friday musings...

things i am loving this week:

1. the story that harper raised her hand and asked her teacher if she could go give calvary a hug when she saw his class happen to walk past the hall.
2. her teacher let her.
3. and i might love even more that calvary was the one who excitedly relayed this story to me the minute he crawled into the car at pick up.
4. watching calvary and harper hold hands as they walk out of the school to get into the van.
5. finley's ruffle birdie print pants.
6. oliver jack kissing finley's cheek before nap.
7. how finley refuses to hold anyone else's hand during prayer time besides calvary.
8. watching the kids eat popsicles on the porch after school.
9. kyle building a tree house for the kids.
10. hearing oliver jack say, "thank you mommy for making this" every night at dinner.
11. hanging out with friends.
12. hearing oliver jack recite a nursery rhyme.
13. the dollar store...and how harper always picks office supplies, calvary always picks something that amazingly breaks immediately, and oliver jack always picks a weapon.

friday's musings...

no better way to start the weekend then to think about all of the things that i am loving about life right now...

1. finley sleeping on my chest right this very minute.  i rubbed my hands across her back and i had a nostalgic moment of running my hands across a very pregnant belly two junes ago...
2. the freckles across the bridge of oliver jack's nose...
3. calvary's giddy laugh when i come in to his room to check on him at night and how he scoots over so we can snuggle...
4. harper's sweet love note that she left under my pillow so i would find it right before bed...
5. watching the excitement of the kids when they hear the door open and shut when kyle comes home...
6. watching harper and calvary hug and kiss each other as they part ways in front of the school each morning...
7. kyle's hugs...
8. taking harper to ballet; those moments with just the two of us are precious and few.
9. calvary's lack of self-consciousness when it comes to fashion (high striped socks, leg warmers, and in-side-out jackets) because it completely contradicts his self-consciousness when it comes to every thing else...
10. campfires in our woods.  so many things about that statement make me happy...the fact that it is fall and campfires are appropriate, the fact that our family is together, and the fact that it is *our* woods...
11. how at the mere hint of rain my kids think that it is movie time.  oliver jack watched the leaves blow in the wind and he said, "you see it blowing mommy? we better go inside and watch a uubi."
12. walking in this morning and seeing oliver jack and harper snuggled up in her bed while she read books to him...
13. seeing calvary excited about starting to read all by himself...
14. the time after the kids go to sleep where kyle and i can have a couple of hours to ourselves...
15. the time just after nap time when jack wants to snuggle...

she takes after her sister...

finley rose...15 months old

finley rose....4 months old

the more i learn...

i realize how little i know.

every day i learn a little more about this parenting gig.  and somehow every day everything that i learn seems to totally up heave everything that i thought that i knew.  i find myself having thoughts like, "i only thought i was sad when harper went to school...it will only be when finley goes to school that i will truly realize how much this hurts".  i am more and more conscious of the fact that i have no idea what i am walking in to...

this sunday i was sitting in church and on one side of me was my wonderful husband that i love with all of my heart and on the other side of me was my baby brother and his sweet, strong wife.  and at one point i thought to myself (as i apparently do often) that i would be so happy if one day my children were sitting happily praising God in church with their families...and all at once...as if God himself captured my thoughts...an image of my older brother flashed in my mind.

as much joy as nicholas and i bring my parents their hearts are constantly grieving.  michael is unhappy.  he is lost in the sorrow of emptiness.  and my parents do not grieve his absence with the pride of someone who is embarrassed of something broken but with the broken heartedness of someone who has lost a great treasure.

i don't pretend to be a theologian but it is in these moments that i feel like i catch a glimpse of God's character that makes me wonder how anyone could or would believe that God would want any of his own children to be lost for eternity.  God's love is so much greater than the love of two fallen parents and yet my parents sit waiting, hoping, yearning for the day that my brother sits beside us all whole.  not perfect.  just whole.  if that is the image of my own parents how much more does God long to have him return? 

the love i once had was limited to the love of a daughter or the love of a sister.  i never wanted to disappoint my parents and i wanted my brothers to be happy.  but then i became a mother and everything changed.  i cannot imagine the pain that my parents have felt only because the pain i have now through empathy i know pales in comparison to the real deal.  i have learned that their pain is not a selfish pain.  their pain is a pain rooted in the despair they feel knowing that he is hurting.  even in the times that he doesn't realize he is hurting.  i no longer feel like the jealous brother that wonders why my father celebrates the return of my self-exiled brother.  instead, i anxiously wait on the day that i can look to my left and see him there. 

my own children are only babies.  i have only had to loosen my grip enough to let them wear crazy socks or choose dance over soccer.  moments like sunday are moments that cement how little i understand what it is i am up against.  my prayer today is that i can consecrate my children into God's hands.  that i will trust God to take care of them in my admission that i cannot pave their way.  i pray for my brother's return...

i am thankful for the love of God; he never gives up.
i am thankful for the gift of children because they bring such joy.
i am thankful for the gift of children because they teach us to be less selfish.
i am thankful for the gift of children because they teach us to live simply.
i am thankful for the gift of children because they teach us how to love.

harper lost her first top tooth...

before the action

(picture compliments of calvary)

after: the toothless wonder

harper has been wiggling this top tooth since last school year.  it takes her quite a while to actually work the tooth enough for it to be ready to be lost, but she finally had enough.  the tooth was completely disconnected on one side and stubbornly hanging on to the other side.  kyle took a piece of floss and looped it around the edge and gave a quick yank...the tooth never stood a chance to kyle's brawn.  i have to give it to harper; she is incredibly tough when she wants something.  kyle and harper wrestled with that tooth for a solid week before they finally reached their limit.  harper wanted to go to a yard sale and wanted the tooth fairy's money to spend.  i'm not sure why she wanted to go to a yard sale so desperately.  i used to call her a hoarder, but i think she is more of a picker.  she went to sleep friday night a happy and excited little girl. 

oliver jack kicked the habit!

 this week oliver jack passed his pacifiers on to the paci fairy.  i know, i know...people cannot believe that we let him have a pacifier for this long, but the reality is that it really isn't a big deal to me.  harper had hers until she was almost 3.  calvary gave his up close to 3.  and oliver jack follows suit.  one morning, after riding calvary's bike for a few days, oliver jack mentioned that he wanted his own bike.  i told him that when he is ready to give his paci up the paci fairy might bring him a bike.  his excitement was hand flapping obvious and he said he wanted to give them up that night!  we ran with it and, keeping the murray tradition, he talked to the paci fairy on the phone, tied his paci to the tree, and went to bed without his beloved paci.  he has not shed a single tear.  he let go of his paci without any of the drama that harper had...(please, mommy...just tell me you know its hard...tell me you understand) or the midnight cries of calvary.  he had a difficult time falling asleep that first night but i think that may have more to do with his excitement rather withdrawals.

the next morning he woke up and found a shiny new bike sitting under the same tree where he left his paci.  he was so excited he could hardly handle it.  ...hands were flapping, feet were rarely on the ground... he has been riding his bike every day and has figured out the pedals and even figured out how to brake...which is a good thing for going top speed down our drive way.  the only sad part about the whole deal is the all too familiar recognition that he is growing up.  he looks so big on the seat of his "rocket bike".  he is loosing so much of that baby chub and starting to look more and more like a real boy.  but mostly i am just proud of him...

granny.

i never knew her as anything else. some have called her mother, sister, co-worker, or friend but i knew her as granny. the name strikes me as ill-fitting now. actually, i always thought that when i mentioned my granny to friends outside of family that i needed to follow up with a clarifying statement because my granny was indeed not the granny i visualize when i hear that word. usually i picture a sweet, little old lady sitting in a rocking chair with her glasses perched on the edge of her nose while she knits. i'm not sure what she is knitting, but in my mind a granny always knits. my granny. she didn't sit in a rocking chair. she didn't wear her glasses perched on the end of her nose. she didn't wear her gray hair in a bun on the top of her head. and she definitely did not knit. i would have loved if she did any of those things, because it would have been her. but my granny. my granny was fierce. fiercely independent and fiercely tenacious.

i called my son "sweetheart" the other day and the emotions swept over me like an unexpected thunderstorm.  i remembered how she would answer the phone and say, "hello, sweetheart!".  i remembered all of the times she told me she loved me followed by the same name.  i cried for missing her.  my world is a little lonelier without her.

i like to read...

one of the greatest tragedies of mothering for me has been the lack of time that i have carved out for reading.  sometimes i even forget how much i enjoy reading.  i talk about how i used to love to read and that person has become so separate from the person that i am now that it is almost like i am talking about someone else.  but recently i fell off the wagon.  i picked up a book and three days later i am still processing what i have read and craving more.  kyle is my pusher.  maybe it is because he is the most darling husband in the world and he likes to see me happy or maybe it is because football is in full swing and he hopes my nose will be buried in a book therefore neglecting any and all housewives shows freeing the tv, but he keeps offering to bring me a book making it painfully aware that even he is struck by the oddity that i read a book.  but it happened. 
i started reading Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers and i fell in love with it all over again.  i read it once before while i was in college.  well, let me clarify.  i read it once while i was in college, going through an unexpected pregnancy and running to the wrong things while running away from the right things.  i aligned myself with sarah.  i aligned kyle with michael hosea.  and i was so blinded by my own situation that i failed to digest all the beautiful parts of the story. 
this time, as a mother, i grieved the devastation of sarah's lost childhood.  the abuse disgusted me.  and i thought about all of the children in the world that are not fiction that live the reality of this prose and i cried.  this time i didn't think of myself as sarah but one of my own children.  somehow it seemed so much more unbearable for me.  even though i have already read the novel in its entirety once before, i had to keep reading just to make sure that things turned out alright. 
at one point sarah acknowledges michael's notion of God by asking him where God was when she was being raped as an 8 year old little girl, or when she watched her mother grieve over the neglect of alex, or any of the other terrible moments of her life and thought how difficult it has to be to reconcile God to a person's life in moments like that.  i have read the poem about sand and footsteps and i appreciate the beauty of knowing that God is constantly present in my life but that is because my faith has already been established.  and even though my faith has been established that does not mean that it has not be shaken.  i have cried out, "oh God, where are you in this moment!?" thinking that he has left me only to realize later that he had not.  but what about the people that have not established a relationship with God yet? my heart is broken for the people that believe that they are facing the world on their own.
at one point sarah tells michael, "i want to be free michael, just for once in my whole life i want to be free." to which he responds, "you are free.  you just don't know it yet." and the more i think about the concept of freedom and God i keep coming back to the reality of sin and consequence.  sarah didn't set initiate the pendulum of terrible events in her life but the fact is that she carried the weight of her mother's sin.  and then her mother's sin turned into her own.  and then she was so deep in the miry clay that it seemed like the only way out was to be suffocated by it. 
we have two choices.  we can either accept the sin and consequently accept death.  or we can accept the consequence and the truth that freedom truly does come at a cost. 
to me it seems like an easy choice but as michael says, "for some of us, one mile can be more to walk than 30".
i wanted to keep reading.  i wanted the story to continue and kyle sweetly suggested finding out if there was a sequel to which i told him that once the main character is dead there are really not any open doors for a sequel.  and truthfully, francine rivers does a tremendous job of tying up all lose ends and offering complete closure for her readers. 
it's just that reading this book was like watching hope.  the last book i read was in 2009.  no joke; i blogged about it too.  The 5 People you Meet in Heaven left me feeling isolated and offered no answer to the question of "where are you God?".  Redeeming Love not only challenged my ideas that God has ever left us but made me fall more in love with Him.  instead of wondering what did i do to deserve any bad thing that has ever happened to me, i am left wondering what did i do to deserve a God like this to love a person like me?

dust in the nursery

Ruth Hubert Hamiliton
originally published as "Song for a Fifth Child"




Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth


empty the dustpan, poison the moth,

hang out the washing and butter the bread,

sew on a button and make up a bed.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?

She's up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.



Oh, I've grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue

(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due

(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).

The shopping's not done and there's nothing for stew

and out in the yard there's a hullabaloo

but I'm playing Kanga and this is my roo.

Look! Aren't her eyes the most wonderful hue?

(lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).



The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,

for children grow up, as I've learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

hugs...

when i tuck calvary in at night i always pray that he sleeps soundly wrapped up snug in God's love.  tonight, after i said the words, calvary reached out his arms and hugged himself and said "come here God and give me a big hug!" i laughed and started to leave the room.  when i got to the door way he said, "you know, when you hug yourself you are hugging God". 
i love that little boy.  his mind is such a precious gift and i am thankful that God shared that gift with me.

the importance of good spelling...



she aims high

 every week harper and calvary bring home countless papers and pieces of artwork from school.  i would like to say that i spend a good deal of time combing each page individually but usually i just glean areas of strengths and weaknesses and give the appropriate amounts of ooohs and ahhhs over their use of stencils and colors. 
but every once in a while i come across something that is beyond anything i could anticipate.

harper was already at school when i found this jewel.  harper is a phenomenal reader, but not a great speller.  sometimes this leads to rather humorous mistakes.  as i read my daughter's words, "i want a hore one day.  she will be abal to run fast. i will teach her to jump. and she will be the best houre ever.", i tried to figure out what could be her intention.  surely my daughter wants more in life than to be a pimp to athletic whores.  i feel as if i have instilled values that would take her down a different path.  one without women of the night. i guess on the positive side, at least she was wanting to own a whore instead of be one herself.  i wondered what her teacher thought.  i also wondered how she even knew what a whore was.  overall, i was deeply concerned. 

then i flipped the picture over and laughed. 

she meant a horse!  of course.  it was at this moment that i realized that i need to work on harper and her spelling. 

party of four...

harper is always a gracious hostess when she has a tea party.  she is careful to meet all the needs of each of her guests, regardless of how difficult that may be. 

oliver jack is slowly becoming more and more refined...and he even left his boogie board a few feet away from the party.  this will be his only chance at cotillion so we are putting a lot of pressure on harper to teach him etiquette. 

calvary has mastered the art of the tea party since he has been harper's main guest ever since these shindigs begun oh so many years ago. 

and some people need more work...finley has clearly not learned that the creamer cup is not meant for guzzling like some sort of parched giant.  the work is hard and the laborers few...

the hostess takes a moment to enjoy the fruit of her labor.

and calvary is either really upset about finley's lack of proper tea party etiquette or he is worried that his manhood is somewhat jeopardized by sipping kool-aid from tiny porcelain cups.  either way, he is letting his opinion known.

at the end of the day i may not be able to give my children every toy that they have asked for or fulfilled every want.  the Lord knows i have wanted to have that ability.  but the gift i have given them is the gift of each other.  my prayer is that they love each other always and laugh with each other daily.  what a blessing it is to have a tea party with people instead of stuffed animals...

grass and parenthood...

sometimes i like to mow the grass because it feels more productive than parenting...