and crash but there's a different list waiting at home, and really there's always another list waiting somewhere and it's never really over.

Tea and slippers and a blanket. A hymnal and a squirmy one-year-old.
It's not perfect. But it's a list to be grateful for.

FRIDAY
Inspired by this blog post, I bring you my first "Photo an Hour."

6:00am 

7:00am 

8:00am 

9:00am 

10:00am 

11:00am 

12:00pm 

1:00pm 

2:00pm 

3:00pm 

4:00pm  

5:00pm  

6:00pm  

7:00pm 

8:00pm 

SUNDAY
I should have known the weekend would end like this. Wicked head cold. Cancelled plans because while my uncle and cousins from New York were on the way here for a late family "Christmas," the truck broke down. House a mess from construction work on the new bathroom. A rare attempt at a nap is interrupted by a crying baby.

I'm definitely "laid low in the dust." I need Tylenol Daytime Cold. I need a long hot shower and a bottomless cup of hot lemon tea. I need a decent night's sleep and a snow day tomorrow and maybe one the next day too. I need a burst of energy to scrub the filthy floor on my hands and knees. I need an awful lot of things.

What I need most when I'm in the dust and my soul is weary isn't any of those things. It's the things in Psalm 119. Strength according to His word. Meditation on His wonderful deeds. A heart set on His laws. It might not clear up my congestion or soothe the body aches or get my floors clean or put my baby back to sleep.

But it sets my heart free. 

Grateful this week for: 
Tylenol Cold
leftovers
dances with H
work routine
hugs from H
prayers from a friend
lemon-dill fish and homemade pilaf
static on the radio