merging into one

http://southerngirlie-girlraisingthreeboys.blogspot.com/2013/12/snow-days-musicals-and-little-testing.html

Sixth grade coffee house

So the sixth graders served their parents coffee on Thursday and had a poetry slam. This was my first experience with such a thing and I'm pretty sure it will be my last. Not that I don't like coffee or poetry or anything like that. But when you add in sixth grade boys as the poets, that's when it all goes snowballing down hill.

There was one kid in the class who's work of art went something like this:

I went to the Loo and found a great poo...

I can't remember the rest and I won't name any names here. But I will say he looks an awful lot like my husband. And even though he promised his very sweet mother that he wouldn't read it aloud, the temptation was too much to bear and once she left, he took the stage. Proud moment. No doubt.

Look for his new book Potty Poetry coming to a Barnes and Noble near you.

Twelve

I couldn't love him more.

Saturday in the park

how my mind wanders

Yesterday on the drive to church we saw a kid who plays football with our oldest son standing on his front porch smoking a cigarette.  I was completely taken aback.  I guess kids do stuff like that all the time, but not kids I know, surely.

And while sitting in church doing my normal long glance around the sanctuary to see who's there and what they are wearing, it hit me smack in the face.  Kids do what they see their parents doing.  And if that's the case, my kids probably aren't getting anything out of the Easter Sunday sermon cause they are looking to see who's wearing open toed shoes and whose husbands bought them Easter lilies to wear.  

And if that's the case then I need to back up my parenting.  Cause it isn't going to be pretty if my kids do what I do.  Are my kids gonna back track in the grocery store just so they don't have to say  hi to the person they don't particularly like on the next aisle over?  Are my kids gonna sit like a wallflower at a social gathering because someone hurt their feelings and they can't get passed it?  Are my kids gonna hold grudges of passed hurts?  Are my kids gonna skip reading their bibles on the weekends because, it's the weekend?  Are my kids gonna roll their eyes when someone says something that doesn't align with their way of thinking?

Are my kids gonna drive right passed a kid who needs to be invited to church because he's smoking and they might be late for Easter services?

Are my kids gonna volunteer in my grand-kid's classrooms?  Are my kids gonna cry out in prayer when their kids are hurting?  Are my kids gonna fill Easter baskets and Christmas stockings with their kid's favorite things?  Are my kids gonna pray over their kids every night even when exhaustion has overtaken them?  Are my kids gonna say I love you multiple times a day?  Will they hug and kiss their children even when they've disobeyed?

Will they root for their kids on the sidelines of life?

I'm not ever going to be the perfect mother that I see in my head.  When I look in the mirror, I am not who I thought I was, but maybe that's better any way.  I know God isn't finished creating me into the mother that he sees I can be.  And hopefully one thing my kids see in me is grace.  If there's one thing I do see in the mirror it's God's grace.  His grace and mercy in my life are evident in every aspect.  And some days I live in that grace and some days I don't.  And when I don't, I hope my kids learn from my mistakes and witness the true meaning of Easter.

Easter

Today was Will's first time to go to big church. He actually listened and asked questions about what he heard. Which is more than I can say of myself on any given Sunday. I've got a lot to learn.

Game night

My favorite kind of day

These days

I just don't get it.  How in the world can time go by so fast.  One minute I am a nervous wreck of a first time mother strapping her newborn into a winnie the pooh (don't judge) car seat and then next minute I am watching him pitch during a high school baseball game.

Gone are the days when I sneaked into their rooms and placed my hand on their backs just to make sure they were still breathing.  Gone are the days of them smelling like anything that comes out of a Johnson and Johnson's bottle.

Last night while driving home from the high school baseball game, I turned and looked in the back seat at our oldest son.  He was talking and playing with our youngest son and it was all I could do not to burst right there.  He looks so old, so grown up, so mature.  And his brother is so little, so young, just lost his first tooth.  It's really crazy how life works.  I've spent so many hours worrying over them, praying over them, scolding them, hugging them and in an instant they are grown and getting ready to make lives of their own.

I know life is meant to be this way.  Raise them the best way you can and when they are old, you hope and pray that all your time and effort and gray hair will mean something.  You hope that they will grow those wings and fly to heights that you've never known.  You hope that they surpass you.  You hope that their lives will count for something good.  Something meaningful.  Something eternal.

But for now, I am gonna bask in all things kindergarten, sixth grade and ninth grade.  Except when they are fighting.  Or whining.  Or tattling.  Or crying.  I am not gonna bask in that. Nor will I bask in the final total of my grocery bill. Or the restaurant bill.

Cause these boys can eat.

He lost it

Our last boy lost his first tooth this past weekend. It's the beginning of the end.

Cousins

He's SIX

He's really really six.  Our littlest boy.  The one we didn't think we would have.  The one who's grandmother prayed and prayed and prayed would come.  The one who turned me into the mother I was really created to be. The one who has bumps and bruises with no known origin and it's okay.  The one who watches rated PG movies long before his brothers ever did.  The one who dared to say butt just because he wanted to see our reaction.  The one who has taught me that any reaction other than love and grace is the wrong one.
I cannot believe he's six.

So full of life and love.  So full of laughter and tears.  So full of mischief and naughtiness, yet oddly such a rule follower.

I haven't blogged in a long time and I'm not sure when the next time will be.  But something made me think that there are things I want to remember about our life and if I don't journal them, they will be long forgotten like yesterday's grocery list.

I want to remember those blonde curls that I hated to cut.

I want to remember the looks on his brother's faces as they laid eyes on him the first time.

I want to remember the day he told Graham to, "get his fat butt into the bathtub".

I want to remember the day he asked me "mom, what is a crap?"  And I had to tell him. And tell him to please never say that word.

I want to remember that a week later he said, "oh crap" and when we reacted to it he cried and cried and said, "I meant to say crab.  I really wanted to say crab".

I want to remember what he said when his soccer coach asked him what his favorite thing to do was, "wrestle with my brothers".

I want to remember how he looked dressed as a seal for the 45th annual kindergarten circus.

I want to remember laying with him in his bed because, "somebody needs to lay with me".

I want to remember that his sixth birthday was a spontaneous, thrown together collection of sweet friends and happy meals and he didn't even care that there weren't homemade invitations.

I want to remember that even though he is being raised in metal bleachers during some sort of sporting event of one of his brothers, that it doesn't matter where we are as long as we are all five together.

Oh, sweet Lord, help me to never forget the littlest of blessings while raising these boys.  And help me to find the funny in every day instead of insisting on the proper.  Who needs proper?