The girls' school has a new art teacher, and I like her already. I'm spoiled when it comes to art teachers. The one at the school where I teach is amazing--pottery, weaving (with wool the students card, dye, & spin themselves!), and more types of sculpture & multi-dimensional work than you could imagine. And she does all this with severely physically, cognitively, and behaviorally challenged kids.
So when Amelia came home with art that had required more than just drawing or coloring, I felt a huge sense of hope!
Of course, as the art teacher at my school tells me, my girls could get plenty of art experience at HOME. Right! So here are a few examples over this past year...all kid-driven, I might add. I can take no credit for inspiring ANY of this (unless I get to count giving birth to the artists.)
Funny how I never have to say, "Hey kids! Look at this! I'll bet you could climb this wall!" They found this one at the school we can walk to from our house.
Tonight on our way to AWANA, the girls were lamenting that we don't have room in our car to bring friends with us. I said maybe we should pray for a bigger car, and Evelyn said, "Yeah! Like a van!"
And Amelia said, "Or a limousine."
Can't you see it? Pulling up to AWANA Tuesday night in a limo and un-buckling fourteen five to seven year olds from their booster seats...
Mom and Dad had us over today to celebrate my little brother's birthday. Mom made steamed shrimp and the kids were hyper and crazy even before the cake and ice cream. They just get so energized by being together! Me, too.
On a more solemn note, Jon's wife Courtney lost her dad this week. His battle with Alzheimer's had been long and slow, but the end is still hard. How good to listen to Courtney's experiences and to rejoice and mourn together.
One of Evelyn's classmates invited us to her street fair near the Farmers' Market--it is the same street cousin Kate & Jay used to live on--and it was AWESOME. There were lots of fun things to do for free, and the atmosphere was so family friendly. (Keep in mind it is the city version of family friendly, which means you see mothers nursing babies without coverups, parents with tattoos and dreadlocks, and children dressed in 100% organic clothing.) The girls had a blast.
And I love how the face paintings they chose belie their personalities: the shy daughter as the fierce tiger and the out-going daughter with the dainty vine of flowers on her cheek.
Is it a long monocle? A hands-free spyglass? Whatever it is, it makes me laugh...and reminds me that there's always something to play with if you're willing to be creative.
(Note: have caution. "Being creative" can require some supervision. Without such supervision, you can discover that creativity has the potential to run a little wild: like hand soap generously decorating all the bathroom mirrors or discovering that black rubber doorstops make satisfying--and frustratingly indelible--marks on walls. Don't say I didn't warn you.)
These giants arose from the spindliest, most delicate little seedlings. Can't tell you how often I painstakingly propped and tied them to gradually taller sticks until they were on their own.
I think there's a child-rearing metaphor in there somewhere. :)
How was your 2011 garden? Ours wasn't stellar, but we weren't stellar gardeners. We have so much to learn. So far we've learned that if we had to subsist on our backyard harvest, we'd be dead. :) But I still like gardening. I like digging in the dirt, being outside, and sending the girls out there to pick tomatoes and snip basil. It's just so cute when they come through the back door with the hems of their shirts pulled up into pouches for produce!
If play is a child's work and necessary for healthy development, then we're doing just fine over here.
The newest obsession is playing "School." They each set up classrooms, and come downstairs in line (moving one animal at a time) to go to music in the living room or art in the bathroom. (Who knew the bathroom was so artistically inspiring? If they've actually MADE anything in art, it's been flushed, because there's no evidence.)
Finally, there's planning time, where the teachers prep the next day's coloring pages and peruse the texts.
It's all quite adorable. Get to work, girls!
"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands..." (I Thess.4:11)
And I thought it might be funny to throw in II Thess. 3:10, so you know how seriously we're taking the work these girls are doing: "If a man shall not work, he shall not eat."
And that reminds me of Evelyn reviewing memory verses tonight. She asked me why people are always called "he" in the Bible. I said that it didn't really mean boys only, but is just a way of talking about people in general. Then she reviewed James 2:10 as"But whoever will keep the whole law, yet stumble in one point, he--OR SHE--is guilty of all." (Emphasis hers.)
(Not to be confused with "We love climbing the walls.")
The Fischer Price Loving Family dollhouse people get lots of attention. Apparently they needed some exercise.
Impressively, no rubber bands or fasteners were used for these feats.
Perhaps our local Y needs a giant bureau for climbing. The chair in the dining room isn't cutting it. Actually, I retract that. I just had a flashback.
Okay. :) And we'll stand far enough away from you to get the full effect of your tongue! (That's Angel, one of the Maryland Zoo's giraffes you can feed.)
It was nice to take friends to the zoo last week.
And tonight I got to go to a Kathy Mattea concert. Remember her? I'd almost forgotten how very much I like country music (I know some of you are cringing...but I've just got to be honest here.) She had a wonderful band with acoustic bass, lead guitar, an Irish fiddle & mandolin player, and herself on rhythm guitar. I was one big grin.
I can't believe I remembered all the lyrics to the refrain of this one. I belted it out shamelessly--almost as shamelessly as I sported the same perm & shoulder pads Kathy wears in this video:
And I totally bawled my eyes out while she sang this one. (The band in the video is the same one I heard tonight.) I remember crying to it in my 20's. Twenty years later, I'm an even bigger blubbering idiot. It's Kathy Mattea's true story of her husband's grandparents. Somehow it struck a nerve, too, that my sister-in-law Courtney was, while I was at the concert, at her father's bedside. He has Alzheimer's, and his mind is forgetting how to tell his body to work. She & Jon & the kids & her family are all with him this weekend. You can read her tender thoughts about being the daughter of man with premature Alzheimer's here.
Look at those two--they're like puppies when it comes to their cousins! The day after Hurricane Irene Mom hosted an impromptu potluck.
The girls are waiting for Anna and Aidan to arrive.
I don't think we've even seen the sun since this day, come to think of it! We will all be happy to see the sun again--almost as happy as Evelyn and Amelia are when they see their cousins.
1. How are Jesus and His Gospel REAL in my life? (The prayer of Peter--"Lord I do believe. Help my unbelief!")
2. How do we teach our girls to recognize the feelings of their own hearts & their basic human needs for Jesus' redeeming work while making them feel safe, enjoyed, and loved, loved, loved? (Parenting is ALWAYS in the list of top things on my mind.)
3. What does it actually LOOK like (as in a schedule--and is a "schedule" even truly necessary?) to prioritize the loves of my life:
- God
- Alan
- the girls
- our extended family
- friends
- our community/schools/work
4. How can I get the most work done in the least amount of time?
5. What else can I get rid of around here to keep our home environment from clogging up my time?
And for those who enjoy a cute picture:
We took friends to the zoo Saturday. My hope is always to use up a lot of the kids' energy, but I typically use up my own instead. In spite of how many times I had to say, "Walking feet, girls, walking feet!!" and "Please don't run so far ahead that we can't see you," we all had a really good time.
I always feel so blessed when we have a chance to spend time with other Christian families whose kids are near our kids' ages. Hopefully I didn't talk too much about the #2 thing on my mind that day. I tend to do that.
Last night Amelia asked if we could go to the fair again today. There was both sadness and joy in my heart as I told her the fair would not be back for another whole year. :) My mom and I are going to need all the time in between to recover.
(Title sung in my best imitation of Tevye from "Fiddler on the Roof." It is second only to my imitation of Tevye singing "If I Were a Rich Man.")
For at least the third year in a row, mom, the girls and I have gone to the State Fair on Labor Day (how fitting, given the vast cross-section of the American Labor Force on hand there.) We arrive when the gates open, walk around the Cow Palace (where, given its name, the country girl in me should be right at home with the woman in me who's been to Versailles; in reality it's a great place to watch your kids gawk at the many amazing kinds of cattle and how often they poop), and then get our all-you-can-ride Midway bracelets.
The girls are Midway Monsters. We had to drag them away after three hours with promises of ice cream at Grandma's (that's where the picture w/the pandas was taken. I considered making up some crazy story about how Mom won them at the Fair, but they are actually part of Mom's grand-kid toy stash.)
Last year Evelyn was SO disappointed she wasn't tall enough to ride "The Zipper." I wasn't disappointed at all. But this year was different. She'd grown. And she'd not forgotten. Not 15 minutes into our ride bonanza today, she dragged me over to it, flapping and jumping and squealing with delight that she was tall enough. Let's just say I think my equilibrium has officially aged past my body's ability to deal with this kind of "fun." All I have is the memory of Evelyn and me bouncing around in that little cage, upside down, screaming and holding on to one another. It took me about 3 hours to recover, although I did manage to enjoy the rest of the day nonetheless. And Evelyn? While she got off saying the ride had made her sick, she says it was the best thing she rode.
Highlights:
- Amelia walking smack into the glass walls in the mirrored fun-house...three times...and laughing her head off.
- The two of them getting off and getting immediately back in line for the "Zero Gravity," the giant obstacle course, and the Funhouses...over and over and over.
- Amelia bursting into tears after the Free Fall (What mother lets her 5 year old ride the Free Fall??) She said later it was because when it dropped "my bottom came off the seat and I thought I was falling off." Well that made ME cry!
- Eating Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream with Mom and Dad afterwards.
- Enjoying a tradition with my mom and the girls. :) Thank you, Mom!
Here's a youtube Zipper clip Evelyn and I found when we got home. She wanted to give Alan an idea of what she'd done today.
Hurricane Irene was coming. The storm shortened the Zeigenfuse vacation in the Outer Banks, and we benefited in an impromptu Hurricane Party.
Chips, salsa, games, and a good old-fashioned walk in the rain. We are thankful we suffered no power loss and no damage. We know lots of others who did, and of course the folks in New England will be rebuilding for a long time.
But we are thankful that Irene blew Amy and Jen our way for a day.
ls.")
