Irrational Butterflies

I don't know what's wrong with Peanut. She's usually very easygoing. She loves to sing, and forever singing songs around the house, some she knows, some she makes up herself, and some, a combination of the two. Sometimes she'll sing her way through conversations, or ask me to listen to her sing a song, but mostly her singing seems to happen naturally and mindlessly, while she's playing with her dolls or coloring -- like she's not even really aware that she's singing.


Sissy loves to sing too, but has never done so to the same degree as her sister. However, in the last few months she has learned some songs in Spanish, and she's been singing those songs around here quite a bit. Maybe she gets a kick out of hearing herself sing another language. In any case, lately we've been hearing a lot more singing from Sissy than usual.

Here's where it gets ugly.
Peanut hates to hear Sissy sing. Almost every time Sissy starts to sing, Peanut tells her to stop.

"It BOTHERS me", she says.

The first couple of times this happened, I was amused.

"You've got to be kidding me, " I told her. "You sing ALL the time. Why shouldn't Sissy be able to sing?"

"It just BOTHERS me!" she whined.

And that has become her chant of protest.

"It BOTHERS me!"

It's the closest thing to an explanation she can give, for why she doesn't want Sissy to sing.

Until tonight, when Sissy could be heard happily singing in the bathtub.

"Solamente en Cristo.....solamente en el" ......

Peanut dragged herself to the living room whining -- again with the whining .....

"I don't like it when Sissy sings, Mommy. It IGNORES me!"

Maybe she had protested so many times she was boring herself silly with the same line, so she used a word she thought meant the same thing. And although I'm pretty sure the word she was going for was "annoys", I have to wonder if the word she actually used, hit the nail square on the head.

Sissy's singing IGNORES Peanut. Nothing get's Peanut's goat like being ignored.

So there we have it.

Of course, I don't make Sissy stop singing. I tell Peanut that she just has to deal with it, that she's not the only person in the house allowed to sing. She's usually so lightning-quick at perceiving domestic injustices that I don't know why she can't see how unreasonable she's being.

Still, she protests.

And it really BOTHERS me.

Writer's Block / Reading Blitz

I'm finding myself at an unfamiliar loss for words lately, at least in the written form.

It's not that I have nothing to write about. It's just that writing a post that I'm happy with takes an agonizing amount of time, even for the shortest of entries.

I think it's because I don't speak, or even think in the same language I write. Yeah, it's all English. But it's different. I have to take the thoughts in my head and translate them to a more polished, less bumpkin English before my tapping fingers throw them out for all the world to see.
And I'm not a quick translator. This paragraph alone has taken me 15 minutes.

And I'm getting irritated that I'm spending time away from my book.

Oh, my book. I'm reading Vienna Prelude by Bodie Thoene, a Christian historical fiction writer who my aforementioned friend Linda told me about.

I don't know how long it's been since I read fiction that wasn't children's literature. I really don't have time to be doing it now, but it is an indulgence I am loving. I'm totally taken with pre - World War II Germany and Austria and a young half Jewish violinist whose family is caught up in one terrible unfolding event after another.

I used to read for pleasure so much more. The last several years, so much of my reading is homeschool related, I had forgotten what it was like.

I curled up on the couch today with my book and a blanket, and a cup of Russian tea, just like old times. I almost forgot I even HAVE a computer. Though this particular book and I had never met before today, it was a sweet and nostalgic reunion. And the best part is, it's not over.

I'm only halfway through the book!

Full Moon Fever

We got to see the "mooner" eclipse! We're not calling it that anymore though. Peanut knows now that her terminology was slightly off, thanks to everybody laughing and correcting her. It makes me a little sad. Like when she stopped saying "callapidder" instead of "caterpillar".


Anyway -- the eclipse! It was SO cool. We didn't think we would see any of it because it's so cloudy here, but these clouds moved fast and were full of holes so we pretty much saw the whole thing. We popped popcorn and turned out the lights and watched the moon disappear in front of our eyes. When it was completely covered with Earth's shadow, it was dark orange. By that time it was so high in the sky we had to go out on the front porch to see it. It's supposed to be in total eclipse until 10:50 and then will start coming out of Earth's shadow. We've seen enough though. It's cold outside and we're kind of wimpy.


There are not many things that will grab and keep the attention of our entire family. This was one. Brother and the girls kept passing the binoculars back and forth.

This was way better than getting up at 4:00am to watch a meteor shower in August. I didn't write a post about that because there was almost nothing to write about. You keep your eyes glued to the sky and propped open (at 4:00am remember), and if you're lucky you MIGHT see a small flash of light streak across the sky. Sit there 20 more minutes just like that and you might see another one.


I'll take a total mooner eclipse over that any day.

Random Acts

Saturday Peanut scored 6 points in the first 5 minutes of her basketball game, prompting her to wonder aloud if she had magic powers. So it was probably a good thing that she didn't hit ANY of the other 15 or so shots she put up. Superheros can be so hard to live with.

Sissy played a great game too, scoring 2 buckets and playing impressive defense against a girl who's a head and shoulders taller than her.

Sunday The girls take turns helping me in the nursery at church when it's my Sunday to stay. It was Peanut's turn this time. We stayed with the 3 year-olds and she had so much fun. She played and played with the kids, and when church was over and the parents came down, the kids didn't want to leave until Peanut finished the book she was reading to them.

Monday We played with Sculpey clay and baked our creations. Also, I continued an effort I started (again) last week in getting the girls to help more with the housework. Today Sissy vacuumed and took the trash can to the road. Peanut dusted and cleaned some glass.

Tuesday Peanut cleaned the toilet bowls and Sissy cleared and wiped the breakfast table and swept under the table, after which she ASKED to dust the furniture. Peanut had done a less than stellar job at this yesterday, so I told Sissy to dust away. Tonight while Peanut was at basketball practice, Sissy and I stayed home and got out her sewing machine she got for Christmas. She just made some practice stitches on scrap fabric, but she had fun with it. Maybe eventually we'll actually make something.

It's so nice to have some time with just one of the girls. I need to make it a regular thing with both of them. For a couple of weeks I've been staying home with one girl while the other one is at basketball practice. Last Tuesday night Sissy and I worked on her Valentine to Peanut- (which turned out way cool, incidentally). Thursday while Sissy was at practice, Peanut and I played the game "Guess Where?".

And on a completely unrelated note, Peanut tells me that tomorrow night there's a "mooner eclipse". That should be fun to watch!

Name Dropping

I have a dear real-life friend who just started a blog called Thoughts of the Heart.


Linda is a Christian homeschooling mother of 5, and one of my favorite people to talk to. We've had some wonderful telephone conversations about Christianity . We've talked at length about doctrines & denominations, or what God's Word says concerning this or that -- usually to the background music of her sweet little ones.


When Linda told me she had started a blog, I knew the Lord would use her to bless others, and she's off to a great start.


So drop by and visit her at Thoughts of the Heart. Remember when you first started blogging, and make her day by leaving her a welcome comment!

The Unfathomable

"40 ??? " Peanut was incredulous.

" WOW! It seems like it should be a whole lot more - like, I don't know, a hundred and forty, or something. "

Going somewhere else in her mind now, her voice drifts into a singsong cadence,

......" 40 days and 40 nights, 40 days and 40 nights ".....

then suddenly, she's back, with the scream of slamming brakes .......

......"but 40 YEARS?!? ......... Man!!!"

That was Peanut's exact response to the answer I gave her when she asked me how many years it had been since I was born.

I wanted to be offended. I really tried to be offended. But it's a hard thing to pull off when you can't stop laughing.

What is Love?

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.... 1 Corinthians 13: 4-8

Around here, love is everything Mommy hasn't been lately.

Today, in a departure from my last few posts, I'm digging a little deep. The Scripture passage above is one of my favorites. It's hard for me to read because with each characteristic of love given, I see how far I fall short of the Biblical mark. It's almost like taking several dinstinct and deliberate punches. But the thing is, I need to be shown my weaknesses. I need to feel the sting of remorse and repentance, so that I can then feel the sweetness of God's mercy. And the process needs to happen over and over again.

Because as difficult as it is to have my eyes opened to how impatient, envious, and self-seeking I am, wouldn't it be terrible if I felt nothing when I read these words? Or even worse, if I felt good about myself after reading them? If I actually thought they describe me? Can't God do more with a heart that feels pain when He pricks it, than with a Teflon heart full of smug self-righteousness? Or is my line of thinking self-righteous in itself?.....as in " Look at me, I'm so tender-hearted, so contrite, so easily convicted of my wrongdoing, God must be pleased with me".

I don't know. I just know a mother who writes cute little blog descriptions about correcting children gently, and letting them be carefree and curious while they're young, should be a walking poster girl for 1 Corinthians 13. And she may do an OK job fooling everybody else, but she doesn't fool God. Yesterday when she began reading aloud the words "Love is patient, love is kind......", she was more conscious than ever of the two small souls next to her , depending on her to not only teach them, but to show them what love is …. and she had the uncomfortable feeling she wasn’t fooling them either.


But she is deeply thankful she has a God who corrects her gently, who repeatedly makes her aware of her weaknesses, but always reminds her that there is hope for her. And while love is the big idea here, for those of us who are less than perfect, hope is also pretty great.

Welcome to Wonderland

I sometimes feel like I fell down a rabbit-hole and landed in this house, where children spawned from the union of Logic and Madness continually charm, and yet perplex me.

Here’s a quiz, inspired by just a couple of events that transpired around here today.
It’s very short, really. Pass or Fail.


1. “This is SO MUCH FUN !!!!!!!! “ Peanut said over and over this morning, unable to contain her joy as she:

a. crafted homemade Valentines using glitter and lots of girlie stickers

b. pretended to camp out using a sheet and the kitchen table for a tent

c. scrubbed the toilet bowl




2. Sissy is smiling so hard her face could split open, she’s pumping a fist in the air, and chanting, “Yessssssss!” All this because I have just given her permission to:

a. see the Hannah Montana movie

b. have a cell phone

c. lug a smelly trash can as tall as herself from the road to the backyard.




3. Sissy is eating a mint. “Whoa!”, she says. “I almost swallowed it whole”.
Peanut responds by exclaiming:

a. Good thing you didn’t get choked, Sissy!

b. Well, at least your STOMACH would have had great breath. HAHAHA!!!

c. Wow, that would have been bad for your cholesterol!



Ready for the answers?


1. C
Remember, this is Wonderland. Left is right. Up is down. And Peanut LOVES cleaning the toilet - but I'm not complaining. If you guessed A or B, you're only wrong because neither of them happened TODAY.

2. C

Curiouser and curiouser. Here we see the same irrational response. Grungy, menial chore is met with excitement and glee. The excitement is not transferrable to most other household chores though. That would only enable me to make sense of, and even predict their behaviour, and what fun would that be? If you guessed A or B, you're only wrong because I still have breath.

3. C

I don't have an explanation, illogical or otherwise for this one. But if you guessed A or B, you're only wrong, because she wasn't in the right mood.

It seems that at least once a day, I realize again that , as the Cheshire cat said..."We're all mad here". Now I'm terribly sleepy and unable to keep my eyelids open. I must go to bed now, so that I can lie awake and stare at the ceiling.

Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it's getting!

A Little Seventies Nostalgia

I loved Schoolhouse Rock cartoons when I was a kid. Who didn't? Even my mother couldn't complain - it was educational. I still know every word of the Preamble to the Constitution..I just have to hum it in my head before I recite it.


Last year I bought the entire Schoolhouse Rock song collection on DVD. I think the girls love them as much as I did. I use them in school sometimes, especially the grammar ones, but mostly we watch them for fun.

My favorites are the ones sung by the Conjunction Junction guy. That guy has the richest voice. He also sings "I'm Just A Bill" , "Rufus Xavier Sarsparilla" , "Energy Blues", and my personal favorite, "The Tale of Mr. Morton", featured below. Give it a listen. Dig the trumpets. Get lost in the jazzy voice - go ahead, it's easy. Hear it soar in the chorus and if it doesn't make you smile, you're a lost cause. Enjoy!

Funny Butterflies

As I recently commented, my kids' attempts at humor are usually corny, slapstick, Looney Toons type jokes that make me wish for a cane to appear and pull them offstage.

Ironically, when they're not campaigning for laughs, when they're just being themselves without trying to be funny..... that's when they make me laugh the most.

To illustrate my point, I give you two recent vignettes from our home.

Vignette #1

Sissy: Mommy, when I grow up, do I have to be a lady ? I mean like, wear make-up and stuff?

Me (ignoring the impulse to more clearly define "lady' and opting for the short answer) :

No, you don't ever have to wear makeup.

Sissy: Oh, good....... because I really want to be an astronaut.

???

Who knew wearing make-up and being an astronaut were mutually exclusive??

And we call ourselves liberated, ladies?

Vignette #2

Sissy, recently sick with a fever of 101, cracks a joke that she is extremely proud of, but that nobody else gets.

"You're delirious," I tell her.

"Umm, I think you mean hilarious," she kindly corrects me.

She really thinks I used the wrong word - and there it is. In that moment, she is indeed, obliviously hilarious.

Me And the Band: A Road Story

So it's the last song of the show right? We sound better than ever tonight. Me and the band, we know each other so well, we're in such a harmonious groove, we don't think at all, we just play, we just feel it man.

So after the second chorus, I step out to do my solo, the part my fingers have been itching to do all night. They attack the strings of my Les Paul Epiphone like they have a life all their own, like if I could detach myself from my hands and walk away, they would still know what to do, because it's all they were meant to do.

I recently learned a new slide technique and when I try it out the crowd goes insane. The energy in the place is palpable, the freakin ROOF is threatening to come off, and at the peak of my solo, just for a moment, the essence of time itself seems suspended in mid-air.

Then, in the distance , I hear somebody scream ---

"That was FUN Mommy, let's do it again!"

I shake my head to get some focus and slowly look around. I'm in our playroom. They've done it to me again.

"We're SUPPOSED to be picking up TOYS!" I yell, waving the Fisher-Price electric guitar around my head menacingly and chasing them around the room. They run away, shrieking with giddy little-girl laughter.

It is the most beautiful music in the world.

The Lost Art of Lingering

One evening last week, my husband needed to meet with someone at our house. Because the courteous and professional nature of the meeting clashed with the loud and boisterous nature of our daughters, Keith and I decided beforehand that the girls and I would take off.

It was very strange to find myself the owner of a chunk of time to kill. There’s always somewhere we have to be, always a deadline, and we’re always running five minutes late. Most of the time I remind myself of Seargent Carter on the old TV show Gomer Pyle, always yelling “Move it! Move it! Move it!"

This evening though, I found myself moving at a much more relaxed pace. We spent an hour at the library, and could easily have stayed twice as long but had to leave because they were closing. Our library has terrible hours - they close at 5:30 on Fridays and Saturdays and aren't open at all on Sundays.

Then we went out to eat. Absurdly, we ate fast food, even though we really had time for a better meal . I actually caught myself almost telling the girls to hurry and finish their food. (I'm always the first one finished). But then I realized there was no reason they should be in a hurry, which caused me to wonder -- is this how it is every time we eat? Am I so in the habit of rushing through meals that I almost did it this time when I really didn't need to?

After dinner, we went to an ice cream store downtown. With temperatures in the 20's and blustery winds, ice cream sounded like torture to me, so I had a cup of White Chocolate Mocha and let the girls take their time eating ....they don't share my distaste for ice cream in winter.

We stopped at my parents' on the way home and hung out for a while. The whole pace of the evening was just unusually laid-back and wonderful. I had looked forward to an evening out with the girls, and I knew we would have fun, but the awareness of lingering with nowhere else to be, once I became accustomed to it, was an absolutely unexpected gift.

Southern Accents

"Mommy, I think Sissy has an accent". Peanut was carefully eating her Froot Loops, one color at at time.

Not really sure how she came to be a linguistics expert, but dying to know, I asked her what she meant. It turns out she was slightly confused about what an accent actually is, and thought that when Sissy mockingly repeated her during an argument, that the voice Sissy used was an accent.

"So what is an accent?", she asked , after I made her aware of her understandable mistake.

"An accent is how people pronounce words depending on where they're from, " I told her.
"Remember how you told me what your friend S. said the first day you went to class after your arm cast came off? How you talked like him when you were telling me about it?"

Peanut: "Yeah, he said....."Oh myee gahsh, yoo gahda noo ahm!"

Me: "That's a Northern accent." New England, I was pretty sure, but I was trying to keep things simple.

Peanut: "Well, what do we sound like?"

I fought off the urge to say, "We sound just like this!" But what a question, though. The only way to answer her was to give her another comparison. I thought a minute.

"Okay Peanut, say - 'Tonight I'm going to ride my bike". She did.

"Well people with Northern accents say 'Tonieeet I'eem going to rieeede myee bieeeke'.
I knew I was overexaggerating, but I really wanted her to see the difference.

The girls cracked up laughing. I told them that people everywere else think we talk funny.
They couldn't believe it.

There have only been a couple of times when I was made keenly aware that I have a drawl.

Once when I was 9 , we vacationed in Florida. At the hotel pool I befriended twin sisters from Indiana or somewhere. I noticed them looking at each other after I would say certain things. Then one of them said, "Tell us again where you're from".
"Tennessee," I said. They looked at each other again and this time laughed out loud. "Teeunasayyy?" they asked. "Did you say 'Teeunasayyy?'

Then in my early 20's when I was visiting family in Cleveland Ohio, it took multiple attempts before the clerk in a 7-11 understood that I wanted to buy a lighter. He kept telling me they didn't sell ladders.

I read somewhere once that the Southern accent is a delicate thing, very easy to lose if one moves away from the South. I've seen it happen in people I know.

I've also noticed that while I'm sure outside the South my kids sound like little hillbillies, they don't have nearly as strong an accent as my husband and I.
Just last month after my husband told Brother he needed to put some air in his tires, Sissy said, "Daddy, what's a tar?"
It was funny, but in a way, it kind of wasn't. I never would have thought our own kids would have trouble understanding us.