This Girl...

She is my middle child. My snuggler. My sidekick.

She collects trash for her special projects. Every disposed toilet paper roll or cardboard box becomes a cell phone or doll house.

And oh, how this girl loves tape.

When she is proud of herself, she effervesces. Beams. Glows.

When I pick her up at preschool, she runs to me, arms open wide, yelling, "Mommy!"

She has a tender heart and sweet nature. She needs an immeasurable amount of hugs before she can fall asleep at night.

She is a free spirit. She loves to dance and when she does, she can really shake her little groove thang.

Every idea proposed by her big sister is solid gold.

She has enormous brown eyes that make it difficult for her mommy and daddy to be angry, even when she draws on the hardwood floor or removes all clothing from the waist down and pees in the backyard. In front of the neighbor mowing his yard. But I digress...

She will try just about anything at least once. Including broccoli.

She is a developing a little conscience. Three weeks after she promised me that she did not cut off a chunk of her hair (even though it looked that way), without prompting, she fessed up and in tears, admitted her guilt.

She prefaces almost every statement or question with, "Can I say one thing?"

When I give her kisses at bedtime, she holds my face in her little hands and looks straight into my eyes.

This girl...
has my whole heart.

Green Grass

I am adjusting to being a stay-at-home mom.

That said, my house between the hours of four and five 0'clock are the closest thing I have ever experienced to the utter pandemonium often associated with being a full-time mom to three young children. Especially lately with Sam's new found mobility and accompanying curiosity. It's pretty much unbridled chaos around here. All three kids are home. Dave is not. They are tired. They are hungry. I am ready to have a conversation with someone over the age of six. Try as I might to find my happy place sauteing vegetables, I am inevitably interrupted (as I was this evening) by a child in need of a timeout for sticking her finger down her brother's throat, or by having to run outside to stop my little entrepreneurs from trying to sell their toys to our next door neighbors, or by fishing a full size grape out of the mouth of my ten month old...and then comforting him after he slams his face down on the kitchen floor, bloodying his lip as a means of protest. At this hour, the witching hour, I must remind myself that I chose this life.

I chose this life because right now because I've been on the other side. I've had the chance to dress up and put on make-up and go to work and bring home a paycheck and have an identity outside of my home and come back to my kids at the end of the day. And the grass is not always greener, though some days it seems that way.

Even on the hardest days, the green grass of my stay-at-home motherhood experience has been the new bond I've formed with my children. I drop them off in the morning. I pick them up every afternoon. I know what shows they watch and what they eat for breakfast and who they played with on the playground. I know how to calm a tantrum and what sets them off. I know their favorite books at the library and what kind of slush they will order at Sonic for Happy Hour. I am there to enforce chores and I know which consequences carry the most weight when they start to whine. I knew most of these things when I worked, too. But now these are the most important details of my day. The only things I have to remember. They are my job. I will not say that this life is the kind of domestic heaven that I always dreamed of as a girl. I have WAY too much laundry for that to be true. But I know my kids. And I know them in a way I've never known them before. That is priceless.

Times three.

Lessons

Here a just a few things that I have learned over the course of the past year:
*Lessons that were re-learned this year and will be probably need to be re-learned in different ways every year for the rest of my life are delineated with an asterisk

-I am entitled to nothing*.
-Substance pretty much trumps aesthetics in every situation*
-One can buy electrocution-style mouse traps
-I can survive with only one bathroom
-I must never leave my wallet in the car. Ever.*
-Blood is not necessarily thicker than water
-Baby boys eat WAY more than baby girls
-Sixteen straight hours in a car with three kids is pretty much as bad as it sounds
-I am more than what I do (or don't do) for a living
-Nature should be both feared and respected...as should tornado warnings.
-One of the best things in life is to have a friend who can relate
-I love my creepy basement
-Ten successive snow days are only manageable with a case of diet coke in the fridge
-Chick-fil-A is the best fast food restaurant EVER.
-Grass is very seldom greener on the other side*
-My kids are awesome. All three of 'em
-The book is ALWAYS better than the movie*
-Excessive licorice consumption will give you cavities
-What doesn't kill you will sometimes make you stronger, and then sometimes it just really, really hurts*
-Avocados are freakin' expensive
-My husband is one of the biggest blessings I've ever received*
-God is good. All the time. Regardless of what is happening around me, God is always good.***

Who knew?

Back to School

In many ways, this summer has seemed interminable. As a parent, I am running out of creativity, grasping at straws for ways to entertain my kids. On Tuesday, in a hazy moment of desperation, I bought a package of Oreos and let them scoop the centers out to make a giant frosting ball. Not my finest parenting moment.

And summer began abruptly this year. It began without good-byes or end-of-the-year parties or any trace of sentimentality. The beginning of summer was, in fact, largely overlooked. Overshadowed. Overwhelmed.

Three weeks in, we began, almost reluctantly (and guiltily) to do some of the more normal summer things: trips to the pool, afternoon drives for ice cream, a vacation to Branson with friends. Even though life was anything but. Normal, that is.

Because there is nothing normal about your kids "playing" tornado. Or asking people wherever they go if they can see their basement. Or their crawl space. Just in case. And normal is not a field of FEMA trailers outside of town. Or little ole' Joplin, Missouri making headlines on CNN. Or letting your kids consume the frosting from an entire package of Oreo cookies.

But there is also nothing normal about weekly church dinners for the volunteers (over 400 at last count) who we have housed on our campus all summer. Or the way strangers help strangers without thinking twice. Or the way people in this city have learned to live with a sense of purpose for serving others. Because those in need live in their backyard. And there is nothing normal about free backpacks and school supplies for all 7,000 students. Or hundreds of people working around the clock to make sure our children, all of our children, have a place to go to school next Wednesday. Not normal can be a good thing. It can be a great thing.

On Wednesday, I will have a first grader. And a new start. A new routine. And a new normal. Back to school means more this year than a few new outfits and a new teacher. Back to school in Joplin will be a return to something that was lost on May 22nd. I am sure that I am not alone when I say that I crave the day-to-day normalcy of school drop-off and pick-up, the monotony of making lunches, of signing and returning paperwork, and of driving my kids to their dance lessons or soccer practice. Though life as it was ended on May 22nd, all of these "normal" things are really symbols that life, though changed forever, does goes on.

Debris

Last Friday, Dave and I spent the morning clearing rubble and sorting debris at an apartment complex destroyed by the storm. There is something incredibly intimate about sorting through the contents of someone's home. Or what is left of a home.

Raw. Exposed. Vulnerable.

Hidden among the debris- blocks of shattered concrete, shards of wood, bricks, and broken sheets of plywood, we found treasure: family photos, one dollar coins, a piece of a locker with a purple lock still attached from the high school a half mile down the road, a crock pot, a few pairs of panties, a bra, a set of greeting cards and an old second grade journal from a girl named Ashley. The first page was dated September 16, 1994. In a childlike hand, the entry read, Today we had a tornado drill.

Raw. Exposed. Vulnerable.

Their lives have been laid bare for the whole world to see. Or at least, our small group of volunteers. We separated the concrete and metal and larger pieces of wood. And we returned whatever personal items we came across to the site headquarters to be reclaimed by the former residents. And then we went home, humbled, shaken, changed.