a.rose

Hallie and Hanna love singing.  They love when I sing.  We sing a lot.  Sometimes I get tired of the same verses over and over, and so I make up new ones. Sometimes Hallie requests a song, and I have no idea what she is talking about, so I make one up.  In case you are in need of a new song or new verses, I will share them with you: She begged and begged for a song about butterflies, but I knew no butterfly songs, so I came up with this.  The Butterfly Song (to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) Flitter flutter, butterfly You look so pretty in the sky Come land on me and we will play Together on this sunny day Flitter flutter, butterfly You look so pretty in the sky. Hallie and Hanna are on a huge "Leafy Treetops" kick right now, and I got tired of singing the only two verses that I know over and over, so I came up with two more. Extra Verses (to the tune of Leafy Treetops) In the soft green grass the bunnies are hopping Be nice to all your f...

It doesn't take much to get her started.  Today, it began with nothing more exciting than a picture of a man driving a bus. I thought that I had already mastered the art of deflecting the "why" questions, but today I was really tested - and I don't want to see my grade. "Why is that man in the bus, mommy?" "Because he is the bus driver." "Why is he the bus driver?" "Because that is his job." (I will now forgo the quotation marks, and the separating per line, I think you get the picture.) Why is that his job? Because that is what they pay him to do. Why do they pay him to do it? Because he needs the money.  Why does he need money?   So he can feed his family.  Why does he feed his family? Because he loves them.  But why does he feed them when he loves them? Because they get hungry. Why do they get hungry? Because they need to eat.  Why do they need to eat when they get hungry? Because their bodies need food. W...

I found a scrap of paper a while back on which I had written some moments when I feel God's love, and just generally am very happy.  I feel God 's love when I hear a child laughing It is eating cornbread hot with butter and honey. It is seeing your mother's eyes in a brand new face. It is bursting in fireworks in the night sky. My sister added her thoughts as well: I feel God 's love when I see my baby's sleeping face. It is smelling freshly cut grass. It is watching "dead" plants come back to life in the spring. It is catching my husband's eye and smile at the dinner table after a long day. It is the part of me that I will never lose. When do you feel God's love, or what never fails to make you happy?

Today was the kind of day that starts off with all signs pointing toward awful, and you wonder desperately how you are going to get through it. Yesterday was a good day, Hallie had some friends over and while they played the moms and I discussed our plans for play school this year, and it was so fun to have a houseful of friends - for the girls and for me.  The bad news is, I spent a great deal of time bending over picking up toys that had migrated from the toy room to every other room of the house.  Having 10 kids over will do that.  Bending over to pick up toys shouldn't be a problem, except for my little friend.  Remember my little friend ?  Apparently I really aggravated it yesterday, because for most of the three and a half years that my little friend has been with me it hasn't bothered me more than a day or two here and there, but only during the last months of pregnancy when my belly is big and hello, things are stretching. And so to have it hurt so m...

Yesterday when I was finished doing the girl's hair I was on my way out the door to go brush my own teeth and get myself ready for the day. Hanna wanted to read Go Dog Go , but so did Hallie.  Hallie had it first, and so I asked her if she could please just hold it so Hanna could see it also, and read it out loud to her.  (Hallie has many of her books memorized from hearing them so many times.)  Hallie said she didn't want to read it to Hanna, she just wanted to look at it.  I asked her to just please be nice and let Hanna at least see the pictures too. Then, leaving them to their own devices (at certain points they have to work out their own relationship, don't you think?) and hoping that Hallie would, at least, decide to let her sister look at the pictures with her, I went to brush my teeth.  When I was done with that I saw that I still had about fifteen minutes before we had to leave to go wherever we were going, and so of course... I laid back down in bed....

A man winked at me at the library a few weeks ago. But that isn't really the beginning of this story. I knew that I wanted to marry Devin approximately five minutes after I met him.  When I knew for sure that we were going to be married, my friend Al printed off pages and pages of rings, wedding and engagement, and I went through and circled the ones I really liked, exed out the ones I couldn't stand, and so gave her a feeling for what I wanted.  And I really only wanted one ring. One very simple ring that I could wear first as an engagement ring, and then as my wedding ring. Devin called Al up and asked her if she would help him find a ring that I would like.  They found the perfect one.  As a 17 or so year old girl at a church activity we had made wedding cans , where we put all our hopes and dreams and plans for our ideal wedding into a can, sealed it, and never opened it until we were engaged.  When I opened mine after Devin proposed, I found inside a ...

When Hanna was still waking up regularly at night and I would have to get out of bed and go to her, I would occasionally find Hallie curled up in a tight ball, asleep.  The strange part was that she would be asleep on the floor, in the middle of the hallway, sometimes right in front of our door. Now, Devin and I don't lock our door at night. Hallie frequently comes in when she is sick, or even just when she has to go potty. She'll wake me up, I'll say, "Ok, go use the potty then get back in bed." She says "ok", she goes into our bathroom, does her business, flushes and then goes back to bed. I tell her good night as she goes out the door.  So I know that she knows she can come into our room if she needs something. So why in the world do I find her on the floor in the hallway? One time I was in a deep sleep, but was suddenly jolted straight out of it.  I don't know if Hallie made a noise or if my subconscious just became aware of her presence, but...

   What's that old saying?  Something about not judging someone until you've walked a mile in their shoes?  Unfortunately for me, I guess that means my children can judge me now. Note to self: Start hiding shoes.

I like to read.  I think most of you know this.  I recently finished reading Sherlock Holmes (collection) by Arthur Conan Doyle.  What impresses me most about these authors of the long - gone era, including Jane Austen, Wilkie Collins, and you know the kind of author I mean, is their incredible ability to describe their characters.  I refer you, as I did in this post, to Wilkie Collins' description of one of his characters:  "Some of us rush through life; and some of us saunter through life.  Mrs. Vesey sat through life. ... A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that she had been actually alive since the hour of her birth." Nowadays, it seems that when an author wants to describe their character it goes something like this: "She looked at him, and she saw him. He had brown hair, and chocolate eyes.  He was hot. So hot she trembled."  (Not a paragraph from an actual book....

To give you an indication of just how much I am struggling, I will give you some key indicators. a. We have lived here for almost a year and a half now, and I still think of our zip code in Peoria when writing our address.  They aren't even close to being the same. b. I frequently can not remember our phone number. Again, a year and a half I've had this number.  So please don't ask for our cell phone number, I don't really know it. c. Every time I have to go somewhere, if I don't give myself an extra ten minutes to search for the keys, we'll be late. I always find them in the most random spot and think "why in the world would I have put the keys here?" I so wish I could blame this on the girls... My main question as I lay awake at night is this: am I going to recover use of my brain in nine months, or is this permanent?  I mean, I remember mommy brain with Hallie and with Hanna, but right now I really feel like I'm sailing at half mast.  Do...

  When is a medium shrimp not a medium shrimp?   Any guesses? None? None at all? Come on, somebody? All right. I'll tell you.  A medium shrimp is not a medium shrimp when it is being used as a visual aid to represent the approximate size (this week) of our as of yet unborn third baby. Last week, it was a lime. I think I liked last week better. We're thinking February 2012. (But we have high hopes for January -- wouldn't that be crazy?)  (AND to my dear friends who may have felt neglected lately, I sincerely apologize. I haven't been well.)

I was downstairs on the computer, on the phone with Devin trying to work out his hotel reservations as he drove around Minneapolis hoping he wouldn't have to spend the night in his car. My sister-in-law Rachel was upstairs, nursing baby Tabitha.  My brother Dan was on the top floor in the bedroom laying down. Hallie (3 yrs), Emily (2 yrs), and Hanna (1 yr) were entertaining themselves, for the most part. I came up the stairs when I was done on the phone/computer with Devin and sat down on the couch to talk to Rachel. I was about to start in on how Devin had accidentally reserved a smoking room, and the hotel had no non-smoking available yadda yadda yadda, when my little niece Emily came over to me, her face puckered up and sad. "Finger hurt," she said to me, holding up her bloody index finger for evidence.  I sprang to my feet midsentence, picked her up and rushed her to the bathroom so I could wash the blood off and see how deep the cut was. Having washed the cut, ...

Yesterday was Saturday. This means that Devin and I (and my brother and his wife, because they are visiting us, and visitors are not spared - ask anyone who has visited us over a Saturday, they'll tell you tales) spent hours in the yard, trying to tame the wilderness that disgruntles our neighbors. Usually I put on sunscreen, because as most people know, hours in the sun cause sunburns, and repeated sunburns can cause skin cancer.  I am hoping to avoid this, and so we lather up the girls and ourselves before heading outside.  Now, to be clear and honest, usually when I lather up I put the screen on my face and arms.  I leave my legs alone, because those poor things never really see the light of day, and when they do in my cut-off-yard-working jeans I like them to catch a few rays.  Not that I've ever seen any evidence of them catching any at all, but hope dies hard and I just keep trying.  Yesterday was no exception, my legs were completely screen free, ready ...

It has been hot. And I have been tired.  These are my two excuses for staying away from my  blog for so long. But I can resist no longer, even though with the heat sucking all my energy away I have none left to write anything witty or creative or even interesting.  So I leave you with this picture, and the charge to come up with something fantastic to say about it yourselves, if you would like. Otherwise, just enjoy the moments. That's what I did.  Hallie is reading the complete works of Jane Austen, Hanna is reading the last installment of the Harry Potter series.  These ladies know how to pick 'em. (Was that witty? Creative? Cute?) Don't forget to take us!  (This one, not so witty or creative right? Totally lame? Oh well.)