Mommy's Are Good Like That

I am the type of person who always has tons of projects  going on at once. I blame my mom for this but at the same time I secretly like it.  For one thing, I am never bored. Most of my projects are in neat piles in my craft room lined up on this extra table I bought to have room to actually do my projects on but that is another story. I even had my husband put up a wipe board for me so that I can list all my projects and easily see what I want to get done in order for me to use spare moments as I have them.

Typically, I get to most of my projects even though it might take a while. For instance, I got really excited last spring when I saw this pattern at JoAnn’s for an “easy” pillowcase dress. I picked out really cute fabric and thought I could get it done before the baby was to born last summer. Yeah right.  A year later I am still staring at the fabric and the pattern. A few weeks ago, I decided that the time was right to finally make it. I got everything out and began reading and the farthest I got was to cut out the actual pattern. I need to mention that I have difficulty spatially. I hated Geometry in school. I love the actually process of sewing, but patterns confuse the heck out of me. The irony here is that I inherited all of my mom’s sewing paraphernalia so if you were to walk into my craft space you would think that I am a seamstress and really knew what I was doing. I never even took Home Ec. as my middle school pushed academics over electives and students were encouraged to take an extra social studies or a foreign language instead. I did finally take a sewing class as an adult, but it was years ago and sadly, I am one of those people who easily forgets skills if I’m not using them.

I think part of the problem was I was actually scared to start, to make a mistake. I just couldn’t begin. I came up with a way out though, or so I thought. I have a friend who goes to my Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS) group, Olivia, who sews and actually used to sew as a side business. She made my nursing cover up and I loved it.  I would tell new moms about her all the time and brag on what great cover ups she made. I sent her an email asking her how much she would charge to make my dress that way I could get it off of my crafting “to-do” list once and for all. She quickly responded that she wanted to make one for her daughter too but had been too busy to make one.  She asked me if I wanted to come over for a “sewing playdate”.  I have to admit I was really skeptical that this would work. I could just envision all of our kids going nuts and my baby crawling around and getting into her things and destroying her house like she does mine. Not to mention the fact that I am one of those nerdy people who needs quiet to concentrate and you put four kids together and quiet just doesn’t happen unless they are getting into something and don’t want you to know about it and then things get really bad. But I was desperate to get this dress made. So I took a risk and said yes.

We got together a few days later and the whole experience was amazing from start to finish. First of all Olivia’s house just oozes this great vibe of creativity and a “go with the flow” attitude.  It just felt good to be there. It instantly made me wonder if my home feels as welcoming and inviting to others. Then the kids simply got along really well. There was little fighting and they never got crazy together which is just short of amazing. They remembered each other from being at MOPS together which did help of course. Even Lillian my baby did well despite being in a strange environment not completely “baby proofed”.  So we started our sewing adventure around 10am and by 2pm I had a completed dress.  Olivia was the best teacher and between the two of us, we were able to help out the kids when they needed things. No one argued or got mad the entire time which amazing for that amount of time and the fact that we were all pushing things way past nap time.  

So, sometimes it is worth taking a risk especially when it comes to women helping other women. I was able to get a dress made, develop a friendship, and help my children develop their own special friendships. It was all so worth it. The funny thing is Riley was so excited that I was making this dress for her and has she worn it even once yet? A big, fat no. But I outsmarted her. I made the dress a size bigger so she can still wear it next year and then after that Lillian can wear it too. Mommy’s are good like that.

 

 

Mommy Validation

I finally resolved a couple of mommy issues that have been hanging over me for a while now. It feels so good to put a check in those boxes. They involve solving drinking cup dilemmas for both of the girls.  It may sound silly, but they have really been bugging me. My baby Lillian just turned a year and she has a tendency to sling her cup everywhere while she eats. I partially resolved the issue by attaching a tether cord to her current sippy cup which also attaches to her highchair. I thought that was all I needed to do but since most baby sippy cups have soft spouts that can easily drip out liquids when they are completely upside down, my wood floor was becoming a disaster. Did I mention that I have also been very stubborn about putting any kind of mat on the floor to catch the spillage? I just want my kitchen to look as normal as possible. We have gotten rid of most of the baby gear and I am so itchy for my old house back it almost hurts. The ironic thing is that one day I know I will miss all the baby gear and the messes but we won’t go there now because at this current moment in time I want neat and clean. Frankly, I crave it as it is in my genes. Ask anyone in my family. It  just can’t  be helped.

So I put out the word to my Mommy friends that I needed to find a baby sippy cup that does not leak even when hanging upside down off of a highchair and it must be AWESOME. They delivered with answers and the funny thing is most of them agreed on the Playtex line of sippy cups. I must say that Playtex has a very informative website complete with a search feature that will customize what you need based on the age of your child. Due to Lillian’s age I tried the Playtex Lil Gripper Spout Cup. I admit the first day she was a little annoyed by it as it is more difficult to suck from I’m sure. I had my four year old use the extra one though so Lillian had an example of how to do it and that seemed to help. After a few days there were no issues. Problem solved!

The second drinking cup dilemma involved my four year old Riley. She has been drinking out of sippy cups primarily. She can drink out of regular cups, but I admit I am lazy in this department and I don’t want to think about the possibility of spills during dinner or snack times. I just don’t want to deal with it. I have enough to deal with as it is and this is one way to simplify things for my sanity. Anyway, when I have bought her the more expensive cups with straws she chews the straws up. A more apt description would be to say that she actually shreds them. They become unusable and I am tired of paying something like $4 a piece for a cup that won’t last long because she can’t control her need to bite them and destroy them like she is some sort of wild animal.  Can you tell I’m a little aggravated?

While researching the baby sippy cups one of my Mommy friends had mentioned those cheap “Take and Toss” cups that come with straws. She had told me that her kids had transitioned to them easily and the best part is that they are easy to clean and if you lose the straws for them you can use the basic store bought kind that come in large packs. Honestly, she had me at five cups in a pack for around $3.  Plus they are super colorful and that really makes a difference when I am cleaning them.  Anything bright and cheery makes me happier all the way around. So we tried them out and they are working out great! It looks so much better to see Riley drinking from a straw rather than a sippy cup. I had been feeling like I was holding her back developmentally and so the guilt had been piling up. She has been much happier as well. We made a big deal out of the fact that drinking from a straw is what big girls do. Would you believe that she is already chewing on these straws too? But no worries this time as I am well stocked with the regular straws that can easily be bought from the store. So onto the next Mommy challenge. There are so many.

Biscuits and Gravy

It is hard to believe that my mom died sixteen years ago this month. One of my life goals is to write about her and try somehow to capture her essence. I plan someday to write a memoir all about her. She was a remarkable woman, complicated and magical all in the same moment. She died of cancer and fought to the end. Everybody loved her. Even when she was difficult, which was often, she was still loved. She had a quality that made her unlike anyone else. It was more than charisma and it is something that I find myself often trying to figure out in quiet moments. She had a gift for "telling things as they are" and strangely, people couldn't get enough of it. Perhaps the southern accent softened the blow somehow. I remember even as a child witnessing it. I knew she could get away with things that us normal people just couldn't. I'm not going to lie, it was sometimes difficult growing up in her shadow. I often wondered why I wasn't more like her and thought there was something wrong with me and my sensitivity to things that seemed to not phase her in the slightest. I didn't subscribe to her philosphy of as she put it, "lob it off and set it adrift". I had to deal with things and those things hurt and hurt deeply, unable to simply be brushed aside. Even so, I love her and miss her.  I often find myself wanting to call her up and ask her how she dealt with different aspects of motherhood. I try to tell myself that her answers wouldn't satisfy anyway as she wasn't one to reflect on things. She simply reacted the best she could in the moment and never second guessed herself or looked back and wondered what would have been. At least that is what I imagine her answer would be in order to lessen the pain of not having the possiblity of that conversation.

So in her honor I offer this short piece knowing that it does not do her memory justice. It is only a small hint of her personality. It also honors two other amazing women in my family who have all gone home. I do have peace in knowing that mom has family with her right now as she sits at the feet of Jesus and that some day I will be there with her too. 

Biscuits and Gravy 

Hearing the ting, ting, ting of a fork hitting the inside of a glass bowl in the kitchen always takes me back to simpler days when someone I loved was making breakfast. The smell of biscuits in the morning all buttery and steamy, hot with their fluffy tops and crispy bottoms is like heaven itself on a plate. There is nothing like waking up to the popping and sizzling hiss of bacon and sausage. I can still smell the smoky, sweet haze in the kitchen air. That spicy brown sausage gravy made with the pan drippings would make me want to lick the bowl or at least lick the stray gravy that would somehow get on my fingers. I swear I would have taken a bath in that stuff if I could have.

How I long for the comforting sight of seeing Mom flour her laminate counter top and mix the biscuit ingredients: Crisco, salt, baking powder, buttermilk, and flour. Of course the flour had to be White Lily. Only, my mom would pronounce it in her thick, melodic Alabama accent. Even the packaging claims that it has been a “Southern tradition since 1883”. No matter what state we had moved to Mom would hunt down the local grocery store manager and insist they carry it for her and they always would. There was a rhythm and a pattern to the kneading that I can still picture in my mind, but my hands won’t imitate it. It’s like knowing a song so well you can hear it perfectly in your head, but being unable to utter a single note.  She would use an old four ounce tomato paste can as a biscuit cutter. I don’t know if she even owned an actual biscuit cutter. Maybe she thought that it would affect the thickness of her biscuits or maybe that was just simply the way that her mom had always made hers. Regardless, the perfectly rounded flat circles with the one exception from the leftover dough which Mom called the “ugly biscuit” would be placed on a cookie sheet and left to bake into the perfection that we would race to the table for each and every Saturday morning.  

 I have seen that gravy made a thousand times if I have seen it made once and always by the masters: Grandmother, Aunt Lynn, Aunt Kay, and of course Mom. I can’t make the gravy even though I know the steps and the ingredients. I don’t think many of us cousins can. I have heard rumor of my older cousin Randy doing it justice and his older brother Jay told us one Thanksgiving morning that he knew how. Immediately, he demonstrated his skills and some brave soul actually ate it, but gluey, tasteless gravy is a travesty to me and one that I will not participate in for fear of the wrath of God himself. After all, gravy is sacred in the south, right up there with Sunday dinner after church and seeing your Mama on Mother’s Day. 

Sounds corny but maybe the missing ingredient in my biscuits and gravy is love. That is always how I felt when I ate them. I was special enough for someone to get up early, take the extra time, and mess up the kitchen. How I long to wake up one morning and smell that country breakfast simmering just for me. This time I won’t tell Mom that I’m on a diet. And this time I won’t tell Grandmother that I need to watch my weight. And this time I won’t tell Aunt Lynn that the fat count is too high. I’ll just savor it all and in the end, use my leftover biscuit to “sop up” the rest of that fried egg with the yoke running all over my plate looking like the sunshine that it truly is.

               

In Need of a Savior

We have been dealing with some heavy stuff as a church family recently. This is a poem I wrote in response to that. I know that God has a plan even for the darkest events and I cling to that promise now. Hopefully, this will give you some encouragement for those dark times that we all go through in life.

My heart is heavy,

Mourning the loss of innocence.

The feel of death all around and closing in around me.

Wanting it to be a mistake,

Wanting to wake up to the world as it was yesterday,

Not today when the wailing is heavy in the air.

Evil invading when given the tiniest whisper of opportunity,

When darkness is sometimes easier then the light.

Too bright and glaring at times,

Too real-

The need of a Savior like never before.

Immunity impossible to this rampant sin plague.

Hunting us all down,

Infesting us all,

Impossible on our own to resist.

Blessed assurance Hope can be mine.

He alone can cleanse us through blood power,

When all other efforts are empty and meaningless.

Filthy like rags.

Hopeless.

He alone can save,

He alone can fill,

He alone can make whole,

He alone can satisfy.

In a world filled with everything else-

Empty promises.

Brokenness like an inescapable stench.

There is nothing else.

No one else.

Love alone cannot do it.

 His love is perfect.

Only His love has the power to set the wicked world right.

Everything in nature worships Him,

Points to His glory all the time.

Why can’t we?

Why is it so difficult to cry out?

To admit defeat?

To surrender?

Lord, help our unbelief!

We need you now!

Favorite Things- My Front Door

I have always loved my front door. It is one of my favorite things about this house. I love the bright white molding and the deeply contrasting pop of red. It makes a statement and I am pleased that I took the chance with it when it would have been easier to play it safe. The rabbit by the door is a tribute to my mom who always loved garden rabbits and we always had tons of them around. I think she would have liked this one. I have had this one for a long time.

I love having a fern by the front door. Ever since we moved I  have to get one each spring. When we lived in Florida I could never do this. Most every plant I put by the front door would die from the intense heat and sun. I used to look in Southern Living Magazine and my eye would always go to those pictures of beautiful southern homes adorned by ferns. Mine is doing especially well this year. We have had more rain this summer which has probably helped even though I water it regularly and it doesn't soley depend on the rain to survive. Just feeling thankful for a beautiful home in which to live and raise my girls! It was always my dream when we first got married.

Memories

Some days I live surrounded by the past, especially today when so much I have done has been connected to a memory. While putting in my contacts this morning I was suddenly transported back to being 11 years old standing in my bathroom with orange carpet and orange wallpaper and my Dad standing over me trying to be as gentle as possible while putting in my first contact lenses for me. He would try his best to put those contacts in his daughter’s eyes each morning knowing how resistant she was through the tears and foot stomping refusals. That was the summer before 6^th grade which was literally a painful one as I had to learn to wear gas permeable contact lenses for longer and longer periods of time in preparation for being able to wear them full time when school began. They were a painful solution to my rapidly declining eyesight or as my doctor so eloquently put it, “They would keep me from wearing coke bottle bottom glasses” Great way to build up an adolescent girl’s already crumbling self-esteem. To say that they were awful was an understatement. Torture would be a more fitting description. I remember counting down the minutes that summer until I could take them out and feel relief each day.  

As I watered my tomato planters I am reminded of my Grandparents and the only week I spent alone with them just my sister and me. The big events of the week were going to Sears, eating at Morrison’s, watching tons of Wimbledon on TV, and eating the best garden fresh tomatoes sliced up on a plate as a side to every supper served that week. I also remember playing with their dog Gerky. I think by that time my Granddaddy had finally given up teaching me how to solve the Rubik’s cube. It was a relief for us both.

I recently received a wonderful present from my cousins that is still sitting out in my kitchen. I haven’t the heart to put them up in my kitchen cabinet just yet. Every year we traveled to their home in Alabama for Thanksgiving and every year I remember seeing my aunt’s pilgrim salt and pepper shakers. She passed away a few years ago and out of the blue recently I received them in the mail. They are a perfect reminder of her as she will forever be linked to Thanksgiving in my mind. They remind me of home, family, good conversation, and of course incredible food. Special times. It makes me wonder how future extended family celebrations will be remembered by my girls as things now are so fragmented by distance and other time restraints. It seems so much harder to get everyone together in one place at one time anymore. Sadly, practically a miracle.

Leaving the mailbox today I see my oldest running down the long, hilly driveway toward our home and I am reminded of why we came to live in this house five years ago and why we decided to make a lifestyle change to move out of a large city with all of its conveniences to a more small town life. Riley runs with such freedom and joy, wild abandon really without a trace of fear at all. I want that fearlessness to remain with her always. Six years ago when we began to build this house I had visions of children running down this very driveway and I wondered who they would be and what they would look like. So magical to have a dream appear in flesh and blood before you. And all that comes to mind is the feeling of thankfulness as the past and present come together to collide in this one perfect moment. The explosion creating right now.