Posts Tagged → school

november 13

So, yes. The weekend flew by, and somehow swept Monday right along with it. Unseasonably warm weather, almost the whole Sinclair family in one house on the same day, and husbands with the day off convincing the rest of us that we, too, should take a vacation day results in, well, a vacation!

Today it’s back to being 40 degrees, give or take. So the boys drew fantastic pictures of “November is… bare trees”, and “November is… football!” My boys do not just sit and draw, unless it’s the beginning of the school year and there are all new drawing utensils (of course). I usually have to assign such creative pursuits — and once assigned, they throw themselves into it. (Hmmm. I think I need to come up with drawing assignments more often.)

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Jameson lost his first tooth Sunday morning. He exuberantly bounced into the kitchen, eyes beaming, mouth full of blood. Ha! We dutifully saved his eensy-weensy tooth, and then Ryan told some elaborate tall tale about a tooth fairy tapping on the window and fluttering around the room while they slept. William, who is far too clever to fall for such yarns, declared that he “knowed” the tooth fairy did no such thing; he would have heard the rapping and woken up. So there. We’re not sure whether or not he realizes the tooth fairy is completely non-existent, or if he’s just quite confident in his sharp hearing skillz. Either way, he’s ridiculously cute, and we’ll keep him. Also, Jameson will keep the dough, regardless of the realness of said tooth fairy.

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Sometimes, like today, I go into my room to check on my sleeping babe, and I find a wide-eyed, smiling, frowsy-headed darling. Her cheeks are irresistibly pink in the morning, and her chubby arms and hands are just that much softer. Over a year later, she’s still greeted with joy and celebration by her brothers every morning. She just may feel like the most special girl in the world. (And that wouldn’t be far from the truth. As we read at naptime, God said, “Let there be Beatrice”, and then saw that it was good. Pretty special, if you ask me.)

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Our school day routine includes devotions after breakfast. This is when our home turns into part church, part circus, part tyrranical-toddler-grabs-every-candle-while-her-mom-is-trying-to-memorize-scripture. I love it. We’ve had such wonderful little conversations, Ryan has been able to teach their little hearts so many important truths, and we get to pray for so many people that we love. I’m not kidding about the toddler part, though. After being told many times to sit down, here she is. Gotta love a little spunk, right?

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Day after day. Weeks, months, years. I’m alternately exhausted by the big events, and worried that the small days are amounting to nothing. My worry knows no end, when allowed to run its course. Thankfully, thankfully, my job is not to orchestrate our lives. There’s the Holy Spirit for that sort of thing. He weaves and guides and creates beauty in ways I’m astonished by, in ways I’ll not even know the whole of until I’m looking at Time from Eternity. For now, faithfulness is my portion: being faithful to believe, to repent, to trust, to live for Him.

i’m here.

I’ve never, ever gone this long without updating my blog. Never. But for whatever reason — busy, foggy head, other thing to do, can’t put it in words, first I’ll download all my photos — I haven’t written here in so long that I actually forgot the url to get here. Just for a second, but still. I forgot it.

And yes, we’ve been busy. I know we have, although if you ask me what we did this week, you’ll get a strange blank stare in response. I have no idea. But here we are, at the end of another week. And the three littlest of us are bigger. Hopefully I’m a bit smaller. I’m only three months postpartum, you know.

We’ve started kindergarten. Is it okay that I sort of smirk when I say that? Because how can this be school? Sitting at the table all together for an hour or so, littlest boy putting together puzzles all by himself (William’s achievement: learning diligence), coloring, putting an entire sheet of stickers on a small square of paper; bigger boy thumping his pencil in rhythm on his new book, carefully writing what looks like the distant relatives of what you might recognize as letters, quickly and without any teaching at all whipping through math pages. All of us with heads together learning about the Titanic and volcanoes and picture books just for fun. Pointing at the globe to find the Yangtze river, France, Ohio, and Maine. Coloring, painting, collecting leaves. Taking brisk[ish] walks and talking about geese. Making a list of things to cook just for fun this winter. And the much-anticipated Little House reading at naptime. (They were so sad to leave Laura when we started Farmer Boy, but I think they’re starting to come around.) And (my favorite part!) going to the library to collect the lovely pile of books that are waiting for us. Goodness, I love the internet!

Of course, that’s just part of our day. There are daily chores, the morning routine that takes forever. (How does it do that? Dressed, showered, laundry, quiet time, breakfast — and it feels like the day is gone!) There are meals, errands, visits, baths. Some days it feels like I’m drowning in an ocean of things-to-be-done. (And so I sit down and cry.) Some days I tell the ocean that I just don’t care, and those days go much better. (Although the ocean is still there, and I’m still not quite sure what to do about it. Besides live for 20 more years. That always seems to help with perspective and things-to-be-done.)

William has turned three (and I never even wrote about him — I just realized that!). It is the best age ever. I love every funny little thing he says, the quirky observations about life, the faulty logic that seems so very logical to them. Just love it. Fridays are our morning together, and we read lots of books. Both boys like to hear stories, but William will quite happily sit through a huge stack of books and be perfectly happy. Today we also went out to The Big Rock. Because it’s a beautiful day. At least, that’s what William said when he was trying to convince me to go out and play with him. Who can resist? That is not faulty logic.

Beatrice is big. She is, I know it, try as hard as I may to ignore it. She smiles and coos and absolutely is a love.

And me? I am loving being here in the North Country. There are so many wonderful people, so many new people, just so many people. I love getting to know them, having them in my home, learning their children’s names and their occupations and where they grew up and what puts the twinkle in their eye. People are important. People are fragile. People are worth it.

That’s what I’m thinking about right now, anyway.

And maybe I’ll write again soon. Because there’s lots more to think about.