little thoughts

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – some crafting with the toddlers

Posted on 2016-05-192016-05-19 by kristinabean

The boys being very excited about painting for various and sundry reasons, I pulled out my previous finger paint recipe and took the boys outdoors with some paper and sponge brushes. (A cornstarch-based edible paint would probably be less messy and sticky, but I didn’t have enough cornstarch to make it work. So condensed milk it had to be.)

{pretty}

I mixed up just the primary colors to avoid ending up with just a brown mess, and I love the way the different colors combined on the paper, brushes, and sidewalk. It was also interesting seeing the different ways the boys painted: Rondel using wide sweeping strokes on the paper, blending the colors together thoroughly and without subtlety; Limerick flinging the brushes in the air above the paper to make fine strings and drips of paint below, far more into the process than the product.

{happy}

Rondel absolutely loved everything about painting. He loved mixing the different colors, testing the different brushes to see what they produced on the paper, and creating something from the raw materials available. He didn’t complain once about the stickiness of the paint, even when it dripped on his legs or when he decided to paint with his fingers to see how it compared to the brushes – which is a huge deal for this little boy who is (or used to be?) so sensorily sensitive. He also didn’t panic or get upset with Limerick at all, even when they wanted the same brush or color paint. It was good to see him so involved in the process of creation that he was able to tune out or ignore the physical discomforts of a hot sidewalk and sticky paint as well as the emotional distraction of a younger brother sharing the brushes and paints.

{funny}

Limerick dove into the painting process with his characteristic no-holds-barred exploratory attitude (which is one of the things I enjoy most about his personality!), dripping paint off his brush onto the papers and sidewalk with intense interest in how the paint flew and fell, with the side-effect of becoming very sticky and colorful himself… and then suddenly he realized how sticky he was and fell apart, attempting to cling to me with wriggly snuggles in his upset. Being set in the bathtub cheered him up considerably 😛

{real}

In addition to their free play exploration painting, the boys helped me with one of my projects with some acrylic paint on wood. But since I haven’t yet finished the project, all you get are the teaser photos 🙂 I promise you it’ll be a good one when it’s done, and I hope to have pictures of the final product up next week!

Head on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter today for the link-up and share your captured moments of everyday contentment with the rest of us!

musings

Pentecost thoughts (a day late)

Posted on 2016-05-16 by kristinabean

I learned this year (from Wikipedia, of all places) that the Jewish holiday corresponding to Pentecost commemorates the giving of the law on Mt. Sinai. (See Acts 2 for the Christian Pentecost story if you’re unfamiliar with it – it is when the Spirit first comes down upon the new church.) This makes sense, of course, since Easter corresponds to Passover and the deliverance of Israel from Egypt!

But it struck me as very fitting that the Holy Spirit should come down to indwell the church on the same day that God had given His law to His people, in light of the prophet Jeremiah:

“Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband,” says the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the LORD: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

– Jeremiah 31:31-33

The external law, which was the binding condition of the old covenant, has been replaced in the new covenant by an internal law: by the direction and transforming power of the Holy Spirit living within God’s people – and so while the old covenant was broken by Israel’s disobedience, the new covenant can be fulfilled through the grace and power of God Himself, since He is now on both sides of the relationship. We no longer need to follow a list of rules, but rather to abide in Christ (which is not less, but more, than mere obedience), and it is the Spirit abiding within us that renders it possible.

And that great new hope, the beginning of the fulfillment of the wild promises of God to a wayward people, is why we celebrate Pentecost.

family life, musings, recipes

meal-planning for the creative and spontaneous mom

Posted on 2016-05-132016-05-13 by kristinabean

I think cooking and grocery shopping are two of my favorite housekeeping activities 🙂 It’s fun imagining different ways to use the fruits and vegetables that are seasonal and on sale, or figuring out how to use up the remnants of a leftover or the last bits of produce in the fridge before they go bad without making an emergency trip to the store, or balancing all the different food groups throughout the day to make sure the boys are eating a well-rounded diet. In a way, it’s like a puzzle that never gets old because so many of the variables are always changing! (And I must confess that I would get bored pretty quickly if the variables didn’t change – I could never work off a strict rotation of menus because I get tired of cooking the same things and like to mix it up and experiment with new ideas fairly regularly).

Most of my inspiration comes from the produce sale list… I see, for instance, that red bell peppers are only 50 cents each this week and I wonder what I could make with them that my bell-pepper-disdaining family would eat (I love peppers so I’m always attempting to convert the rest of them). Maybe on top of a bruschetta with some sort of cheese – something with feta and ricotta, perhaps… I call those “little toasties” to the kids because they sometimes will outright refuse a food just because it has a strange name and I’d rather not have to deal with that if I can avoid it! And there’s one meal down: I would throw together a quick pasta or veggie to accompany it, depending on what leftovers we have and what’s in the pantry, and let the bruschetta be the main star of the meal.

I think one of the factors that makes this sort of meal-planning easier for me is that I don’t think every dinner has to include a meat. I was a vegetarian for eleven years, so as long as there is some sort of cheese or bean in the main meal I feel like it is complete, and especially if we had a high-protein breakfast or lunch I don’t think it necessary to emphasize the protein at dinner. Instead, dinner ends up being the most vegetable-heavy meal of the day most of the time. We’ll see if this needs to change as the boys get older, of course 🙂 Meats are just harder for me to be creative with because I lost those eleven years of experimentation, so I get more easily bored by the options I can reliably cook.

Right now we’re entering into one of my favorite meal-planning seasons because there is so much seasonal fresh fruit! Fruit is an easy side dish to round out a meal, a healthy dessert if I’m feeling nibbly after dinner, a no-guilt snack to pull out if the boys are hungry an hour before dinner, and a quick breakfast if I’m running late to work. It significantly reduces the amount of prep and forethought I have to put into meals… and the hot weather in general lends itself to quick, light foods instead of the heavier meals that require thawing time, prep time, and cooking time (as delicious as those meals are in the colder weather!).

What are some of your tips and tricks for feeding your family every day?

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – our trip to San Diego

Posted on 2016-05-122016-05-12 by kristinabean

This past weekend we were able to drive out to visit my husband’s brother and his family in San Diego! They were incredibly gracious in opening their home to the four of us and squeezing themselves into one bedroom so we could squeeze ourselves into the other bedroom – without that hospitality, it would have been a lot harder financially for us to travel out there, and we want to try to maintain the friendship between the cousins in a way that is difficult if we only see them for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so the trip was a priority for us.

While the weather didn’t exactly encourage the kind of outdoor beach-y activities we’d hoped for (cold and rainy, anyone?), we did still have a great time with family. Limerick in particular loved interacting with his cousin F (who is Rondel’s age) and Rondel loved the adventure of a new city. And to my great surprise and relief, both boys handled the long car ride incredibly well; we only had to stop in Yuma both coming and going, and the boys were relatively cheerful even when they weren’t sleeping or snacking.

{pretty}

My in-laws have a year pass to Sea World, and used their guest passes to take us for the day. The sea turtle exhibit was one of our favorites – the kids wanted to sit and watch the fish forever! Fish always leave me amazed at God’s creativity: there are so many unique shapes and colors that you don’t see in land animals.

Rondel was also hugely impressed by the orca whales and their ability to jump right out of the water!

{funny}

The sea lions were another exciting exhibit as Rondel and his cousin actually got to feed them by dropping tiny fish over the edge! It kind of looks like he is trying to climb over the edge himself though! This was also the first exhibit where Limerick (who had fallen asleep on the drive over and then woke up too early) stopped clinging to our necks and became keenly interested in what was happening around him, which made me quite happy.

{happy}

The next day we attempted to go to the beach despite the cool and cloudy weather, and Rondel and his cousin had a blast running and digging in the sand. Rondel even got completely knocked over by a wave at one point and got back up with a huge smile on his face – not at all a characteristic reaction for my sensitive boy. But he has always loved the beach, from the first time he set eyes on it two summers ago, and this visit was no exception.

{real}

Limerick, on the other hand, was not impressed by the beach, which really surprised me. He is normally my adventurous and free-spirited boy, and I was expecting him to be running with cousin F up and down the sand. But I think he was just overwhelmed by it all: the roar of the wind coming in off the sea, the crash of the waves, the endless water stretching to the horizon, the unfamiliar feel of the fine, soft sand. He spent the entire time snuggled up with me or my husband 😦

The closest Limerick got to the water – see how he’s nestled up to my husband so sadly? It wasn’t like him at all.

To top off the whole weekend, my parents surprised us by deep-cleaning the entire house while we were away! There isn’t much nicer than coming home to a sparkling clean house after being gone for a few days 🙂 And so I have been basically feeling very blessed and very loved this week, basking in the friendship of our extended family and the generosity of my parents. Sometimes I think I must be the most fortunate person in the whole world, to have these people loving me so much!

Head on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter today to join the link-up and share in each others’ joy or travails from the week!

family life

night-time parenting and my need for grace

Posted on 2016-05-09 by kristinabean

My worst parenting moments are typically in the middle of the night when one of the boys is taking an uncharacteristically long time to fall back asleep after waking. It’s a combination of three difficult factors: my tiredness, the unexpectedness of the problem, and the baby’s insomnia. I could probably handle things with more grace if only one or two of those factors was involved, but together they are a deadly trifecta to my parenting calm. Because I’m tired, it’s harder for me to assess the situation and come up with a solution; because the wakefulness is unexpected and not a normal event, I have no routine already in place to deal with it; and because the baby is also tired and out of sync with his normal routine, he typically can’t express what exactly is bothering him and keeping him up. Limerick has been known to scream for a good 30 minutes straight before managing to sob out that he wants a bottle of milk instead of a bottle of water, for example, which is a far cry from his communicative daytime self.

It is in those moments that I most desperately need to turn to God for help. That is when I am most helpless, most frustrated, least buoyed up by my own reason, most emotionally and physically fragile and worn out. And yet I don’t often find myself searching for grace and peace at those times. The immediacy of the problem blots out everything else from my mind, unfortunately.

And that is one of the reasons why it is so important for me to bathe my parenting in prayer in all the other moments – to keep praying for grace, wisdom, patience, and strength even when everything seems to be going well, so that when things get hard and my sleep-fogged brain can’t see past the crying baby, I’ve already asked God for the help I’ll need to get through it with love. I have to cultivate my relationship with Him, my dependence on Him, through all the easy times, the happy times, the normal times, so that my anchor and foundation are already secure when the challenges arise. It would be foolish to think the challenges would never come, and even more foolish to think I’d be able to handle them without a consistent effort to walk with God.

So tonight I think I’ll be preemptively praying for patience, wisdom, and compassion, just in case Limerick is up for hours in the night again – and maybe that will help me when I can’t see past the irrational tears and my body is crying out for sleep. If the Spirit is there reminding me of the reasons Limerick might be up (last night he was in some sort of pain and it took a dose of Tylenol to settle him down), helping me find solutions, helping me think despite my fatigue, maybe I won’t get so frustrated with my little guy, and will be able to better respond with gentleness and love, just like God consistently responds to me even when my complaints and tears make no sense at all in the light of the bigger picture that He can see.

links

a better post than I could write for Mother’s Day

Posted on 2016-05-072016-05-04 by kristinabean

In lieu of my own thoughts, which are not particularly profound, wise, or experienced, I want to share this post from Laura at Mothering Spirit.

None of us is all of these things. But we are all here together. And together, we are what can make motherhood so complex – and sometimes challenging to celebrate.

We are the thousand colors of one stained glass window. Love’s light passes through each one of us, and we are changed. Because we know ourselves to be mother.

[…] whenever we let our hearts be stretched to invite each other in, we all love better, bolder, and braver. Because we remember the mothers we have been. We imagine the mothers we might become. We honor the mothers we have loved.

And we love wider. Like the mothers we want to be.

musings, quotes

prayer for a new day

Posted on 2016-05-062016-05-04 by kristinabean

Sometimes the best prayers are short and simple, expressing in a few words what I struggle to communicate, capturing the essence of what I desire to offer to God and become in Christ without turning into a litany of praises or requests. And first thing in the morning, when I’m foggy from too-little sleep and worried about the day to come, a simple prayer can remind me of the perspective that truly matters.

“At the dawn of a new day, fill us with your mercy,
That the whole day may be a day of joy and praise.” – from the Divine Office

Isn’t that such a beautiful way to look at the beginning of a new day? That we may be filled with God’s mercy and so live out the day in joy and praise – that we may be filled with Christ and thus live in Christ and for Christ – that our unity with Him may be increased, that all the good that is in Him might be in us and in the world through us.

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – pretty much all real

Posted on 2016-05-052016-05-05 by kristinabean

I will be honest with you all, this was a rough week and a half. Last Tuesday we spend the morning playing at the park with the boys’ cousins – and by nap time Limerick was vomiting. And he didn’t stop for over 30 hours, most of that time losing it every 1-2 hours very violently. So then last Thursday he transitioned from one end to the other and Rondel started bringing everything back up. Both boys had low-grade fevers for a couple days and were essentially couch-ridden (I made them sick nests on the couches so they wouldn’t have to be upstairs in bed); Rondel slept for the majority of the day three days in a row, and I have never seen him that worn out and sick before in his life – which admittedly has been a rather short one, but still! It was a new mommy experience for me.

Yesterday was really the first day both boys were feeling (almost) back to normal – no diarrhea, no vomiting, and energy to get up and play for more than 10 minutes at a time. Through this whole week, I’ve been reminded of Auntie Leila’s rejoinder to consider this time of sickness as a time to sacrifice myself – my plans, my routines, my comfort – for the sake of these kids, to show them what Christ-like love is all about. As she puts it,

You know, when our children are sick, we have a wonderful opportunity to serve them in a completely different way from the way they are used to. We can take a break from all the demands of daily life — demands which include prying them away from love of self, encouraging them to serve others and take responsibility — and just take care of them. Rather than viewing this part of motherhood as a stressful chore that reveals our incompetence, we can see it as a real blessing.

It was very stressful for not to be able to clean the house, or have regular meals together, or get out of the house for the outside time that I need just as much as the boys normally do, (a lot more stressful than I would have anticipated!) and I had to keep telling myself that “love endures all things.”

Kind of humbling to realize how much of an emotional and spiritual challenge this week of sickness was to me… I’ve still got a long way to go to reach holiness! 😉

{real}

In the first days of the illness, Rondel was so concerned about his brother. He kept asking me when he would be feeling better, and what was wrong, and just wanted to comfort him with his presence. This is one of the beautiful side-effects of sickness, I think – the development of compassion in the sick child’s siblings.

But all too soon he needed his own spot on the couch 😦 When Limerick started to feel better he seemed to find a lot of happiness in helping me take care of Rondel, especially when I would let him deliver a bottle to his brother, which was adorable and sweet.

{happy}

One of the happy things that sustained us during the sick times (besides endlessly blowing bubbles for Limerick) was reading books. The boys like books well enough normally, but they also like to be moving and doing things – but when they didn’t have the energy to play, the books took them out of the moment and gave them something to think about. Limerick in particular has become far more excited about reading than he was before!

demanding to read the Very Hungry Caterpillar

So there were some fun things in the middle of all the sickness – but all in all we are all extremely glad to have the blankets and sheets washed and off the couches, and a sense of normalcy and order restored to family life. I’m sure the boys are even more glad not to be hurting and sick anymore!

I really hope that you all had a better week than we did! And don’t forget to join me over at Like Mother, Like Daughter for the link-up today 🙂

family life, musings

filling my marriage with love

Posted on 2016-05-042016-05-03 by kristinabean

Despite the financial and practical headache of divorce, I think it is often easier to split up than to hold a marriage together, even (especially?) when there are kids involved. Children make it harder to find the time to invest in your marriage; the stress of added expenses and responsibilities leads to shortened tempers and sharpened tongues; the lack of sleep and increase of worry contribute to emotional and impulsive choices. Our own flaws, quirks, sinful tendencies, and past baggage drive us away from each other as well, their effects exacerbated by the absence of time to relax to and put things in perspective. And as we grow more accustomed to each other and our infatuation settles down, we start to notice only the things that irritate us and take the rest for granted.

My primary love language, to borrow from Gary Chapman’s schema, is quality time – so when school and work and sick kids have prevented us from having a good conversation or a chance to snuggle and just be together, I start feeling unloved and the irrational thoughts just flow from there. I get angry at every little thing he does that isn’t perfect. I barb my tongue even as I desperately hope he’ll want to spend time with me. I start blaming him, in my head, for every struggle we’re having financially or in parenting. So if we didn’t make it a priority to spend time together and rebuild that feeling of love, it would be extremely hard for us to make this marriage work. Similarly, if I don’t make sure that I’m doing the things that make my husband feel loved – like listening to him well, giving him physical love and closeness, and taking care of the little things that need to be done around the house – he is going to be more stressed, more on edge, and more likely to lose his cool when things with the kids or school get frustrating. Actively investing in each other, intentionally trying to give each other love in a personally meaningful way, prevents so much strife and so many misunderstandings! And yet so often we neglect it, and take each other’s love and happiness for granted…

All this is to say, take the time to learn what makes your spouse feel loved and then live it out! Build up the love and joy in your marriage and in your home – there is only so much you can do alone, of course, but I believe in the majority of cases both spouses want to fix the malaise and tension in their relationships, and all it takes is a little bit of intentionality.

family life, musings

building a marriage on mutual respect

Posted on 2016-05-032016-05-02 by kristinabean

One of my happiest memories is that of my parents complimenting each other, whether implicitly or explicitly, face-to-face or behind each other’s backs. Everything felt right in the world when my mom and dad were admiring and relying upon each other, whether it was in little things like cleaning and chores or in big things like vision or logistical skills. I’m not saying that my parents were perfect; in fact, they probably picked on each other more than they complimented each other (and they will never be reconciled to each other’s driving style!). But they had an understanding and appreciation of each other’s abilities, accomplishments, and efforts – a realization that their marriage was so much stronger with the gifts both of them brought to it than when either of them tried to dominate or control the relationships. Though they have never been particularly demonstrative or romantic people, I saw in this dynamic the deep love that they had for each other. And so it is this mutual respect and interdependence that I want to cultivate in my own marriage, so that both my husband and myself can bring our strengths to the table with confidence instead of pride or insecurity, rely on each other in our areas of weakness without feelings of shame, and generally form a team that functions out of a place of mutual love and encouragement.