pumpkin patch visit 2015

There are a couple of things I can't quite get over:

One, is how looking at Chase is consistently like looking back in time to when Austen was a baby. It freaks me out. Example:

And two, how my girls are now one and four years old. Did you hear that right? I said FOUR YEARS OLD. Three months ago, I had a five year old, a three year old, and a zero-year-old (as my kids would say). Then all of a sudden all my children grew up a tad, all at once, and now I am the mother of a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and a one-year-old. And unfortunately for my mama heart, I barely have time to accept that my baby has become a toddler before my preschooler became a pre-K'er. And it's funny how in our heads, our mother heads, it's always, "Next year she'll be (fill in the blank)!" All aghast, as if how dare they become the inevitable subsequent number that labels their abilities, their babyness, the way they need US less and less. Next year Austen will be five! (How dare she!) Next year Chase will be TWO! (Really... how dare she?!) And River will be SEVEN. (This... this I cannot accept. I have tears now. Really.)

But I digress. So, it's October, which is the month of celebrations. My two girls' birthdays, my little sister, my grandpa. A close friend just gave birth to her third baby (her first girl!) and my grandparents' anniversary is in October. I was really trying to convince Chase to be born on that day, but she wanted to come on her due date; which, really, I have no qualms about. My little predictable, mild child. We also have several cousins who have October birthdays. October is also my favorite month, besides the fact that I celebrate a lot of people I love, it's also the month that the trees celebrate by tossing their fiery leaves like confetti to the ground and the earth sprouts forward trendy little pops of color placed just so. (Funny how it knows how to do that. So Pinterest. And all from scratch, too.) And it's the month that has its own sound, its own smell. Crunch and rot. Okay, that's not poetic at all, but tell me you don't also love the sound and smell of dead leaves on the forest floor? C'mon, admit it. Who doesn't.

So to celebrate with October, we went to the pumpkin patch for Austen's birthday, which I think has actually been our little accidental tradition for the last three years.

I think my children are cutest in a pumpkin patch. I mean, they're cute always, but look at this smile.

It's so fun to see how excited they get about simple things like hay rides and finding the perfect pumpkin and buying things like pears and corn on the cob at the farmer's market, sipping hot cocoa or cider while sitting in a dusty barn, jumping off hay bales and getting knees muddy and holding kittens and petting ponies and goats. Yes, all of it. I love it, too.

Ah yes, my favorite month. For its colors, its celebrations, its tastes and smells and sounds and cool breezes. The sunny days that bite the face with cold... those are my favorites. The ones that demand boots and scarves and cinnamon-scented candles. Yes, please.

(A little behind-the-scenes look at what it took to get some cute pictures)

This was literally the only picture of the three of them that turned out almost good. Sigh. :) (Side note: Chase is totally chewing on something like straw or a rock in this picture.)

Yep, I am the mom who has a miniature pumpkin on every available surface in the home from the beginning of September until the Christmas bug bites (usually mid-November... I know. I know.). I am the mom who serves squash soup every week and puts canned pumpkin and cinnamon in anything that will have it. Chocolate chip cookies... why not pumpkin chocolate chip cookies? Oatmeal... heck, why not cinnamon pumpkin oatmeal? Chicken pot pie... just kidding. We'll stop there. But hey, a little butternut squash couldn't hurt, right? Actually, that's not a bad idea.

I love my sweet babes. They are my reason for enjoying my Octobers. Sure, I'd still have the scarves and cinnamon candles, but they bring the joy and the meaning, and they're the ones that convince me pumpkin tastes good in everything in October. 

mine for one year : chase elizabeth

My sweet, sweet girl, you have breathed in this life for one year, fourteen months, and 16 days.

One year ago, you left my body and became your own -- dependent, but unique. Already hard wired to be quiet, reflective, easy going, joyful, sweet, kind, and a child of God. You are from me, but you are not me. I remember this being the thing I reflected on so much when your brother was a baby. There's something spiritual about being a mother, in that I feel like I've known you forever... I don't remember what it's like to not love you. I feel that you are a part of me... but you are beautifully, wonderfully, and uniquely, your own precious person.

I feel so much when I look at you. I think about how quickly this year has gone by. I remember months and months ago, pushing your exersaucer aside as I tried to walk down the hallway, my mind immediately going to the thought, "I can't wait until you're too big for this dumb thing and we can get rid of it." But then I stopped. I thought about you being too big... your toddler self, crawling out as your brother did at the tender age of ten months old, and that chapter of my life closing. You, no longer a tiny baby who simply observed, but was involved. And I took it back! No... I can wait. I can most certainly wait.

And that day came. You are 14 months old, and just last night I put that exersaucer outside with a "FREE" sign taped to its front, and this morning it was already scooped up. Being used by some other tiny, helpless, observing little human, too young to decide she is bored in the Circle of Neglect (as my friends and I like to call it), clamber out, and explore the world beyond.

The way you call Mama... may I never forget. It's different than the way your brother and sister did it. It's demanding, needing, full of personality and knowing. MAma. MAma! I love it. I knew with your brother that soon, the constant "Mama Mama Mama" would get old (and I was right), but I didn't know back then how quickly time would pass. As I gaze upon his baby face in my mind, I am met with the reality that I will never hear that same tiny voice again. It's gone forever, and every time your brother calls me "Mom," I swear my heart breaks a little. It's always by accident, but I make sure to be dramatic about it anyway. Mom?! Who is this MOM you speak of? I am Mama. Please let me be your Mama forever!

Sweet Chasey, I love the way you say mama. For although you are becoming this toddler, blooming into your own, with that cheesy grin that reminds me of a baby vampire (the way your lateral incisors hang lower than your central incisors... something only a mama would know and cherish), and your long, below-the-shoulder hair that everyone comments on, to your sweet little toes that seem to grow plumper by the day (though you are my smallest babe yet). Goodness, I love every bit of you.

I love the way you dance on command... "Chase! DANCE!" I love the way you eat lentil soup one lentil at a time. I love the way you chuckle when you do something you know is funny. I love the way you place your little hand on my neck when I am nursing you, giving me a hug. I love the way you suck on that paci of yours, with its squelching sound... you are still such a tiny babe. I love the way you shout to get your way. (Yes, I love it! It's hilarious... and so melodramatic.) I love the way you wrinkle your nose when you smile. I love the way you climb on the table top and just play. You like to be up high. I love the way you say "nana!" when I ask you if you want a banana. I love the way you say River. (Vuhvuh!) I love the way you walk around with any type of bag on your arm like a purse. I love the way you curl your lip under your top teeth when you smile. I love the way you cry when River or Austen cries... because you hate it when they are sad or in pain. Empathy, already. That is one of my biggest prayers for my children... that they would have empathy.

You know, I have written three of these "Mine for One Year" letters, and each one is magical and precious in its own way. I often remember the wise words (full of love and sacrifice and belief of magic), of a friend of mine, who has six of her own precious souls... "I love each of my six children more than anyone else in the world." And that's exactly what it feels like. I love you so. I love you so much that it hurts. If I peer deeply into my chest, extract that feeling I get when I think of you and the way my heart beats for you -- it's a deep longing, almost pain. That's how I love each of you. That's how I love YOU, my sweet Chasey.

Chase, I feel so lucky to be your mommy. I can't imagine life without you... we did not expect you, but you were the piece we didn't even know was missing.

You are loved. You were designed. You were needed before we knew you were needed. You fit. You belong. You are cherished. You are beautiful. You are precious in God's sight, and he loves you.

I love you Chase. Thank you for being my sweet baby girl for one year.

Love,
   Mama

rest at the feet of jesus

Rest at the feet of Jesus.
Be still and know that he is God.

This is what my journey in motherhood needs most at the moment.

Rest.

Slow down.
Enjoy.
Patience.
Peace.
Rest.

Sometimes a lot of my impatience and frustration  comes from being in a rush, but why? I have a 5-year-old, 3-year-old, and 8-month-old.

Where are we rushing to?
The park on time?
Dinner on time?
Bed on time?
What does "on time" even mean
when it's just the four of us
with no other obligation
than to enjoy each other,
learn,
play,
cuddle,
and love.

None of these are as important as I think they are. I always have to remind myself that God will meet me where I am. He meets all of us exactly where we are. He doesn't ask us to take a step further  in order to help us, love us, guide us, or comfort us. He is already there. He is already beside me, and my comfort is in knowing  I'm not doing this mom thing alone.

I couldn't do it alone.

Sometimes I feel like I am, but I have to remember this struggle is inward. It's my choice. He's not asking me to be perfect, and I know this.

He desires me to slow down. It's not truth, this idea that I have to rush. That I have to meet some unrealistic expectation of what makes a good mother.

A lot of times when I'm falling asleep, I'll get this idea, out of the brink of slumber, and it'll wake me up with a jolt.

Last night it was this:

I always pray, "God, help me be the mother I want to be." But then I realized I've been doing it wrong. I should be praying, "God help me be the mother you want me to be."

Does God care if dinner is on the table at 5:30?
Does he care if I forgot to clip River's nails before church?
Does he care if I don't have the energy to read 3 books before bedtime?
Does he care if there is playdough ground into my kitchen floor?
Does he care if dinner doesn't taste that great?

Where did my perception of what would make me the "perfect mother" even come from?  If all of these things aren't important to him, then what is? If being this kind of mother (the perfect one in my head) isn't realistic because of the person I am, the character I was born with, and my inability to be organized, then what is the perfect mother?

Obviously, and with a chuckle, I admit there is none. Right? I'm pretty sure we all know this.

This is where it occurs to me that he will meet me where I am.

He calls me to be patient, loving, kind, and respectful. To use a gentle word when I want to scream. To hold and comfort, rather than yell and belittle. To teach instead of punish.

That is the kind of mother he wants me to be, and that is the kind of mother I can be because even though it feels heavy, his yoke is easy and his burden is light. And I'm not in this alone. I'll never be perfect, but half the fight is with myself. All this rushing, this strive for perfection, it's pointless. If I surrender to his peace, I'll be a lot closer to the kind of mother he's called me to be. And he's not asking me to do this alone, He is with me, and he simply wants me to rest at his feet.

things remembered

Laura Ingalls Wilder said, “I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.” 

There are seasons of life during which certain ideas resonate with your soul, they meet you perfectly where you are, and they define who and what you are about in that moment. Even if you have placidly agreed, nodded because such and such was said and you thought it was true and nice and then moved on after you pinned it on your quotes board on Pinterest, it didn't hit you in the heart until... it did. And then words are more than just words, and they shape you, they echo in your mind as you go about your day, like a beautiful song you've heard once and want to listen to again and again.

I've always been a "simple things" kind of girl. My sister and I joke that we are have really been little old ladies in disguise our whole lives, because we would rather drink tea and knit and read a good book and take walks in the woods and listen to quiet music than go to a party, even when going to a party may have been more socially acceptable for our age. I'm always reminded of that scene in Gilmore Girls when the headmaster of her school is worried that Rory hangs out alone and reads too much. It makes me chuckle. 

I've always been a loner, and I've always been a reader. In college, my adventure was sitting in Barnes and Noble, hunched over my sketch book, drawing rugged and lined faces from photography books. Or driving past the city limits, taking a random turns to see where sun-drenched paths would lead me, Radiohead blasting through the speakers of my mini-van. (Yes, I had a mini-van when I was in college.) Alone, always alone (but not lonely). 

Now, as a mother, my adventures consist of googling what that strange plant is for my curious five-year-old, getting "lost" in the two-acre wooded area a mile away from my home with a baby strapped to my back and two short-legged people who are somehow much faster than I. I could not, would not ask for anything different. After all, these simple things, this is what life is.

These simple things, they are what I will remember. 

You only get eighteen summers with your children. Eleven or twelve, if you want to count the summers they will for sure want to spend with you. Fifteen, if you're lucky. Eighteen... well, you could force them into eighteen. (I kid.)

So, as I pack away newborn clothes that belong to a certain little girl whose growing up I have so been in denial about, I take pictures to remember every moment, these building blocks of memories that will make up the very best days of my life.

The things I won't remember are the things I think I want some days. The things I will remember are the things I already have, the things that make my life rich.

And the way the simple pleasures in life accentuate those things must be by design. The dusty light cutting through the shadows in a forest. Fingerpicking a folk song on a guitar. The smell of damp leaves underfoot, a bright flower breaking through, quiet strength and tiny miracle often unnoticed. Lace. Dandelion seeds. Shades of green. Waves of grass in the breath of the wind. A nest of eggs. Laughter.

Amid those, true riches.

Those are the things I'll remember when I remember nothing else. Maybe just a whisper, or maybe like the lyrics to a song I can't quite recall.