Long a fan of construction vehicles, Louis has lately shifted his interest to dinosaurs and mythical beasts.
So I am busy all day answering questions like: “Is an allosaurus bigger than a blue whale?” or “Does a stegasourus eat meat?” (Answer: “I’m not sure, son – I know very little about dinosaurs. How about you find your book and we can look it up.”)
Frustrated with my lack of answers, he has started to just make up “facts” about imaginary dinosaurs. “The excavator dinosaur is as big as an orange shark, but still smaller than a blue whale.”
It’s a small step from imaginary dinosaurs to dragons – and Louis transforms into Sedonafee, a genuine fire-breathing dragon. Sedonafee is terribly proud of his little brother – HE breathes meatballs instead of fire. (Cooked meatballs. His mouth is like an oven that cooks them first.)
You’d think by the time a woman was shepherding her sixth baby through early toddlerhood, she’d have no more tricks to learn.
But you’d be wrong.
It never fails to frustrate me that brand-new puller-uppers LOVE to play in the toilet. Keep them out of the toilet and they’ll be digging around in the bathroom trash.
The worst thing is, when one is busy in the bathroom, one doesn’t always have a lot of ability to keep a baby’s hands out of inappropriate places.
It won’t really do much good if I take my hands out of the toilet where I’m rinsing dirty diapers just to move her hand away from the ick. And if I’m washing my own hands and they’re all wet? That’s not really ideal either. I’m going to have to wash them again (along with the baby’s hands) anyway, but I don’t really want to get her outfit all wet…
It’s a conundrum. It has been a conundrum for the past five and a half years since Tirzah Mae started pulling up on things.
But I’ve finally discovered a hack so simple I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.
How many times have people commented on what they see as the impossibility of our life? Difficult deliveries. Lots of young children, one right after the other. Foster care thrown on top.
How many times have I responded back that God gives grace for what he gives? I didn’t have the grace (or the skills) for three when I only had two – but God gave the grace when he gave the third child. Ditto four. And five. (Even if the skills are still a work in progress, to be honest!)
Nothing makes this more clear than when a foster child moves from our home.
Sweet P lived with us for 20 months and was reunited with her biological family in November of last year. We were so excited (still are!) to be able to participate in a successful reintegration. Of course, it was bittersweet – as happy as we are for her and her family, we are also sad to no longer have the connection we once had (We are so thankful that we have a good relationship with Sweet P’s family and have been able to see her a few times since reintegration, most recently an overnight just last night.)
The view around my dining room table this noon – five of my precious children together again
Anyway, having a foster child move is bittersweet, but there’s another feeling I wasn’t quite prepared for when we started fostering. It was a feeling of… ease. Like, “wow, it’s a lot easier to parent four than five.”
The strange thing is, it wasn’t that easy to parent four back before four became five. My capacity expanded somewhere along the way. God gave grace for what he gave – grace for five.
But our family size contracted for a bit, and the bit of ease that comes with four instead of five has given me additional wiggle room now that I’m frequently parenting alone while Daniel travels for business. And has given me some additional wiggle room to help me establish good habits in our homeschool.
But it’s time for expansion again.
Four children has become five again.
Not a foster child this time. We’re not sure when Daniel will be done traveling and the logistics of a new placement don’t work very well with our current situation (lots of appointments that need to be done rapidly don’t work very well when you have four other children that you can’t take with you – thanks COVID! – and a husband that may or may not be out-of-state at any time in the near future). So we won’t be taking new foster children until we have a more settled schedule.
The Sumerian cylinder seal I made for myself as part of our history studies (Tirzah Mae thinks I should start looking like this tomorrow, since I’ve been pregnant almost a month :-P)
But four has become five again – it’s time to stop popping bon-bons (ha!) Instead, we are preparing to expand again as God gives grace for a new little one arriving on the outside sometime in September.
Beth-Ellen came to me, complaining that her shoes didn’t fit. Would I help her put them on?
Oddly, she seemed to be right. I could have sworn those shoes fit yesterday. But wait…
I peeled back her sock just to make sure I wasn’t missing something.
Yep. Three pairs of socks worn on top of each other.
But three pairs of socks is barely scratching the surface of this girl’s love of layers. She’s worn as many as six or seven pair at a time. She’s also been known to layer three shirts and stick a dress on top of it all.
Ursula K. Le Guin’s Catwings Return is 48 pages long, has illustrations on nearly every page, and just happens to be due back to the library tomorrow with no more renewals available (which means I’ve had it on my bookshelf for 12 weeks already – nothing like a due date to inspire action.)
It’s a tiny accomplishment, but I’m learning to celebrate tiny things.
One fewer word missed on the verse I’m memorizing. The times when my children look me in the eye when I call their name instead of just ignoring me. A couple square feet of counterspace cleared of dishes and wiped clean of crumbs.
May 2021 be a year of many tiny steps in a good direction.
One of my favorite parts of this particular stage of mothering is that I can do all sorts of crafts without any expectation of them having to look truly good.
We gathered leaves and made leaf prints today. The ones we made with our temperas and kiddy paintbrushes are nowhere near as pretty as the one on Pinterest, made with expensive paint markers and made by an actual adult. But the children learned a little about the process of printmaking, and this actual adult got to do leaf prints without stressing over how my product was, mmm, less-than-amazing.
And when I finished making my prints and thought the painted leaves looked pretty? I quick cut out a cardboard ring and glued the leaves onto it to make a funky fall wreath. As a single gal, I couldn’t have pulled off such a kitschy craft – but nobody bats an eye when they see such things in the home of a mother of preschoolers.
Just don’t tell anyone that the preschoolers didn’t make it – it was all me :-)
