objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

Life has been moving at a pace that I can't sustain.  For example, this morning's agenda:
9:00- Deliver Claire to art camp.  During drive to art camp, call Nate to ask him to put the carnitas that I made for lunch in the oven.
9:15- Stop at grocery store, pick up remaining stuff for lunch.
9:20- Ten minute clean up at home, plus drop off groceries.
9:40-Pick up coffee for myself and a friend.
10:00-Playdate with Everett and Ingrid's friends at the park.
11:35- Sideswipe a Dodge Caravan while attempting to return a magic fairy book to the library.

WHAT?

Thankfully, I wasn't texting while I was driving when I caused the accident.  Though, I'm not sure trying to turn into the library from the center lane was my brightest moment.

There are things I like to do that I am not doing because I am driving around like a crazed taxi driver.

When we bounced off of that caravan, I understood that something's got to change.  I bristle at words like "self care" because, quite honestly, I think we're all really good at caring for ourselves.  But the truth is this pace, this busy isn't good for anyone.  The sad part of today is that I really didn't have time to sideswipe the Caravan because I needed to pick Claire up at art camp, scoot her over to her best buddy's house and then head home so I could host three little boys for lunch.  UGH.

Side note:  Claire has become hilarious.  Her two comments about my wreck, "Too bad we're not in England, Mom."  (I knocked the driver side mirror right off) and "We should paint on the window of our car, objects in mirror are much closer than they appear."

We have had a wonderful summer in a lot of ways, but this mommy is weary.  It is time to lay the calendar bare.  To say yes to single-tasking.  To stop running around like a crazed taxi driver.  It is time to be grateful and to live big.

in the thick of it.

We have been through it.  Oh, March how you came in like a lion and treated us like crap.

We have had someone sick in our house since March 2.  Today is the 17th.  And this mama is still coughing like an 80 year old pack-a-day smoker.  I annoy myself when people ask how I am and I can't even muster a response, because it's just getting OLD.

We have been sick.  Really, really sick.  Like self-employed husband, who didn't take any time off when we had our babies was too sick to get out of bed for a week sick.  4 prescriptions sick.  Tell your college roommate who is visiting from BOSNIA that you are unable to get together because there is no way she wants this plague upon her sweet pregnant self and precious baby girls before heading home via INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT.

We've been ALL CAPS sick.  We've been no grocery shopping except for Nyquil, and vitamins, extra humidifier-purchasing and orange juice-guzzling sick.

A fun feature of illness with young children (at least my young children) is that we have seen every animal-does-sports movie known to Netflix.  I have seen a dolphin beat the olds and swim with a prosthetic tale, I watched a chimpanzee snowboard, another chimp become a spy, a zebra go on a quest to find his stripes and the entire Air Bud cannon.

And I am just so over myself and my germs that I could scream.

new math.

Somedays just sing.  I drop the kids at school, go for a run, volunteer in the kindergarten class for an hour, and manage to get dinner in the oven before my (third) school pick up of the day.

Other times, it feels like I'm juggling incompatible needs and failing miserably.

For example:

You have one introverted 8 year-old who desperately wants time alone with her mama and a little sister who desperately needs a nap do you
a.  let little sister nap, ruining the chance for a sweet early bed time and alone time for the big sister
or
b.  keep little sister awake, even though the thought of this makes you want to stab yourself in the eye, knowing that she will go to bed at 6:30 and you and big sister can blissfully paint your nails alone.

Another, also from today:

If you have promised a playdate to your sporty-spice son, do you let him have his friend over even though it means
a.  introverted big sister is going to freak out
b.  wild woman little sister is going to be a menace
c.  mom may want to stab herself in the eye
d.  all of the above

And finally,

Your dear friend who constantly watches your kid asks if she can drop her daughter off during basketball practice tonight during the planned "nail painting portion" of big sister's alone time with her mama.  Do you
a.  say, "sure, the more the merrier!"
b.  say, "no, big sister needs alone time."
c.  stab yourself in the eye.

a birthday story.

I married a good man, who is nothing like me.  One of Nate’s more annoying quirks is that he hates his birthday.  He’s fine with other people’s birthdays but is more than a little “meh” about his own.  This makes no sense to me.  I love a birthday.  I even love other people’s birthdays.  My kids will always and forever have theme-d out birthday parties with specific cake flavor requests and over the top decorations that I won't photograph because I forgot to charge the battery on my camera.

80's Double theme- Annie& Chuck E. Cheese!

Nate’s birthday is 2 weeks before mine and for his request was to do nothing.  This drove me insane.  I let him sleep in and then proceeded to pester him to do something.  Which, I guess would be frustrating when he wanted to do nothing.

I made him a cake.  He took the day off of work to read a book about Lewis and Clark and fixed our 80-year old neighbor’s mailbox.

Two weeks later, he who hates his own birthday planned a wonderful surprise for me.  And he didn’t even attend.  The surprise involved phone stealing, favorite friends-calling and lunch at the French bistro that was opened just for us.  Wow. 

He loves me well.

Next year, Nater, I promise, no fuss.  No balloons, no pestering wife, just all of us together.  I know it is your favorite.  And you are mine.

mini-habits, 10 days in.

It may be a bit early to declare the mini-habits a massive success but I'm an optimistic believer.  During the first week of January, I kept up with my bible study, ran 9 miles and managed to write my minimum number of words per night.  Thankfully, the nine miles weren't run entirely around the shop, though at least a couple of nights I raced a child or two around the shop and they found this hilarious.

So goals number one and two are totally working.  The writing, though, is hard.  On more than one occasion, I have dragged myself out of bed at 11 PM to pound out fifty words and crawled back into bed as quickly as possible.

Some theories that I have about my inability to write more than the minimum:
1.  I am way out of practice.
2.  I would rather read something someone else wrote or (better yet!) look at pictures someone else took.
3.  My other two goals tend to take place in the mornings where I put the writing part off until the last minute and the result is pretty lack luster.

I still love January. Hope you are loving it too.

on becoming a streaker.

I am a January girl.  I love new calendars and goals for the year.  I love the freshness of a new year, seeing new joggers on the street and dreaming of what’s next.

I read through a quick and convicting little book today about setting mini-habits.  The premise is that we set too lofty of goals that rely on motivation (which will fail at some point), and that people would be better off with tiny, mini-goals in order to trick our brains into compliance.  It is for that reason that I am sitting down tonight to type out 5o words on my fancypants new macbook.  It is also why I ridiculously ran around our shop 5 times.  Don’t be impressed.  It’s not that big of a shop.  The idea is if your mini-habit is laughably small, you’re on track.  So here are my mini-goals for 2015:

* Run around the shop one time every single day.  Yep, that one is laughably easy and once I hit my goal, I ran 4 additional laps.  Like a rockstar.  Except it would take me 20 times around the shop to make a mile and I don’t even want to think about how many laps to hit a half marathon.  Still, hitting that  teeny tiny goal felt good and I think the author might be on to something.  He referred frequently to his own experience of dramatically changing his fitness level by challenging himself to complete one push up per day.

* Read one sentence of the Bible every morning.  Be thou impressed.  I’m sure it would take me eons to read the whole thing at that rate but my hope is that committing to putting my body in the chair will improve the amount of bible I’m reading lately.

 * Write fifty words per day.  So far I’m at 332.  Easy peasy.

What are your goals for the year?  Have you ever thought of doing mini-goals?  What laughably small thing could you commit to do now?

grace in a minivan.

She asked for music in the car.  Truth be told, I wanted silence.  But I slipped in her CD.
Kids' songs were the soundtrack to a day full of errands.  Veggie Tales gave way to worship songs and my big girl sang:

You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of dust. 

You make beautiful things, You make beautiful things out of us.

Our imperfect voices together and I was undone.  

My childhood was not like hers.  He makes beautiful things.

He also makes funny things.  This picture, for example: