Quiet Glimpses During a Busy Week - You Capture

This week just flew.

It rattled around me like the strong winds that have been whipping through Los Angeles.

But it's been a good rattle. A good fly. Because my soul is filled with the joy of opportunity.

I didn't have many chances to capture QUIET this week.

But I tried.

I happened upon this scene as I stood in the kitchen and I realized the house was uh, quiet.I walked back towards the kids' rooms and this is what I found. A big sister just learning to read quietly reading to her adoring brother.

I don't really mind that the photo is blurry. I like trying to capture the real light of the moment. Do blurry photos bother you?

And then a typical school morning but the light was streaming in and I don't know about you but streaming morning light is just simply quiet. It's feels quiet even when it's resting on a noisy 5-year-old.

I'm so hooked on these weekly You Capture projects. Join the fun if you aren't already in on it.

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This has been an edition of You Capture over at Beth's I Should Be Folding Laundry.
The theme was "Quiet."

And tune in tomorrow for another edition of "Conversations with My Kid." If you're posting
a conversation you've had with YOUR kid, you can link up and join the fun!!

Wishing you the peace of some quiet moments.

My Children's Artwork. And How it Ends Up in the Trash.

Every single day my children produce art. Every. Single. Day.

There are stacks and piles of colorings and clippings and gluings and stickerings and glitterings and just so many ings of creative expression that I find myself utterly petrified wondering if I'm gonna get caught when I throw the majority of these masterpieces in. the. trash.

Cause I've been caught. Many times. And it sucks.

"MOOMMMYYYYYYYY!!!!!"

And when I run over to see what the problem is, there they are, pulling one of their absolutely perfect, never-to-be-thrown-away, pieces of art out of the garbage can.

"Mommy, how did THIS end up in the TRASH?????"

And then I lie.

Of course.

Because mama would never ever throw away a piece of precious, innocent artwork created by her precious, innocent children! No way!!

"Honey, I have NO idea how that got into the trash. That is crazy!! Maybe (insert babysitter's name here) accidentally threw it away when she was cleaning up the kitchen. Yeah, that's probably it."

And thank GOD they are young enough to buy whatever line I feed them.

But even though I have come to terms with the fact that MOST of their artwork simply must be trashed, I still have trouble in the moment when I'm deciding which pieces of art will be saved from the world of recycling so I can preserve it forever in my special artwork file thingy.

I mean look at this stuff:


Could you ever feel good about trashing that?

And look at Jane here...


She represents a whole new style of drawing that Claire, 7, is doing. And I kinda dig her.

And then even this crazy creature...


Sure it's borderline creepy. Okay, maybe not borderline. Like actually super creepy. But kinda lovable all at the same time.

The sifting through the piles always gets me riddling in my skull about whether or not I will follow through with the trashing or perhaps I'll just return it to the pile for the next sifting session.

But then when I come across things like this....


...it's kind of like a no-brainer.

I mean really. I'm totally looking like a grandma in that one by Claire. She says it's how I look in the morning.

Yikes.

I'm not gonna even make an excuse when she finds THAT one in the trash.

Now what do YOU do with all of YOUR kid's artwork?

"Conversations with My Kid" Friday - A New Feature

I know everyone is dying to read Part Two of The Mime Trilogy and believe you me, it's coming. I just want to give those peeps who have been too busy to read this blog some time to catch up. So if you want to get in on the mime frenzy that is currently spreading throughout the blogosphere, click here to read Part One.

For now, I've decided to launch something new over here. The idea came to me this morning and before I get too lazy to implement it, I'm gonna hit publish and get this rolling.

Last Friday, I published a little story that Claire wrote and it really made me smile. And maybe it made like six of you smile. So that's cool. And today I want to share another Claire story that has been making me smile for the last 16 hours or so.

And the story from yesterday was a conversation I had with Claire. Sometimes I stop in my busy tracks and wonder if I really did converse with any of my kids on any given day. You know? When I am having an actual conversation with my kids listening to their words, I realize I am present. And aren't we all always working on being more present? I sure am.

I thought, I want to remember more of these sweet conversations. Where I get real insight into their brains.

So I was thinking that every Friday, I'm gonna share a conversation I had with my kids that made me laugh, cry, think, whatever. I'm thinking these conversation posts will be short and sweet and will simply help me remember these precious interactions that happen every single day but then slip away into the corners of my mind making it tough for me to recall the beauty of each and every one. (or hardly any of them for that matter.)

I'm not sure what I'm gonna call this little Friday event but I'll come up with something by next week. And I'll even have Mr. Linky up next Friday. I mean, is Mr. Linky still the industry standard? Or has something cooler come along? Let me know.

This way, I figure I can click around and get to know a little more about your kids. I mean, your kids are cool, right? And they say awesome things? And we are kinda like uh, mommy bloggers? In a loose sense of the term. And we like to talk about our kids sometimes, right?

So, let's try this thing.

For now, let's call it "Conversations with My Kid" Fridays. Is that lame? Someone help me.

Here we go:

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Yesterday, Claire, 7, was doing her Social Studies homework. She had to color this packet of papers stapled together to tell a story about Martin Luther King Jr. I was, once again, in the kitchen doing God knows what and I said -

"Whatcha doing Claire?"

"I have to color this book about Martin Luther King Jr."

"Oh yeah? You've been learning about him, huh?"

"Yep."

"What have you learned about him?"

Still coloring and not looking up, Claire says "I learned that he had a dream."

"What was his dream?"

"His dream was that white people and black people could live together."

And then she paused but before I could say anything she added, "I don't think that's a very good dream."

"It's not?" I asked.

"Nope...

....My dream is to have a horse ranch. And that's a way better dream than his."

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If you have a "Conversations with My Kid" story you are sharing today or have shared recently or something that resembles one, leave the link in the comments and I'll come check it out.

Happy Friday!

Looking for Me

Written by Lee

Oh it was supposed to be sooooo fantastic. My day off from work. A day with my babies. A happy mama buzzing around in the morning with no place to be, just making lunches, attempting to braid some wispy hair, sitting on the floor to help with shoes, not feeling rushed to get out of the house myself, smiley kisses as they hopped into the van with daddy and promises to pick them up from school.

And after homework and a snack, we would head out on an adventure of epic Thursday afternoon proportions. A trip to the mall to find some dresses to wear for their upcoming Christmas program. My girls love their fashion, twirling and posing in all of their eclectic fabulosity. I don't think I've dressed them since they were like 2 and now Claire is 7 and Phoebe is 5. Their look is all their own. I love that.

Or at least I think I love that.

I don't know exactly why I thought it was all such an awesome idea to take the girls and my lil' train obsessed 2-1/2-year old Tommy to Macy's for Christmas dress shopping. I guess I just thought they would dig the idea of a new fancy get-up and then they would get to pop into a toy store to start compiling their Santa lists and maybe, just maybe, they would see the ol' guy himself and get to whisper in his ear some of their most outrageous Christmas wishes.

If only they weren't so deathly afraid of large bearded men in red suits.

My girls are fierce. Independent. Strong. Creative. And imaginations that make me wish I could shed my adult skin and jump into their raw alive child-minds and run fast and free in their ever-changing story-lines filled with fantastical characters and the silliest plot lines ever concocted.

And my girls are expressive. And loud. And opinionated. And bossy. And irreverent too much of the time it seems. And dramatic. And wow.

So when I stepped into that over-sized dressing room pushing my gargantuan stroller and holding my bag of tricks along with a slew of holiday dresses, I should have known that disaster was imminent.

But I was in denial. Slightly delusional. Blinded by the high expectations a working mama has when she has a day off with her kids that is supposed to simply be fabulous.

The road to destruction was a slow but steady build. The first 15 minutes or so of dresses going on and off and Tommy pushing his brand new Hot Wheels I just had bought him to keep him amused while we browsed the racks all went relatively fine. But then the voices started raising, the temperature started rising, the walls started shrinking and with each costume hoisted over their precious heads, the drama in their little souls let loose with reckless abandon.

I'm not sure exactly what made me snap but it happened somewhere between Phoebe sitting on the ground in the 8th large puffy snowflake of a dress screaming "I looooook ridiculoussssssss!" and Claire dancing around in a hot little pink and purple number that had no place being hung on a Christmas dress rack all the while making Tommy scream as she attempted to yank his cracker bag out of his hand because "I am hungry toooooo!!" Red-faced and teary-eyed, Tommy wailed and slapped at his big sister, and she cackled and grabbed the crackers anyway because that's what big sisters do sometimes.

And I felt my insides boiling. I hated the sound of my voice as I tried to keep it quiet for the sake of other customers being subjected to our own personal hell. I felt spent from the hour it took just to get the dresses off the rack and into the dressing room. I was hungry. I was tired from trying to be it all. A working woman. A working mama.

And I was speaking in harsh tones with my mouth tightly clenched and I told the kids I was done. I had warned them already multiple times. We had made a pact before we entered the mall that we would stay happy and work together and for our good behavior, we would get rewards. A trip to the food court. A romp to the toy store. But now everything was being ruined. There would be no new dresses, no fun at the food court, no Santa lists being made.

My fabulous day was being ruined and I. Was. Pissed. Off.

And while I hurriedly picked up the dresses off the floor and tried to hang them back on the hangars, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. And it was not a face I wanted to see.

I remember in my younger, partying days in my mid-20's or so, I would do this thing that if I was altered in any way by a variety of partying uh, substances, I would every so often take a little look in the mirror and make sure I was still all there. And no matter what, I could always see me. Even through the altered brain.

But in that dressing room as a mama of three, I let my eyes linger for a moment at the face I saw in the mirror. And it was tough to see me right then and there. I have to be honest. It was not an expression I recognized. It was not a familiar face. I was really hoping that that person I was looking at was not me. It simply could not be me.

And my kids saw it too. Mainly my girls did. They saw something in their mama that made them feel sad and maybe even a little scared. And as they begged for us to stay and not to abandon our mission, I still silently and quietly picked everything up and firmly told them "Let's.Go."

They followed me out of that dressing room like good little ducks - all in a row. They were subdued and quiet and obedient. There were no tears just solemn faces of acceptance. There would be no new dresses today, they knew. No fun at the food court. No new toys to fantasize about.

And as walked past the rows and rows of holiday dresses on our way out of the store, Phoebe suddenly grabbed me around the waist and looking up at me she said "Do you forgive me Mama?"

And I stopped in my tracks. The tears welled and I said "Of course I forgive you Phoebes. I will always forgive you."

"Can we try again Mama? Can we try to find our dresses for our Christmas Program?" she said.

And with that face of light and innocence and 5-year-oldness that is palpable and precious staring up at me, my heart gave way and a part of me I recognized resurfaced.

I took a deep breath and said, "Sure Phoebes. We can try again."

And we grabbed some more glittery holiday costumes and headed back into the dressing room.

I don't know why I am still fighting so hard. To maintain the me that was. Maybe because I am working again and it's a tangible reminder of the person I used to be. Maybe it's because it's the path I am meant to walk on this eternal journey of surrendering to motherhood. Maybe it's because I, like my girls, am fierce and independent and opinionated and bossy.

But that glance in the mirror was a wake-up call to me. I didn't like what I saw in that Macy's dressing room that fabulous Thursday afternoon. And I hope I remember the visage that was staring back at me. 'Cause I believe it was telling me to find a new way.

It was telling me that I can't look in the mirror expecting to find the me that I used to find so many years ago. That me is gone. There's a new me in there. And it's the new me that I want my kids to see and know. The me that is head over heels in love with being their mother. The me that will always be willing to head back into that dressing room again and again and again.

December 2009 - Where we find ourselves on a Thursday afternoon