Tag: family

Posted in musings

bike thefts and mindfulness

Posted on by kristinabean

Remember how excited I was about biking in my {SQT} post on Friday? Well… it’s a good thing I’d written that post the night before, because when I went out to the garage that morning both my bike and my husband’s bike were gone. Beautiful brand-new bike (first new bike I’d bought since I was in junior high), stolen. I took the car instead that morning, and worked on cognitive-behavioral techniques about it all day (because sadness triggers a lot of unhelpful thought patterns for me), and prayed about the best way to move forward, and just generally felt sad and disappointed and hurt all day long. It wasn’t just a bike that was stolen: it was my quiet time with God, my exercise time, my outdoor alone time, my time of refreshment and empowerment, that was taken away. And I didn’t know if it would be financially wise to buy another bike when we apparently live in a high-risk area.

But what I did know was that I didn’t want my (very legitimate) sadness to prevent me from experiencing the happiness of all the good things that were just as much a part of my life as the bike theft. Driving home, I thought about how the kids were waiting for me, how they would be excited to see me, and want me to play with them, and fill the house with silly games and wild stories and sweet cuddles – and how my sadness could interfere with my ability to connect with and cherish them, or keep me from feeling the joy of their laughter and craziness. Was I going to let this unknown thief steal the happiness I have with my children? No I was not! It is ok to be sad, I told myself, but right now, in this moment, I am going to seize the joy and beauty and love that presents itself, and let the sadness wait until a time when I can listen to it and determine how to address the practical issues the theft created. The bike was stolen in the past; the commuting will take place in the future; but my children are with me now, offering up their little happinesses, desiring my love and happiness in return. And I can choose what I am going to open my heart up to in this now, this present moment. (Oho! Look at that! It’s my 2017 word of the year!)

One of the things I’ve learned from my therapist is that it’s extremely pointless to try to make a thought or emotion go away. The more one fights it, the bigger and stronger it gets. Choosing to open oneself up to a new thought or emotion, however (a more helpful alternative), allows the unhelpful thought or emotion to slip away, or at least shrink into the back reaches of the mind. So that’s what I tried to do with my sadness and disappointment, by fully living in the present moment so characterized by the happiness (and neediness 😛 ) of my children.

(And in the end, we found two cheap old bikes on Craigslist that will work for now and not be quite as appealing to thieves – or quite as much of a loss if they are stolen! I still miss my bike, but at least I don’t also have to miss biking itself.)

Posted in musings

learning who I want to be; remembering who my foremothers were

Posted on by kristinabean

On Friday my therapist asked me who I wanted to be: what positive self-image I wanted to move towards. If we’re going to make a therapy plan, after all, it helps to have a long-term goal.

I couldn’t think of anything.

I have a very clear mental image of who I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be the one with the chronically messy/dirty house because she’s too lazy and undisciplined to get things cleaned and organized. I don’t want to be the mom who lets her kids watch TV so she can get some quiet time or a nap in the middle of the day, because she cares more about herself than about her kids’ developing brains. I don’t want to be the mom who over-schedules her kids’ lives so they have no time to free play and explore; I don’t want to be the mom who lets her kids wander around in self-directed ways so much that they bother the neighbors and never learn manners and miss out on awesome events and opportunities. I don’t want to be seen as discourteous or ignorant. I don’t want to admit that I can’t handle the beautiful and blessed life I’m living because other people handle lives that are so much harder with so much more ease and grace. I don’t want to be who I am, because my self-image is all wrapped up in shame.

So I’d been thinking about her question since the appointment, and as my daughter smiled at me that evening I remembered the women who have always been my inspiration, the women who made me want a daughter of my own so I could pass on their memories someday:

The great-grandmother who passed away when I was six, who shines so brightly in my mother’s memory that I wish I could have known her myself, who knew a poem for every circumstance (and wrote her own as well), who always had an open door and good food, who saw the world through rose-colored lenses that enabled her to believe the best of everyone she loved – whose faith in God, in humanity, in her family, was deep and strong.

The grandmother whose life has been full of challenges, who endured miscarriage, mental illness, and a string of alcoholic husbands after her first marriage fell apart, but who never lost her heart for helping others or her buoyant optimism and goofy joy, who managed a warehouse of donated goods for those in need as a volunteer when she herself was quite poor, who got down on the floor and played with my boys with energy and zest for life, who as a young white woman in the 50s and 60s wanted to adopt children of all different ethnicities, who has such a love for children that she fostered more in addition to raising her own – whose hope through suffering and trials never died.

The mother who always seeks to honor her family and friends with her words and doesn’t let a disagreement or a quarrel turn into bitterness or lasting anger, who taught me the joy of baking and cooking and watching people enjoy the fruit of your labor, who gives of herself unceasingly to the people she loves and the responsibilities she takes on, who is never sentimental but always supportive, who defied the odds of her upbringing to earn not only a bachelor’s but a master’s degree in engineering, who has a song for every situation, who thoroughly gets into the competitive clash of board games and card games and teases us mercilessly – whose love for her family is self-sacrificial, unwavering, unconditional.

I am not any one of those women, nor could I be some amalgam of their best qualities alone; I’m as human as they were, and I have my faults and weaknesses as well. But I see in them the full ripeness of seeds that lie buried in my own soul also, which I would be honored and privileged to have blossom in my life. Can I have the generosity of spirit which made them spring up like a fountain of blessing for their families and communities, or the exuberance with which they approached life, or their ability to find joy and see beauty in the little things, and thus hold on to hope and faith and love when the big things are hard and broken?

I am sure those things will take on a different form in my life than in my mother’s, my grandmother’s, and my great-grandmothers, because I live in a different time and place and am a different person. The hard work now will be in discerning exactly how they might look for me, here and now, because I know now that their image, their fallen human image reflecting God through brokenness and redemption, is the positive image I want to work towards.

Posted in family life, musings, Uncategorized

beauty in the little things

Posted on by kristinabean

newborn baby giggles as little girl slips, milk-drunk, into sleep in my arms…

the smell of fresh bread, sweet and citrusy, to celebrate Epiphany…

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it got a bit lopsided but tasted delicious!

warm sun and a cool breeze and a couple hours at the park with my family…

little boys all crazy smiles running through the splash pad in the cold…
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warming up before heading back into the spray

sunlight on baby girl’s face, streaming through the window to the changing table, holding her spellbound for a good twenty minutes…

little boy hugs, head laid down on baby’s tummy, arms ever-so-gently tucked around her…

big boy love, wild and exuberant, caring and protective, running joyfully in each morning to say hi to the baby, showing her his toys, getting up at dinner to check on her…

tiny fingers capturing us all with their utter perfection…

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not forgetting that tiny perfect nose and mouth and chin of course! or the perfect chubby curve of that tiny cheek…

Postpartum is hard. But in with the hard times, there is so much beauty – beauty in the new life, beauty in the old familiar everyday that keeps on going on – and the beauty is what keeps me going on as the old and the new become one.

Posted in family life

happy birthday, limerick!

Posted on by kristinabean

Dear Limerick,

Today, you are two years old.

You are very proud of this fact. You have been telling me for weeks that you are only one now, but that you will be two soon! The prospect of having a number “2” on your birthday cake is also quite tantalizing for you, ever since you found your old number “1” candle in the pantry. I won’t be surprised if you start asking about a number “3” candle in short order, though – you like keeping those numbers together!

It’s hard to remember sometimes that you are just now barely two years old. You speak in long, fluent, clearly understandable sentences; you can write all the letters of the alphabet in both lower and upper case; you can count up to 10 and write most of the numbers; and you have several books memorized to the point where you will sit and “read” them to me instead of the other way around. On top of that, you run, jump, hop, and wrestle right along with your older brother, and climb with incredible balance, coordination, and lack of caution (you’ve almost given me a heart attack several times, up on ladders and bridges higher than my head, but you’ve also made me proud of the way you focus on your goal and keep trying until you accomplish it).

Most of the time you seem like a fairly laid-back little guy – you take the yelling and pushing and bouncing dished out by your three-year-old big brother in good grace (and often provoke it with a big grin on your face!). You try whatever crazy new food I come up with, and usually eat a decent amount of it even if you don’t really like it all that much. If another kid takes the toy you’re playing with, you typically just find another and keep playing and exploring the world around you happily. You banter and laugh and do ridiculous things with me and Rondel and Daddy that make us all fall over laughing together!

However, you can be extremely intense when you’re concentrating on something that you want to be able to do! When you’ve decided that you’re going to open a door or pick up an object (no matter how high the handle or how heavy the item), you won’t give up until you’ve figured out some way to do it all by yourself. “You want to do it! You want to do it!” is the cry we hear all day long, since you’ve picked up Rondel’s habit of referring to yourself as “you” – and while it can lead you to great frustration, your perseverance and desire for independence also empower and strengthen you. “You did it!” I tell you: and the joy on your face at doing it, whatever “it” was, is deep and authentic and beautiful. In the same way, when you play independently, you are often serious and unsmiling, intent on the task at hand, focused on discovering or accomplishing something to which you’ve set your mind.

The physical world around you is your easel and paint, the clay in your hands, tools and raw material for you to work with and shape. You inhabit that world with an ease I still don’t have, absorbing its power and potential with uncanny natural ability, creating, building, making with talent beyond your years. It amazes me to watch you practice and develop those abilities even more, with no more motivation than your own internal joy in the process of it.

You are two years old today, little man with the deep blue eyes and charming smile, two years old, and I can hardly believe how much we’ve already gotten to do together! I can’t wait to see what all the years ahead of you will bring.

I love you,

Mommy

Posted in musings

to the “difficult” kids

Posted on by kristinabean

From eighth grade through college I volunteered every Wednesday night with the Awana program at my church, with the K-2nd grade kids. I loved it for so many reasons 🙂 But what I came to realize through that experience, as well as through the summers I spent as a camp counselor, is that my favorite children were almost always the difficult ones, the trouble-makers, the strong-willed and stubborn kids, the insecure and struggling kids acting out without even knowing why. They seemed to live in turbulent waters, when most of their peers were coasting by around them; the behaviors that should have been perceived as a plea for attention, connection, and love all too often simply served to push other people away from them. And I loved these kids, and sought to connect with them, and trained my defensive instincts in their behalf.

Then I became a mother, and one of these kids was my own child.

And I realized that no matter how much I had cared about those other kids, and gone through hard things with them and for them, I had never come close to loving them like I love my son. I had stood up for them against the negative perceptions their behaviors had led to – but I had never felt that primal physical rage in their defense that I feel when someone makes even the slightest off-hand comment disparaging my child. I wish I had loved them better. I wish I had been a fiercer advocate for them; I wish my heart had been more easily broken for them, my life more freely poured out for them. Because I know now, and I knew then, so I had no excuse, that most adults will see the negative behavior and never look past it to the child who may be scared, overwhelmed, overstimulated, uncomfortable, and just simply in need of love and guidance.

When does your heart bleed, as a mother of a needy child, a socially awkward child, a child who doesn’t fit in without that extra love and care?

– when you watch your son “playing” with a group of peers, and they’re all busily climbing and digging and talking and investigating the world, and he’s sitting on the side just holding a toy and watching them, trying to figure out what’s going on, like they all know this social script that he’s never heard of

– when you come to pick your child up from Sunday School and he’s trying to break into a circle of kids building, to be part of the group, and one of them says, “oh good, he’s going home!” when she sees him running to you

– when you glance at the activity/story pages coming home with your son and the only personalized comment is that he played with his tongue.

In the moment I read that comment I knew only two things:

  1. Since when does an adult who claims to love and represent Christ think it is ok to fixate on a “weird” behavior that a child has to the exclusion of all that child is as a person created in the image of God? Also, did they think they were enlightening me or something? Believe me, random childcare helper, I know my son better than you do. I know that he licks his hands when he’s overstimulated by the noise and chaos of a group of kids, when he’s trying to figure out social cues, when he’s excited by everything going on around him or worn out from processing a hundred different things at once. You don’t need to fill me in on that piece of information.
  2. One callous and ignorant comment is not sufficient justification to leave a church, no matter how strongly I wanted to in the visceral rage of my first reaction.

I just want the world to know that the kids who seem different or difficult are beautiful, funny, intelligent, sweet, unique individuals – just like the ones who fit in, make friends easily, listen well, and charm you with their good behavior. You just need to see them for who they are, to see the person who needs and struggles and wants to be loved, instead of stopping at the outward web of odd or negative behaviors.

Posted in family life, links

thoughts on connection from the Read Aloud Revival podcast

Posted on by kristinabean

One of my current favorite parenting/homeschooling podcasts is the Read Aloud Revival podcast; the host is an upbeat, faith-filled mom who manages to be idealistic and practical at the same time, and who together with the rest of the podcast team puts together a deep line-up of interviewees for each season of the podcast (they’re on season 9 now, so they have some experience!). Topics range from reading with toddlers, to exploring the world of fantasy literature, to developing high school curricula, and more.

This most recent episode, #50, was ostensibly about building upon picture books with simple and natural projects for young children, but what stood out the most to me was the emphasis on connection with your children, and using the books and the projects as a means to that end. The guest, Jennifer Pepito, said among other things that

I feel like connecting with our kids is probably the best antidote to any of the social ills that people struggle with… when kids aren’t well-attached to their parents, they’re not interested in carrying on the values of their families. Projects serve as a starting point for that attachment.

We get so busy with the planning and the researching that a lot of the time that we could be connecting with our kids is lost. Your kids are really better off having you look them in the face and chat with them about what they’re doing… they’re better off having you than all the fancy ideas.

I am definitely guilty of being an obsessive researcher and planner; I get lost in the world of my ideas, too wrapped up thinking about what I could do with the boys that I lose the time I have with them in the present. So it was a really good reminder to me to hear this veteran homeschooling mom say that no matter how good a project is, if it requires you to spend a whole day researching, planning, and preparing, it’s made you lose a whole day of connecting, a whole day of spending time with your children, a whole day of showing them just how valuable and precious they are to you – and that’s just not worth it.

In the end, what I took away from this episode was that it’s better to just read good books together, and play the simple pretend games or do the basic activities that naturally spring from the stories, than to make everything as perfect and wonderful as possible, because nothing can replace the love and connection you have with your children. And that is something I can totally get behind 🙂

Posted in family life

water balloons and popsicles

Posted on by kristinabean

The boys’ cousins came over this weekend for a play date and we went all out preparing for the fun – because when you live in a small house you don’t want to keep four toddlers and a baby cooped up in it all morning, and when it’s summer in the Valley of the Sun you can’t just casually go outside to play (especially when the raised bed catastrophe in the back makes it into a child safety hazard – exposed nails, anyone? – so the moms have to be outside in the heat too!).

So, to make sure we could handle both the crowd and the weather, we made popsicles (for the first time for my kids!) and water balloons (also a first!). Rondel and Limerick were absolutely enthralled by the water balloons, and couldn’t keep their hands off of them while I was filling them up, although they did try their best to be gentle and save them for when the cousins arrived. Their look of surprise the first time one popped in their hands was priceless 🙂 And of course, when they finally did get to start throwing and deliberately popping them later in the morning, they were completely into it. I think the approximately 100 balloons survived about ten minutes into the water play…

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selecting balloons from the bucket (which was almost full at the beginning! The kids didn’t leave me much time to grab the camera)

The popsicles were an equal success with the four toddlers, and a much greater hit with the baby, who obviously couldn’t share in the water balloon fun. I had made two types, one using watermelon and lime and another more creamy variety using strawberry, banana, and milk. While the strawberry-banana popsicle was the first to be claimed and devoured, everyone went back for seconds and ate up the watermelon popsicles without any complaint. I only tried the watermelon and was surprised at how refreshing it was, and how well the lime complemented the watermelon flavor. And everyone took a turn feeding their popsicles to the baby – I wish I could show you all those pictures! My nieces and nephew are really quite adorable 🙂

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And in between the water balloons and popsicles, the kids played with a hose sprinkler, a plastic slide, a kiddie pool, and a lot of different cups and bowls – the standard water play setup for our house. But everything is more exciting when you have a friend to share it, even if it sometimes means waiting a while for the slide, or being crashed into at the bottom by an overeager cousin 🙂

Posted in family life

best friends

Posted on by kristinabean

Rondel has a rudimentary understanding of the concept of “best friends” from watching the Pixar Cars movie, where Mater and Lightning are best friends despite the major differences in their personalities and experiences. The other day, this conversation took place between him and his daddy on the topic:

R: Lightning McQueen and Mater are best friends!

D: Yeah! Do you have a best friend?

R: You do!

D: Is your best friend Mommy?

R: No, your best friend is [Limerick]!

What’s fun for me (and also really rewarding) is to watch this play out in everyday life. When Limerick went down for his nap the day before yesterday, Rondel came up to me with a sad expression on his face, asking where he was because he wanted him. When I told them it was bedtime yesterday because they were acting tired, Rondel declared he wasn’t tired and began a huge list of all the things he was doing instead of acting tired, about five of which included Limerick. When they were showering off after the beach yesterday, Rondel started bopping Limerick with one of his floaties and then stuck his belly out so Limerick could bop him back with the other floaty. And when Rondel was crying hysterically in the car earlier today (because we only had cold water for him instead of ice water – he was really tired), he was only able to calm himself down when I asked him if he could try to calm down for Limerick, since the crying was starting to scare Limerick. He really loves his little brother, in a caring and self-denying way as well as in a playful companion way.

When I read the quote about a new sibling being one of the best gifts you can give to your child, I look at the relationship between Rondel and Limerick and feel that in this case at least it is very, very true. Rondel has matured in so many ways through being an older brother, and had so many happy experiences as well. I have no doubt that our new baby will only expand and deepen the friendship and joy within our family, especially since the boys are already anticipating his or her arrival with great excitement and periodically hug my belly as proxy for hugging the baby, and I am looking forward to watching those relationships unfold as well. And for now, I will enjoy the closeness between my boys and pray that it stays that way for years to come.

Posted in family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – memorial day weekend

Posted on by kristinabean

We packed a lot of activities into one weekend!

Saturday was our fifth anniversary – but my sister’s husband’s brother (who is also a friend of ours) was getting married that evening, so we dropped the boys off at my parents’ house Friday night for a sleepover so we could celebrate a little early. The next morning I woke up early, being somewhat incapable of sleeping past 6am, and made cinnamon rolls for an anniversary surprise 🙂 He ate six of them over the course of the day, so I think they were a success 🙂 and I ate the other six between that day and the next, shh! So that’s a bit of {happy} and {real}:

I didn’t take any pictures at the wedding, in part because the cameras honestly tend to detract from the ceremony in my opinion, but also because corralling two toddlers with no practice in sitting still through long events took both my hands, all my skill, and most of my patience. Fortunately they had a foyer area where we could watch the wedding without any of our noise disrupting the event! My sister, who was a bridesmaid, said she couldn’t hear anything; the wedding planner, who kept darting in and out of the foyer, seemed to think otherwise by the looks of exasperation and disapproval she kept shooting our way.

And in general, despite the fact that it was an exceptionally nice wedding and reception, and was set up in a very family-friendly way (as I had anticipated, knowing the couple), the attitude of the other guests made it really hard for me to enjoy it. Maybe all those older women were childless, or had forgotten what it was like to have young kids – but I got a larger dose of judgmental glances at that reception than I have ever gotten before. If you really want to make someone feel uncomfortable enough to leave, just keep shooting nasty looks at them… but if you want to be courteous, come over and express whatever’s bothering you and maybe it can be addressed. It didn’t help that our kids were the youngest there. We had a lot of young children at our wedding and reception, and I would have loved to have more – it is weird to me to celebrate marriage, the covenant that leads to new life, in a child-exclusive way – but there were only a few here, and I think the others skipped the ceremony and came late. Sigh. I don’t think I want to attempt that again; my social anxiety is bad enough without the blatant disapproval of others pushing it home.

Sunday was another story altogether, though. Since my sister and her husband were in town for the wedding, we had a family party at my parents’ house, including my uncle, his sons, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s daughters, whom I hadn’t met before. Again, I didn’t take many pictures, but it was mainly because I was too busy swimming and eating to think about it! It was good to be with family, to relax, to be free to be ourselves and let the kids be themselves, and to remember the love of family which matters more than the passing judgments of strangers.

I did get a few shots of my husband and Rondel swimming together, while Limerick was napping! The boys absolutely love the pool and spent hours in it throughout the day, with whoever they could persuade to accompany them.

On Memorial Day itself, we stayed at home and recovered from the weekend. I was intending to clean but after doing three loads of laundry, washing a couple batches of dishes, and vacuuming the floors, I was pretty much exhausted. I keep forgetting how much less stamina I have in the first trimester! The floors were in desperate need of vacuuming, though, so I’m glad I at least got that done. Next in line? The bathrooms. (Always the bathrooms… I hate cleaning the bathrooms, so they get put off, and then they get horrible, and then I want to do them even less, but then I finally do them and it is such a weight off my shoulders.) I had found a good routine for housecleaning over the spring semester, but my schedule has completely changed again and I have two fewer mornings at home, which makes cleaning more difficult as the boys are more tired and needy in the afternoon and dinner prep needs to be done. I’m sure I’ll figure something out before the schedule changes again, though!

Head over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for the link-up today! There will probably be a lot more beauty and happiness there than in this rather rambling and complaining post of mine – but I am glad and thankful for the special times we’ve had thrown in with the challenging ones this weekend.

Posted in musings

My mother’s hands

Posted on by kristinabean

My mom has pretty normal hands. They’re not too big and not too small, with fingernails that are neither short and stubby nor long and elegantly manicured. Her knuckles stand out, as do her veins, and in the winter her skin gets horribly dry.

But to me, they are hands of strength. I’ve seen those hands, chapped and cut and bleeding, folding laundry and doing dishes, serving with endurance. I’ve seen them cleaning and organizing messes they had no part in making, or trimming and weeding the garden.

To me, they are hands of love: hands that soothe a feverish child, that prepare meals, that zip up dresses or style hair, that type emails and pick up phones to advocate for her family and students. 

To me, they are hands that create beauty and community, quilting and cross-stitching family treasures, decorating for each season, setting up events to bring people together and deepen friendships.

And when I rubbed my sick boy’s shoulder this morning, I looked down at my hand and saw my mom’s – and I thought, if my hands can bring half the service, love, and happiness to my family that hers have, they’ll be doing well.