7 Quick Takes Friday

1. My favorite moment of the mass is right after Communion.  In that quiet, I know that all of us have stories, have crosses big and small that gnaw at the heart and make even the simplest things difficult. But we are all here, and all of us are offering all our sorrows, joys, hopes and triumphs and tragedies in that quiet moment before Christ, and being  fully aware of having Christ within us. 

2. My son finished school this week, and my daughter finished her exams.  For my oldest two, summer has officially begun. Time to sign them up for outside of the house jobs.

3.  Swimming lessons.  I think the woman at the aquatic center nearly quit but we got five kids signed up for the same time, all in different level swimming.  The sixth one is only 3 so I'm going to have us go to the pool for two hours prior to the lessons so she gets her water fix twice a week.   It should be fun.

4.  On my nightstand: Eat, Pray, Love.  So far, not too excited by it.   Sparta.  Yeah, I like it more than one  probably should.   Also hoping to throw myself into reading Blessings and the Bee Keeper's Daughter. 

5.  Phineas and Ferb have made it popular but before the cartoon, my kids and I had a tradition which we will still hold this summer.  We make a list of 100 things we hope to do over June, July and August.  We post it on the refrigerator and check off as we go, and add in as we find new things to do.   I highly recommend it. 

6. There are three things I require of my children's teachers; that they care about the outcomes of their students, that they come prepared to convey material and meaning to the kids, and that they hold the children accountable for their actions or inactions because  the real world commercial, social, economic, political, cultural and spiritual will.  

I thank God for teachers my kids say are "hard" because they assign homework, grade it and give it back with corrections.  I thank God for teachers that give my kids the grades they earn and demand my children turn in their best efforts even if the efforts reveal a lack of understanding.  I thank God they care enough to assign projects and posters and book reports, all things that cause my kids to groan, and to grow. 

We are coming to the end of another school year, and knowing how much I hate homework and how hard it is for me to get kids to get through it, I love these men and women for being willing to take it day after day.  I love my kids and some days it's a battle royale to get started on homework, but they walk into the lions den everyday to demand more.  

So Thank you!

7.  

Have a great weekend and remember those who walk in harms way and have since the beginning of our Country, so we could have all this lavish freedom, all these opportunities, all the gifts our society rains on its people.     

  

Spring Thaw

One of the problems I face raising so many children, is getting into a parental rut; like not varying the menu or not thinking to expose my kids to a type of art work because for me, I’ve done this six times before. The tone I use with the three pre-schoolers cannot apply to older, nor can the ironic humor used with teens be salted in conversations with pre-teens. If you only eat Nutella, you forget other chocolates like semi-sweet have a beauty that’s worth appreciating. Drinking only one type of wine or hearing only one kind of song will ultimately become dull. Parenting the same way with everyone is a guaranteed recipe for failure. As of late, the sheer numbers had resulted in my engaging in mostly triage style parenting, fixing what needed help the most and trying to just muddle through the rest.

Playing ball, the kids began a rhyming game and I had to marvel at how quickly my older children molded their behavior to keep the younger ones engaged. I conceded, I had been an all work and no fun parent as of late. Fortunately, my daughters and sons keep providing me with their fresh perspectives. Without their everyday examples, I’m not sure how one could rediscover experiencing toddlerhood the eighth time around and continue to recognize that a day spent scribble scrabbling through an entire ream of paper is much better time spent than even a few minutes agonizing over a difficult Sudoku.

The other day, my daughter put out the paper and crayons as soon as breakfast was over and had the toddlers make periscopes so they could play pirates. The project lasted all of 20 minutes but the joy was contagious and soon I had swabs running about the house saying “ARRR” and “AVAST” with lots of giggles, whereas boring old me would have cleaned the table and handed out the crayons and paper without the additional prompt.

How long had I been sleeping? These effortless acts that for some reason had for me, taken effort, were all around me. The children needed me to have new eyes too. A mental wall came down, making me wonder when I first put the darn thing up and why?

Suddenly, there were all sorts of possibilities. I could already foresee, reading the lyrics to rock band, our first grader would getting additional reading time and mentally planned a band session for the next day. That week, times tables were an issue for my baseball player, so we’re worked on drilling them as we played catch. “Pop fly Pop Quiz. Seven times Seven.” He had to catch, throw and give the answer. I told him it was just as hard for me without the math. After watching me drop a few routine flies, he agreed.

The calendar may say only March 8th, but the first signs of a real spring are here. For me, parenting is and will always be like listening to opera, watching a movie with subtitles, visiting a museum or hearing baseball on the radio. The experience itself is more pleasurable than the idea of the experience, and I need to not be put off by the concepts which often sound dryer and duller than the reality. The thaw of my hibernating fun parent has begun.

Yesterday was beautiful so we went outside. One daughter had too much homework, but in keeping with the new policy to squeeze in a little fun, she dribbled the basketball under the table as she worked on her geometry. The old me started to mess with it, after all, she was in the house, it was loud, what if the toddlers try to do this…visions of messes threatened to create six more weeks of winter. Then I remembered myself in a desk. Even in graduate school, my leg was always bouncing, I never sat still. Even in tests, I’d be almost twitching to get out of my seat and my notebooks were illustrated with dragons on every page whenever a lecture was taking place.

I made myself smile and ushered the younger ones outside to bike a game of red light green light, but before leaving, I drew a dragon on her worksheet. "Keep up the good work." I added.
“Cool Mom.” and she kept on dribbling. “Look, with my left hand too."

P.S. There are lots of lessons I’m taking in from this most recent child’s brief life, not the least of which is, whatever I’m currently worrying or obsessing about, it isn’t important. Life raising nine children suddenly seems a lot less difficult than I previously thought it was, and thus I am grateful to this little one for bringing with her, the gift of perspective.