Waiting

Today is a big day in our house. Today we're going to take out a rock that we've been shrinking and measure it. Way back at the beginning of the school year, we took a one ounce piece of limestone and put it in some vinegar. Apparently over time, the acid in the vinegar will eat away at the soft limestone, and the rock will get smaller. It doesn't look smaller. I'm really hoping that when we weigh and measure it, we will see some difference, because waiting for this experiment to mature has been an exercise in patience over a couple of months. So why did we decide to do this today? The end time of the experiment is completely arbitrary, I have just been wanting to leave it in there nice and long so that we will be sure of seeing some sort of measurable difference. Today is the big day because taking it out and sparking the interest of the kids who have been waiting to see what happens is my way of coping with waiting for Matt to get home from his latest trip to the UK. He's been gone for several days on this trip, certainly long enough for me to see some measurable difference. Not having Matt around means no one constantly running the tea kettle, producing the countless cups of tea that prompt many enjoyable conversations around our house. Somehow it is so much nicer to sit and talk about things with a cuppa something hot in your hand. Not having Matt around means that I have been in charge of teaching all the kids during our sessions of doing school at home. It is very difficult to engage big kids and little kids at the same time, and usually involves letting one group wait while the others get attention. Not having Matt around means a constant feeling of being on duty every minute. I know that feeling of being in charge is multiplied by having kids home all the time, and that if I had them on a school bus to "away school" every day I would have some time to myself. But the way we do it here really depends on two parents being around for the sanity of everyone. So today, after months of waiting for a rock to shrink, we're going to take it out of the mason jar, rinse it off and measure it to see what happened. Meanwhile, I am discovering dimensions of my relationships while waiting for everything to get back to normal around here.

Bunny Love

We are a bunny family. Some families have dogs and cats for pets, we have dogs and cats and bunnies. At one point, after two unexpected (really?) litters of baby bunnies we had fifteen of them. Months and many craigslist ads later we are down to our four standby rabbit friends, Wolf, CT (Cottontail), Hop, and Buttercup.

I don't think often about why we are a bunny family, but lately I had reason to be reminded of all the bunny stories we have enjoyed through the years. First of all, when my eldest child was quite young she was given a green plush rabbit for a toy, which became named Eliezer. I used to make up bedtime stories for my young daughter about a little girl meeting a rabbit named Eliezer in the back yard, and the adventures they would have. Then, of course, there were all the Easter bunnies and Easter bunny stories: the rabbit series by Alan Barker which is now out of print, the book Bunny and Me, featuring a lovely baby in fabulous handknits playing with a lop (what could be better?) and Hop!, a board book featuring, you guessed it: rabbits.

In addition to all the picture books, of course, contributing to our bunny mania may be the tiny fact that as soon as my daughter could read I began shoving my beloved copy of Watership Down at her. She read through it twice before she was ten, and I'm sure she'll revisit it at some point later on down the road. She may not be as much into picture books as she once was, but we're still reading them out loud to her siblings. There's not much better than a good bunny story. Even if it does result in a houseful of rabbits.

Turning a Corner

I learned something new this year. I taught myself, with the help of some books and a youtube video or two, how to construct a mitered square out of yarn. To do this, one has to knit three sides "around a corner" and then finish by completing a square with the mitered section. I know, I know, this sounds like absolute gobbledy-gook--unless you yourself have knit mitered squares. Some of you have.

Another thing I taught myself this year, with the help of some books and a few key people, is that I could turn a corner in my life. I had been doing the same thing for a long time. But this year I decided to do something different. I quit my job; I went back to school. This felt really risky to me. I'm still not sure how everything is going to turn out. But I turned a corner, and I made a change. This is the point at which the mitered square starts to pull everything together and make it all look really good. So if you are one of those people who have been helping me take this risk and turn this corner, thank you.

Where are the balloons, mommy?

Today is my birthday. I am turning 36. It is the kind of age you might rather forget about, since it truly signals the short distance to 40 (but isn't 40 the new 20?). Just kidding. I would rather 40 be 40, since trying to be 20 for 2 decades sounds nothing less than hideous. But seriously, let's get back to talking about my birthday.

When I got up this morning I had breakfast with my family and opened a present, and a card and had "Happy Birthday" sung to me by a three-year-old. It was very sweet and went perfectly with my coffee, which I was drinking throughout. At some point, though, my six-year-old looked around and said, "But Mommy, where are the balloons? When is the party?"

It is with great happiness and contentment that I say I am not having a party for my birthday. At some point in life you realize that in order to have a party you have to either put out some serious effort yourself, or lay all that effort on to someone else. It is such a good feeling to enjoy a birthday without having to run out for balloons, bake a cake, have people over, you know the routine. I won't tell that to the kids just yet, because they are still in the lala-land of believing that all these things magically appear in the natural order of things on birthdays, and I don't want to spoil it for them just yet. But I am very much enjoying having a birthday where I am with all the people I love the most, having a good day (but no balloons).

Animal Planet

Somehow, the job description of "Mom" never seems to include the large and significant amount of time spent taking care of the non-human species in the family. And I don't just mean the obvious, like filling up the dog's water dish or alerting the child in charge when the litter box is getting a little ripe. I mean dealing with another child's anxiety over leaving several bunnies in their outside hutch during a mild thunderstorm, investigating another rabbit for a possible but unlikely pregnancy after discovering her diligence in making a nest in the indoor hutch, and needing to quick-a-minute rehouse tadpoles before heading off to Great-Grandma's for dinner because they might just be at a crucially sensitive point in their metamorphosis requiring access to dry land to prevent drowning. I have found that there is no "out" here other than being the kind of draconian, zero-pet-tolerance mother I never wanted to be. So here I sit, next to the happily swimming (and not drowning) tadpoles who like to hide behind the rock I found for them this afternoon, rather than sit upon it, breathing the same atmosphere as do I.

Cloth Napkins

We recently had a rummage sale at our church. I helped; so did two of our girls, one of whom was on one crutch doing a passable impression of Tiny Tim if Tiny Tim had ever voraciously bought and sold the entire contents of a used jewelry table. (Aside: I sure got a lot of jewelry this past Mother's Day). While my girls were busy with the accessories, I was over in Housewares, enjoying myself.

Now, I never thought I would have so much fun (or take home so much stuff) from the Rummage Sale, but I did. My enjoyment was centered around two things: aprons and cloth napkins. I surprised my husband into a raised eyebrow a couple of weeks ago by hanging the clothes out on the clothesline while wearing one of the aprons; the capacious pockets were too tempting as clothespins holders to pass up. And one of our goals this year was to become more sustainable as a family in terms of our paper product consumption, so the cloth napkins were irresistible as well.

I am a firm proponent of buying used products. Not only is it good to reuse things (remember your three "R"s) but it takes the guesswork out of whether something will survive the first washing. I have no idea whose home these napkins came from, but I like to imagine that it was a place where setting a gracious table and serving a good meal were a priority. So far, having the cloth napkins on the table at dinner time has been nothing but good. The kids like to pick which color we will be using on any given day and I like the virtuous glow I get from not throwing them away after the meal. Win, win.

Bonfire

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpurrin1/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

We had a bonfire tonight. It smelled like a campfire, and looked like a campfire, except that it was burning inside our broken outdoor fireplace. The kids had done garden chores all day so that they were ready for a reward (AKA bribe, AKA positive reinforcement) for all the toil they put in. Fortunately, I had driven up to Community Supermarket to get graham crackers, marshmallows and Hershey's chocolate bars before supper so we were well supplied to make S'Mores.

I enjoyed making the treats. I always like toasting marshmallows. It's one of the things I think I happen to be good at. But at a certain point in the evening I realized that it wasn't really necessary to stand there by the fire, taking charge and making everything. The kids were doing just fine all by themselves. It was one of those moments you have now and then as a parent when you realize that you are in an entirely different phase of your family's life. So, I sat back, had a glass of wine and enjoyed watching the children have a wonderful evening.