MommyCoddle

am I a modern mom?

Does your library have these newfangled "playaway" devices? These digital audiobook recordings that you can check out? Well, our library has recently introduced them–a hand held ipod-looking device that has a book already loaded on to it. You just plug in your earbuds and listen.

My children have been hounding me about them since the posters started going up in the library and I've really been dragging my feet. I rarely allow the girls to listen to my iPod, though they beg all the time. They have to be really sick, or really pathetic-looking in order for me to give in. Just the sight of them walking around tuned out to the world, plugged in to something else kind of gets to me. It's similar to the whole zone-out in front of the TV thing.

But last night after a homeschooling meeting at the library, I was browsing for some things to bring home to the girls, and there in front of me was the "playaway" for A Cricket in Times Square, the book Emma and I just finished reading, and another easier-read that Mary would be able to enjoy.

And I folded. I stuck those little devices in my bag and checked out.

You can imagine the squealing and excitement that "mom brought iPods home from the library!" when I arrived home last night before bed. Batteries were checked and replaced, earbuds were untangled, buttons were explained, and "ipods" were set out carefully on bedside tables for morning.

This morning, two girls emerged at my bedside, talking extremely loud with wires trailing from their earlobes. Ugh! Am I a modern mom? I don't think I'm there yet.

I'm reminded of this fantastic post by Stefani. Now I just have to think of my "hook" to bring them back to my "little house on the prairie"-fantasy world that I want to live in.

On a more serious and important note, I hope you will take a moment to check out the important NieNie Auction going on at design mom. Amy asked me to share it with all of you. She thinks highly of you all, my dear readers, and hopes you can take a moment to help out. I was unfamiliar with Stephanie's story until this week. She tugs at my heart and demands my continual prayers. Please take a look.

Wishing you a wonderful, long weekend. xo.

Does your library have these newfangled “playaway” devices?

These digital audiobook recordings that you can check out? Well, the library of All You Can Books
has recently introduced them–a hand held ipod-looking device that has a book already loaded on to it. You just plug in your earbuds and listen.

My children have been hounding me about them since the posters started going up in the library and I’ve really been dragging my feet. I rarely allow the girls to listen to my iPod, though they beg all the time. They have to be really sick, or really pathetic-looking in order for me to give in. Just the sight of them walking around tuned out to the world, plugged in to something else kind of gets to me. It’s similar to the whole zone-out in front of the TV thing.

But last night after a homeschooling meeting at the library, I was browsing for some things to bring home to the girls, and there in front of me was the “playaway” for A Cricket in Times Square, the book Emma and I just finished reading, and another easier-read that Mary would be able to enjoy.

And I folded. I stuck those little devices in my bag and checked out.

You can imagine the squealing and excitement that “mom brought iPods home from the library!” when I arrived home last night before bed. Batteries were checked and replaced, earbuds were untangled, buttons were explained, and “ipods” were set out carefully on bedside tables for morning.

This morning, two girls emerged at my bedside, talking extremely loud with wires trailing from their earlobes. Ugh! Am I a modern mom? I don’t think I’m there yet.

I’m reminded of this fantastic post by Stefani. Now I just have to think of my “hook” to bring them back to my “little house on the prairie”-fantasy world that I want to live in.

On a more serious and important note, I hope you will take a moment to check out the important NieNie Auction going on at design mom. Amy asked me to share it with all of you. She thinks highly of you all, my dear readers, and hopes you can take a moment to help out. I was unfamiliar with Stephanie’s story until this week. She tugs at my heart and demands my continual prayers. Please take a look.

Wishing you a wonderful, long weekend. xo.

13 Comments

art with children / children and nature / crafting with children / life on thomas run / MOTHERHOOD

This Old House Rocks

If you live in an old house, chances are you are very familiar with the phenomenon that if you set a ball down to rest on the floor, it will easily roll to some little sweet spot across the room. Some resting place where the settling and shifting of time has caused the floors to sag and give.

We have many floors like that in this house. Character-giving flaws, right? In fact, there is a room upstairs, that when empty of all furniture, gives me a serious case of vertigo–the "fade to center" was that bad. Now that we've completely filled it with desks, beds, dressers, I feel much better. (Though I happily usher all our guests to that room.)

And when floors sag, chances are you have a few doors that don't cooperate either. If you want them open, they want to swing closed, if you want them closed, they'll swing open.

In a house with so much character as ours has, one piece of hardware is vital–the rock door stop.

And it just so happens that if you follow our mowed trail out the back fence and through the field you'll find yourself at the perfect little stream crossing. The perfect little spot for gathering nice, heavy rocks to hold back doors.

On this particular trip, I failed to remember that you can't rush stream play. We'd just returned home from running errands on a beautiful day and I was feeling stir crazy. If I was a completely responsible mother, I would have been sending all my children upstairs for stories and naps, but instead I decided to strap Elizabeth into the backpack, tell the girls to get their bathing suits on and grab a bucket. We were going rock collecting.

Of course I told them we were on a time crunch. A small piece of information that didn't sink in.

Over an hour later, after I'd given ten of the "I'm serious this time" warnings, none of which were serious: "Okay, I'm really leaving now and if you don't come with me I'll make you eat these rocks for supper…" I found myself standing knee-deep in the stream, shoulders aching from the 29-pound chunk of baby on my back, fingers stiff and cramped around the handle of a pink plastic feed bucket carrying 15 pounds of potential door stops, I realized all my mental guidelines for this trip had suddenly washed down the stream with the current:

We're only going to take 20 minutes.
Don't take off your shoes in the water.
Just don't get your hair wet.
Don't sit down there, you'll get the seat of your suit covered in sand and mud.
You must carry your own rocks back to the house.
Don't get me wet.

What was I thinking? Seriously.

Days later after the rocks were given "baths" more times than my own children, we finally had a painting day. (Which quickly morphed into a face (and hand and bicep)-painting stand. )

All in all. A good outcome. I have a lovely tattoo of flowers on my bicep, which I'm thinking looks pretty tough. And my bathroom door no longer hits me on the way out.

And when floors sag, chances are you have a few doors that don't cooperate either. If you want them open, they want to swing closed, if you want them closed, they'll swing open.

In a house with so much character as ours has, one piece of hardware is vital–the rock door stop.

Of course I told them we were on a time crunch. A small piece of information that didn't sink in.

What was I thinking? Seriously.

Days later after the rocks were given "baths" more times than my own children, we finally had a painting day. (Which quickly morphed into a face (and hand and bicep)-painting stand. )

All in all. A good outcome. I have a lovely tattoo of flowers on my bicep, which I'm thinking looks pretty tough. And my bathroom door no longer hits me on the way out.

24 Comments

LIVING WELL

Rejoice Evermore

Last night, Dan and I finished watching the HBO Films series John Adams. I think this last episode was my favorite. It was the only where I cried, but it was also so much about Abigail and John Adams reflecting on their lives as they reached the end of them.

In a final scene, John Adams is walking along a cornfield at dusk with his son, Thomas. His wife has died, all of his peers but Thomas Jefferson have passed away and this is what he has to stay:

"Still, still I am not weary of life. Strangely. I have hope. You take away hope and what remains? What pleasures? I have seen a queen of France with eighteen million levers of diamonds on her persons, but I declare that all the charms of her face and figure, added to all the glitter of her jewels, did not impress me as much as that little shrub. (pointing with his walking stick to a small white flower in the field.)
Now my mother always said that I never delighted enough in the mundane, but now I find that if I look at even the smallest thing…my imagination begins to roam the Milky Way. Rejoice evermore. Rejoice Evermore! …REJOICE! EVERMORE! I wish that had always been in my heart and on my tongue. I am filled with an irresistible impulse to fall on my knees right here in admiration….If only my knees would bend like they used to. "

Must we reach the end of our days for us to find delight in the mundane? For our hearts to rejoice at all times? For the smallest flower to stir our imagination? I surely hope not.

Tonight, I noticed the cool breeze on my bare skin, a group of dark cattle grazing on the hill below the old stone church, my children running and falling and laughing in the grass with their father, a moment of quiet, just for me.

Those words of John Adams stirred something inside me. They once again reminded me to fill my heart and my days with thankfulness, hope, joy, curiosity. To take pleasure in the smallest flower, the most mundane tasks oftentimes repeated day after day after day. To notice. To not grow weary.

Life is full of so many pleasures.

Rejoice Evermore.

In a final scene, John Adams is walking along a cornfield at dusk with his son, Thomas. His wife has died, all of his peers but Thomas Jefferson have passed away and this is what he has to stay:

Must we reach the end of our days for us to find delight in the mundane? For our hearts to rejoice at all times? For the smallest flower to stir our imagination? I surely hope not.

Life is full of so many pleasures.

Rejoice Evermore.

29 Comments