green goodness

The vegetable garden in our backyard is on a great run.   Earlier this spring we had dumptruck loads of beets...

The lads' Tonka dumptruck makes a great produce-hauling mobile, especially with the younger lass at the wheel.

  ...garlic ...

homegrown garlic.  Who knew?!

 ... and peas.

School uniform shirts are good for holding freshly-harvested peas that younger sisters will soon devour.

We also had spinach, radishes, and carrots.  In recent weeks we've been enjoying green onions, white onions, an array of heirloom tomatoes...

 ... and some sweet Jimmy Nardello peppers.   My beloved has been tweaking his salsa recipe with the rest of us (even me, shockingly) serving as taste-testers.

Juan Flamme heirloom tomatoes and Jimmy Nardello peppers from our garden with some thyme from Grandmare's garden

The elder lad has taken upon himself the morning watering duties, all the while doing his level best to keep his baby sister from plucking the unripe fruit from the tomato vines.  That's proving to be a mighty challenge.

All the bambini have gotten into the garden-tending spirit, even sampling the fruits of their labors (some more willingly than others).  Seeing them out there working alongside their daddy is as sweet a sight as the taste is delicious from the "farm to table" produce just beyond our doorstep.

love song

The lads have been at Vacation Bible School riding "The Vatican Express" this week, doing art projects a la Michelangelo lying on the floor while painting pictures taped to the undersides of the desks they lie under and learning classic VBS songs like "Father Abraham".

A few nights ago before bedtime the elder lad had everyone up and dancing, arms flailing and voices singing along.

This morning the younger lad sang "skida-ma-rinky-dinky-dink, skida-ma-rinky-doo. I...love...you" to me, adding that he'd have to teach me the rest later after VBS because it was about a railroad.

He has yet to finish the lesson.

motivators

On the last day of school we drove to the library and signed up for the Summer Reading Program, which asks each participant to read (or be read) a certain number of books and visit the library a few times in order to earn a medal and prizes.  There are special programs and events throughout the summer as well.  We've made it a point to participate since the elder lad was a toddler.  We read to him in those days.  These days he can read to himself (and his siblings). 

Each year when the bambini sign up for the program, they are eager to see the medal and prizes -- sometimes stuffed animals, other times inflatable toys -- they stand to earn.  As soon as we get home from the library they ask me to get out the previous years' medals, which I usually have stashed somewhere after said prizes have been used as lassos or other contraband. 

Reading books together is a high-priority agenda item most days, so we reach the goal of however many books it is to win the whole shebang of prizes fairly early on in the summer.  The elder lad has reveled in writing down the books he's read in his log.

A day or so into the book-logging project, my beloved was giving the elder lad some good-natured teasing about reading before bedtime -- more specifically, that the lad needed to cease his dilly-dallying getting ready for bed lest there be no time left for reading.  The lad wasn't too concerned. 

"It's important to keep reading during the summer so you don't forget how," said my beloved, hoping to motivate the lad.

"But Dad," said the lad," I've already read 12 books today!"

Our aunt who teaches at the school our bambini attend had a snappy comeback of her own when she heard about that:  "Time for longer books!  Next up: War and Peace..." 

on the agenda

This happened last year too.  The end of the school year seemed like a prolonged tsunami of music programs and special events with Mother's Day thrown in there somewhere and teacher gifts to cook up and help lads execute. We may have collectively been recovering from illness then, too. I can't remember.

So here we are a week into our summer. With no snow days to make up, the school year ended on the early side.

The early side is when these lads are still waking up, even though they're on summer vacation. This way they can have breakfast with their daddy, who has laid aside his morning school bus driver duties for the next two months.

I might be one to while away the hours in a lovely haze of crafting, coffee, writing, and piano-playing if left to my own devices, but seeing as how those times are not the norm in this season of family life I take a different approach to the "lazy" (ha!) days of summer.

a full day.  The symbols next to the agenda items are meant to be clocks.

Reams of unstructured time might work well for some families -- maybe even ours eventually (there's that word again), but for the time being we need a little more structure. The elder lad has been drafting "agendas" for us each morning (I think the main draw is the dry erase marker he gets to use). It's a loose framework for the day so we all know what's coming next and what we need to accomplish. It's subject to revision (ahem) and refinement.

Items that make the agenda are, for the most part, fairly broad.  "Cook" refers to preparations for dinner (in which I am trying to involve the elder lad most days -- we call it "cooking camp"), the whipping up of snackies, or a baking project.  "Art" could be crayons and paper, paint, beads, clay, or something else.  "Play" and "clean" are wonderfully vague.  In the past week I've encouraged the bambini to play outside as much as possible before the temperatures hit triple digits.  Picnic lunches have been the norm.  "Wii," on the other hand, means playing the Wii video game system.   Time spent playing Wii must not be greater than time spent reading.  Or something like that.

Our days don't always elapse according to the agenda.  There weren't enough nappers (or "nodders," as I like to call them) here today.  We did get to go have some happy family fun time, however, but there was no more Wii when we got home from the festivities.  Last Friday the day's agenda was drafted the night before, only to be happily upended by an impromptu trip to pick berries with Grandmare. 

Around here we go one day at a time.  Making a plan for the day is one way I'm finding to help make the most of these salad days, knowing that nothing is etched in stone and that every day is a gift from God.  When I take proactive measures like these, I'm better able to revel in the gift.  I may be ready for some downtime at day's end, but I can do so knowing that we didn't just pass time.

summer reading

Hot summer afternoons make for excellent reading time (if the bambini are cooperative).  When the stars align, we all pile together to thumb through some pretty picture books.

If the lassies are sleeping (or primed for sleeping), the lads and I work our way through a chapter book.  It helps stave off the requests to turn on the glowing screen when pleas to go outside in the brutal heat are shot down.  We just finished The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden.  The title character named Chester (a country cricket who rode into New York City underneath some sandwiches in a picnic basket) turns out to be graced with the gift of perfect pitch and the ability to remember and perform music of any genre after hearing it once.  This talent soon becomes known, and the cricket (with some help from his friends Tucker Mouse and Harry Cat) is soon the toast of the town from the subway station newsstand in which resides.  Fame isn't what Chester wants, though.

Before that satisfying story we read My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett (illustrated by her mother in law Ruth Chrisman Gannett -- this very easily could get me off an a tangent about having a spouse with the same name as one of your parents.  What's that like?) and will start the next story in that set of three soon.  The rich character and scenery descriptions make it ideal for reading aloud. 

  

The relentless heat is taking its toll on the tempers of certain lads ages four and six, who have been likened by their hapless mother to the tigers in Helen Bannerman's The Story of Little Babaji (illustrated by Fred Marcellino).  Handsome Little Babaji parcels out his beautiful clothes to tigers who threaten to eat him.  Those tigers' respective needs to be the greatest among them force them into a showdown that results in their dissolving into butter that Little Babaji's father Papaji collects and takes home to Mamaji to cook with!  In honor of this story, we recently had pancakes for supper, just like Little Babaji and his parents. 

As usual, the two-year-old lass is happiest thumbing through a stack of books reading to herself and anyone else who wants to listen.  

And despite his protestations whenever I ask him to read to me, the elder lad has been observed reading books to himself, things like the comic-book style series of Lori Mortensen and Jeffrey Thompson including A Day at the Fire Station, Going to the Dentist, and Working on the Farm.  Rumor has it he's even been reading Mary Pope Osborne's The Magic Tree House series with his grandmother on those days she's been hosting "camp" at her house. 

As many times as we stack up the books and get them just-so into the canvas Trader Joes bag imported from Chicago that serves as our library bag, they are shortly thereafter strewn all about with children in various degrees of recline poring over their pages.  And that's okay by me -- especially if it precludes them from chasing each other until they turn into butter like those tigers...

good idea: batch grilling

The dog days of summer wear us down handily enough without us doing it to ourselves slaving over a hot grill (or stove).  Batch grilling in the morning (on a weekend!) helps us help ourselves.

Get the full scoop here.

fresh start

After such a long hiatus from this venture, it's difficult to choose a starting point.

Do I give a rundown of what's been going around here, from eleven-month-old baby girls walking and big sisters championing milestones of their own?  Or should I rhapsodize on the blessing it has been to have all four bambini together (most of the time) and a reprieve from the pressure of the early morning school preparations?  I couldn't write about that without an accompanying long-winded expression of gratitude who have made it possible for me to have some regularly-scheduled and sorely-needed downtime to regroup and renew. 

Perhaps a minor victory in the sustained management of the family laundry load -- if only I have the self-discipline (and free hands -- which when I have two of those together I generally prefer typing chronicle entries to household chores) to fold the laundry one or two loads at a time soon after it's finished washing and drying -- and the developing sense of responsibility three-fourths of the bambini have for putting their laundry away? 

And whither all those book reviews that have gone uncomposed and unposted? 

The real explanation for the silence, though, is in the daily application of effort, attention, and will to making peace with the present, often chaotic conditions -- trying to bring peace to those situations where peace is lacking, especially within my own heart.  For that, it's been a matter of praying for the grace to be open to receiving the love of God and the strength he gives to fulfill the duties he's entrusted to us.

It's meant a diversion of my attention from crafting sentences and stringing deep (such as they are) thoughts together and instead being present in the moment, acquiescing to going several directions at once, and knowing that's exactly where I'm meant to be.

course corrections and mile markers

Miss July took her first few hands-free steps tonight. Her big sister is increasing the little mommy doting on baby sis, who often waves to Sis, Daddy-o, and other familiar faces. The elder lad is proud to be a first grader, getting his own library card and devouring the science kits he received for his sixth birthday. The younger lad survived his first experience at vacation bible school last week, weathering his wistfulness for Mama while enjoying the activities.

The six of us took our first weekend getaway to a destination other than my parents' house this past weekend for a family wedding. All four bambini were enthralled at the concept of the hotel and reveled in checking everything out. Like their mama used to, the lads quickly zeroed in on the complimentary pens and paper and set about writing notes and taking hypothetical orders for the hotel restaurant.

The summer days I fretted over those last few weeks of school have turned out to be a blessed time of resetting and renewal. Our midday siesta time could use some refining, but we're working on it. With the elder lad now moving into another stage of childhood, it seems the ideal time for evaluating both our routines and our expectations, tweaking where necessary. I'm sure just when we get it just right, something will change.

I'm still here.

A recent spate of stormy weather coinciding with an overnight business trip for my beloved requiring that I drive like mom one morning in the midst of many end-of-Kindergarten festivities for the elder lad has spelled a drought for this chronicle.  I'm still here, though, with a laundry list of salient topics (but lots of laundry to keep on, lest it bury me alive) in my mental queue.  So please stick with me...