of rebecca

I hope you are able to celebrate well the remaining 47 minutes of your birthday.

I hope that it is filled with

quiet

sleep

alone time.

But that in the morning you wake up to a great many smiles and a reminder

of the great mom

that you are.

happy birthday.

p.s.

try to look like you're actually aging.

of holly

I hope that today was a great day.

I know it wasn't THE day but for someone like you there should be at least two celebrations where we remind you of how awesome you are.

Awesome for being a great mom, a forever self educator and great conversationalist.

happy birthday--the other day

and happy

today.

I am glad you're here.

of jessica

It is an unusual thing how marriage makes family of strangers.  How so many years ago Jessica was unknown to me and now she is a sister. 
A sister through experience and situation.  A sister through marriage and motherhood. 
A sister who's fun to talk to and easy to be with.
A sister who I hope has a wonderful birthday.  Filled with time to herself and surrounded by people she loves.
Happy birthday.

of a few jems

Ever since Halloween Bears has taken to blaming any random, bad thing that happens on--who else but,  Frankenstein.  

After finishing all her drink and then forgetting that she finished all her drink, she comes back to find it totally empty.

"Empty! Ahh, Frankenstein!"

(this is said with a certain growl of frustration, as if she's told Frankenstein 50 times to not finish her drink)

As Mm's explains to me this mystery,
"Mom.  I had my American Girl doll's shoes on my blanket and then I flipped my blanket  up and one shoe was left but the other one is gone.  I can't find it."
"Yep, Frankenstein!"
(this is said as if Bears has been trying to convince us all, for years, of Frankenstein's shenanigans and she has yet another proof of it)

Lately she's also mentioned how when she grows up and gets married she is going to "hire" her husband to do certain things.
She is going to "hire" him to own a toll bridge.
She is going to "hire" him to own 40 houses for her to live in.

She's got men on the brain it seems because we pass an all boys Catholic high school on our way to pick the kids up from school.  The Catholic school is also letting out and so there are teenage boys everywhere; getting on buses, in cars walking, etc.  Yesterday she yells to me from the back,
"Mom!! Tell some of them to get into our car!! Do it Mom, do it!  Roll down your window and tell them to get into Mary's car!"
Then she questions, mainly to herself,
"Why are there so many handsome men there?"

of things that fit and a pile of brains

So after 5 kids and seven years of experience, I finally feel like a real mom.

I feel a kinship with my van.  I've got the kitchen paired down to only the appliances and pans I actually use.  I have a set of simple meals the kids will eat.  I feel like I know what kids will wear and won't.  I know how to do my day so that I can spend evenings with the kids doing school work, coloring and playing webkinz--(a good round of Smoothie Moves can destress me like I don't know what!)  And I feel as settle as one can, in the area of what to expect out of myself, the kids and just this time of life in general.

In short, I feel like I fit.  I fit well in my calling in life and I've learned a whole lot.  I mean more than all other experiences combined--take all of college (what did I major in again?) the intensity of my mission (sayonara Japan!) and it pails in comparison to the applied lessons of being a mom.

And yet, I know I'm not the only mother who feels like she's lost her brain--in fact somewhere, the brains are out there.  Just sitting in a pile waiting to be collected by moms who have a moment to realize they are gone.  Isn't that just great!?  Right where knowledge and experience are blending in a perfect fit to create wisdom is also when I am limping along on a useless brain.

Life is hysterical.

Just ask any person whom I've scheduled something with in the past two weeks if I've had to reschedule because I've scheduled on top of other things I scheduled at other times of scheduling--how useless my brain is.

Where is that pile?

I think mine is on top.

of fantastic and determining reality

I recently purchased new sheets.  Remember that last post about having things of value, sheets falls into that category.  Since, for the past 7 years, our bed has been a small night time train station of transfering children, I have held back from buying a really nice bed set as I knew everyone who visited the bed wasn't going to be as committed as me in maintaining their gloriousness.  But we're slowly moving out of that phase and so I was ready to make the purchase of a life time. 

Soft.

So soft.

White.

So white.

Incredibly glorious cloud like feel.

I am struggling greatly with pulling myself away from them.  They are my newest best friend.  I lay down and I don't emerge until way too late in the morning and once I open my eyes I think, "When can I get back to those things?"

I'm sleeping real well and consequentally dreaming.  Real dreaming-- where my mind takes all the elements of my day and reconfigures them into a totally new reality, which seems very real, and causes me a little bit of momentary stress once I open my eyes as my mind tries to reorient itself and begin taking care of the day amid the grogginess...

Wake. Today is Tuesday.  These sheets are awesome.  Kids need lunch today.  I am not getting out of bed.  Dr. appointment.  Wait?  Did Charlie get baptized last night? 

Did I really invite a bunch of cats to his baptism? 

Why did I invite cats?  I mean, Friskey was there, but she's dead.

I don't want to get up.

I love these sheets.

 of younger brother's birthdays

I guess as you grow older certain memories stick to a person and become their identity.
It certainly isn't fair, but it can be very funny and one of my favorite memories about this birthday guy was when he was younger and we were watching The Empire Strikes Back.  He was frantically trying to pause and play the VHS so he could take notes on what Yoda was teaching Luke.  He wasn't able to write quickly enough or spell correctly all of Yoda's wise teachings--so he asked me to write them down for him.  It was at that age, maybe he was 10, that I determined an aspect that stayed with me for years.

Quincy can't really read.

But he could already understand what was good counsel and what was bad and at age ten he already knew that a big part of life was about self improvement and surrounding yourself with knowledge.  These are qualities he still has today.  As well as a willingness to work hard, stick to a job and believe in yourself.

He's put those qualities to use and has become a great man--
who can read.

At least I think. ;-)

Happy Birthday buddy.

of opposition, how funny!

See these trees.
They are incredible. There are a number of blocks in our neighborhood that are lined with these gorgeous gingko biloba trees. They have a beautiful soft green leaf in the summer that turns to this vibrant yellow in the fall. We literally have streets paved yellow for a few weeks each fall. It is beautiful. Truly, serene.

And it stinks.
The seeds from the female trees drop also at this time of year. They smell like rancid butter--or perhaps a more familiar smell to us all, poop.

On my morning runs I can't help but run through these leaves and delight in their beauty and be repelled by their smell and find the opposition between the two rather funny.

I have been obsessed with this for a while now. I have been obsessed with how within everything good, is something that could be bad. Within all happiness, there is a measure of sorrow, within all tradgey is an element of joy.
Really it is incredible that we can even communicate to one another and simplifiy our experiences and our emotions and our day to day life with the mundane pharases of "I was happy," "It was good," given how incredibly complex our swirling experiences of emotion can be.

I have been enjoying this tutorial in opposition. It has helped me to ride out my bad days knowing that the next day will inevitably bring something better, something good. It has turned some of my frustrations into utter comedy as I refuse to take them that seriously anymore.
It has also taught me that there are people, named my husband, who don't feel this way about the world. That they aren't caught up in a swirl of emotional torandos that I can be caught it.

See, more opposition, right there.
But that too is funny isn't it? Or at least can't it be? Differences with your spouse, black and white, beauty and the scent of poop.

Really the opposition seems to have just the best comical timing because this morning I was working on this post right before church. We were right on schedule and everything was flowing lovely until all of a sudden it started to go downhill and we were running late and it was 70 degrees outside and I had put the kids in winter dresses and we were all hot and cranky and church was long and the whole family ended up in the foyer sitting on one couch because we couldn't be reverent and frankly all that opposition was really NOT funny and I was annoyed and wanted to know why I am the family couch and everyone insists on sitting on me and I tried selling d.d. to others in the foyer but no one would buy him and then I thought about this post--and how I had just written about how funny opposition can be.

And I laughed.
Because it really is.

of Halloween treats

This year included Dorothy, Darth Vader, a Vampire Princess and two frogs-one of the Kermit variety. All participants were in full character in both dress and behavior except for the frogs, but nothing too much can be expected of them anyway. The vampire was down right scary, Dorothy poised and beautiful and Darth Vader? Well, annoying. You know he's got that giant red light saber everywhere he goes except for the 10,000 times he forgets it or loses it.

We also had a pregnant mother, which M deemed the scariest costume of them all. I love that I was wandering around the house and getting the kid's to M's work party for a full hour before anyone said anything and when they did it was Big C, "Hey mom! You're pregnant!" Because apparently pregnancy falls from the sky.

As I was thinking over my past few posts I realized that I really haven't done that many on Mm's lately. When the kids were getting into their costumes and I was finishing up the blood on Bear's face -- Mm's comes bounding down the stairs, wig hair flowing, dress pressed, hands cupped liked the Von Trappe family singers', and Bears says with blood all over her teeth, "Wow, you're beautiful."
There are a lot of things I adore about her. Just totally adore. I love that she still wears and prefers dresses and asked me yesterday if I could get her a bonnet. I love that she says to me about 23 times a day, "Mom, can I tell you something?" I love that she still comes in to sleep with us sometimes.

I love that even as she gets older I still get to think of her as my baby.