A Little More Spring

I've become quite taken with nature photography lately, especially flowers and flowering trees.
I like flowers. They sit still when you take their picture. And they never make funny faces or bunny ears.

However, if I don't remember to take the date stamp off my camera before I take more nature photos, I am going to go into apoplectic fits!

Shades of Spring

For lo, the winter is past,

the rain is over and gone;

the flowers appear on the earth;

the time of the singing of birds is come,

and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land....

Song of Solomon 2:11-12

Yesterday

All my troubles seemed so far away
When I listened to my children play

Oh I believe in yesterday


Copacetic. Is that how you spell the word? Is that even the word?

When brightness and clarity are amplified in every otherwise normal, run-of-the-mill thing that happens. When sweetness and love exude from your children, causing you to forget they ever exude anything else. When, after sorting Legos for days, you can see the bottom of the gigantic tub.

Is that copacetic?

Yesterday, Sissy took on multiple digit multiplication . She did not “get it” right away, which is usually a red flag for imminent meltdown. Not so yesterday. Her attitude was wonderful. Bright and shiny all around.

Then I listened as the girls played some kind of pretend adventure in the next room. They were using clothesbaskets as boats and were “sailing” the boats through the house. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it sounded like the waters were treacherous. Then, as they entered the room I was in, Peanut sighed in relief, and said :

“Now we’re in the Pacific Ocean. It’s much calmer here. That’s why we call it the Pacific Ocean. ‘Pacific’ means ‘calm’.


Right on cue, the sky opened up and a host of angels filled the air with song, while we were bathed in warm, radiant light from above.

Okay, maybe that part was only in my head.

But talk about making my heart swell. Nothing is sweeter to a homeschooling mother’s ears than to hear her children incorporate facts they’ve just learned, into their completely unscripted, unsupervised play.

We’re learning about the explorers. Columbus, Vespucci, Magellan. We had read how the Pacific Ocean was named.
It was sinking in !!!

“Hello”, said Captain Peanut, from her boat. “I’m an explorer”.

“Oh, hello”, I greeted her. “So… where are you from?”

“I’m from India”, she said. “I’m looking for a new land.”


Oh dear. The singing angels in my head disappeared.

But I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

In a pretend game, anything can happen.

Indian explorers? Why not? True, they live in the land of the coveted spices, to which for hundreds of years, Europeans have made the long, dangerous journey along the Silk Road. They could keep sitting back and taking it easy. But sometimes, you just get tired of waiting for other people to come to you. I can dig that.


Later the girls played “golf” outside. Sissy was Tiger Woods. Peanut was Zack Johnson. They played this for an hour. Golf. For an hour. Without coming in once or fighting. That’s when the surreal “bright, sunshiny day” feeling surfaced again.

After that, they cheerfully helped me sort Legos.

Then they helped me make barbecued chicken pizza for supper, each making herself an individual pizza. They were so thrilled at taking part in the process, I was struck with pangs of guilt for not getting them in on the cooking more often.

After they went to bed, Keith and I, weeding through some old VHS tapes, ran across an Eagles concert we had taped, oh about ten years ago.

We put it in and jammed just like old times. I sang background vocals. He said I was off-key. I said I was just switching back and forth between Henley’s part and Frey’s. He said, Oh is THAT what you’re doing. Just like old times.


You know, I wish God would grant me the power to adjust the speed of the earth’s rotation whenever I want. I wouldn’t abuse it, really I wouldn’t.

I would just slow it down for days like yesterday.

A Roundabout Way to an Old Poem

I read somewhere recently that April is National Poetry Month.

This would be a perfect time to post a heart-tugging poem about Peanut and all that she is.

The thing is, I still haven't gotten around to writing it.

Oh, I will. I wrote a poem for Sissy on her last birthday, and we try to divvy up the butterfly accolades right down the middle around here.

And lest we slip up, the ever-so-helpful Grandmother Butterfly is quick to remind us:

"Nina, I don't know if you're aware of this, but awhile back, you posted that Peanut scored 6 points in one of her ballgames. But you didn't write about Sissy scoring 10 points in her last game! That was her best game of the season! I know things were crazy the following week and you didn't get a chance to blog any, but you really need to go back and fix that."

Sometimes, I think if I have to give them exactly equal portions of one. more. thing, that my head will open up, and my brain will just, very neatly , separate along the midline, and both overloaded hemispheres will tumble onto the floor in quivering blobs of protest. One for each girl.

But, I'm going to risk it right now, because I'm just that crazy. And my mother is right. It was absolutely her best game. So here goes.

On March 1, 2008, Sissy played her heart out, got a couple of lucky breaks, and ended the season with a point total in double digits for the first time ever. She has since decided she wants to be a Lady Vol when she grows up. THEN she'll be an astronaut.

So, yeah, I'll eventually get around to writing Peanut's poem. But just in case I don't get it done in April, I'll celebrate National Poetry Month now, by reaching way, waaaay back.

Ah, yes. Here it is. One of my best works. Third grade, I believe. Or maybe it was fifth.

Anyway. Ahem.

Spring

Spring is here

Bees are buzzing

Wooly worms are just fuzzy-wuzzing

Flowers blooming

Leaves turning green

And the prettiest redbuds you've ever seen

Goodbye snow and ice

I need you no more

Springtime just now knocked at the door

You know, I just realized, spring isn't really wooly-worm season is it? Oh well, I was eight. Or so.

Sissy Goes To Standardized Testing .....

..... and emerges relatively unscathed.

I was so worried for her.

I wasn’t worried that she wouldn’t score high. Standardized tests are not the be-all end-all benchmark for mastery of knowledge on a given topic. I know that Sissy’s test results may show weakness in some areas. In fact, I’d be surprised if she didn’t score a little lower than average in science and social studies. Because the curriculum we use for those subjects covers material in a different order than most public and private schools, I’m sure she was tested on some things we hadn’t covered at all. And I’m OK with that.

But I wasn’t sure SHE would be OK with that. She thinks she should know the answer to everything, sometimes even before it’s taught to her. She doesn’t like not knowing the answer. It makes her very uncomfortable. And she freaks out when she’s being timed, at least at home. So I really didn’t know how she would handle the whole testing thing.

And it cut me like a knife, to think of her sitting there, staring at her test with panic in her eyes, and knowing, just KNOWING that something terrible would happen if she shaded in the wrong circle, and HYPERVENTILATING at the thought of second after precious second ticking unmercifully by. And I knew she would do that, I just KNEW it, because I KNOW her better than I know MYSELF, because I bore her from my LOINS........ because we’re flesh and BLOOD, body and SOUL, and well… she gets the whole tendency-to-overdramatize-everything from me.
Obviously.

So I psyched her up on the way to the test site. “You’ll do fine,” I said. “But, you should know there will probably be some stuff on these tests that you don’t know. Maybe stuff we haven’t even learned about. And that’s OK. Don’t panic. Just make your best guess”.

“OK”, she chirped, a little nervously.

And when I picked her after the first day of testing…. She was smiling!

She said it wasn’t bad! She even said it was kind-of fun!

Being awash in relief is the sweetest feeling in the world.

It was short-lived though.

“But Mommy, I was supposed to bring a SNACK”, she said reproachfully.

“Oh, I’m sorry honey. They told me you COULD bring a snack, they didn’t say you HAD to bring one, and you had a really good breakfast, and testing was only two hours long and….. did everybody else in your testing class have a snack?”

“Yes”…. ( and now, I’m suffering self-inflicted wounds again, picturing her alone and snackless in a room full of eating children) ….. “But two other girls shared theirs with me. They were nice. Hey Mommy, what’s your favorite part of the water cycle? Mine’s precipitation.”

And just like that, it was forgotten.

Relief again.

Thank you, sweet, generous girls, whoever you are.

For the Record

I'm not happy with the way my last post turned out, technically speaking.

The thing is, I've been getting bumped off the Internet a LOT lately, and I spent so much time trying to re-edit my post, and then getting booted off before my re-edits took effect, I was practically reduced to tears before it was over. So, I finally gave up on "fixing" the post.

Just know that in my heart, it's a much shorter post. And all the phrases containing the words "believe" or "faith" are underlined. In bold font. And the title more accurately reflects the content.....e.g. "What Baptism Does NOT Mean".

There, I feel better.