good nightingale
November 26, 2011 | Filed Under extraordinary, familial, the greene life | 2 Comments
the farm, a peaceful and wonderful place. grandpa is 92, so this kind of weekend won’t happen too many more times. we’ve got a beautiful, mortal life, do you know it? our little family felt the pangs of it as we drove under the pecan trees and away today.
swan dive
November 15, 2011 | Filed Under extraordinary, familial | Leave a Comment
oh, she’s my lola.
weekending
October 24, 2011 | Filed Under extraordinary, familial, weekending | Leave a Comment
it’s been a long time since i’ve been a-weekending around here. our weekends have been been filled with work or travel or a hazy fog of getting-through-it-ness. but we’re making an effort to change that, even though it may be the teeniest of efforts or close to impossible.
this weekend we went with some friends to hunting island, a south carolina state park on a perfect driftwooded beach. there were porpoises up close, sandpipers whisking fast-footed in the first of the waves, raccoons by night, cheerio-eating deer, cold tents, sunshine, lola in the sea, max meeting the sea, boys bodysurfing, constant campfire, marshmallows, excessive amounts of bacon, kids that get along well together, adult conversations, and a goodly unplugged weekend all around.
this week we’re wading through school projects, making a place for a fire-ring, finishing some paper taxidermy, transplanting rosemary into the house, having a pizza party while ernie is gone to NYC, and, horribly, cleaning kids rooms.
places i remember
October 10, 2011 | Filed Under extraordinary, familial | Leave a Comment
and then, a thousand days and nights and four hundred sixty more, and my lola is four. she is strong and pretty and smart as a whip. she is the best girl i know, my daughter, my sister, my sweet.
thank you, God, for lola. may she see your face and know you are real. keep her safe, and even though it’s selfish and too honest, please let me die before she does.
more (and better) celebratory photos here, on ernie’s blog.
weekending
December 13, 2010 | Filed Under familial, weekending | 1 Comment
another weekend of basketball, church, hanging around the house, cooking and eating, and a little bit of tidying up after a week long royal buffet frenzy. we went to a christmas party at cory’s and erin’s house and ate lots of cheese dip, little blts and candy of all shapes and sizes. it was hard to stop eating the candy. and the meatballs. and the cheese dip. erin does amazing things with lots of foods that are all good and ready at the same time. that’s hard to do.
lola came to the party and we took turns holding elsa. babies like elsa make me want another baby of my own. if only life were simpler.
it was fun to go to a party at christmastime. we took lola along and the boys had a pizza party with big dad. we came home at 9:30 to find that the boys had tucked themselves into bed and had actually gone to sleep. this was both surprise and pride inducing and also made us feel kind of sad as we know that big dad didn’t tuck them in with kisses and goodnights and extra blankets and books they’ve not read in awhile, so the idea of them going to bed like that didn’t seem quite right. “i guess we’re just attachment parents,” ernie said, and of course we are, but when the kids get older and you don’t have slings and the secret that you co-sleep and don’t let your babies cry in a (nonexistent) crib is no longer really relevant, you don’t really think as much about the ways you practice attachment parenting anymore, or how that will actually be realized with older kids.
this week we’re having christmas school at our house, doing all of the christmas things that are hard to do with the more involved school things in the day. we made gingerbread houses today, a little village. i bought a kit this year rather than making them out of graham crackers. there was enough candy for constant eating and sprinkling and squishing onto the houses and there was frosting all over the place. there was lots of thanking from my kids and i love you moms and i felt kind of bad that we don’t make messes together like that more often. there’s plenty of mess, but not a lot of it that we’re doing together and with purpose. i think there’s a difference somewhere in there. tomorrow’s mess will add to our paper cut snowflake collection. i saved the best from last year and hope to add some every year for many years to come.
gratitudes
November 25, 2010 | Filed Under extraordinary, familial, lists | Leave a Comment
walks in the trees, cold winds, mud underfoot, giant mushrooms, hedge apples by the armful, white trees that grow forever, grandpa, my dad, nieces, nephews, hot chocolate, hot coffee, all day cooking, heaps of dinner and heaps more, making kids pilgrim hats and indian head-dresses, pie for now and again for later, loud laughter, kids everywhere until bedtime, kids tucked in bed, late night movies, sleeping in with my love.
there are many things i’m often thankful for, my husband, my children, health and strength. and then we come together with almost everyone i’ve always known and i can see in a glimmer that God has looked on me with way more love than i can imagine and that for some reason i am very blessed.
three (and a wee bit more)
November 5, 2010 | Filed Under extraordinary, familial | Leave a Comment
this is a girl who is three. she is three in years and much, much more in smarts and achievements. it is hard for me to believe that she is three yet at all, and harder for me to believe that she is only three. she has always been here with us, it seems, for what were our lives, what was the empty world without her?
she is a light in our house, her laugh fills the sky with the brightest of stars. she is wild and strong and has learned to be brave. she has learned to sing, to whistle, she loves for me to read to her, to read to me from memory. she loves her brothers, her dad, moustaches, her max, her mama, her tricycle, and bubble gum. when she was born we didn’t know what we had, that dark haired, dark eyed bundle of sweets.
thank you God, for lola, for her beautiful life, for her mind and her liveliness, for all she is, for giving her to me to love.
(the trampoline is dangerous)
October 28, 2010 | Filed Under familial, ordinary | 2 Comments
in theory i really do like it when the kids are staccato jumping on their beds, when they are shrieking with frenzied laughter while jumping from chair to chair, from coffee table to couch, from couch to floor to chair. as long as i don’t have to see it i don’t mind it. jumping on furniture, especially on beds, seems to be a childhood necessity, one that i happily remember myself. but practically it drives me a little bit bonkers. i feel a burning wash of fury when things are broken. i cannot bite my tongue to keep from moralizing as i go to patch up bloody gashes. mostly it’s really just not all that terrific to spend the whole day cleaning what the fun left behind. the mess, the cushions torn asunder, the blankets crammed beneath the beds into the deepest corners, the cheerios and crackers and raisins knocked to the floor and smashed underfoot, the whooping and hollering and red cheeked breathlessness, these are the wine that flows like a dark red river after all of their stomping and trampling and leaping high into the sky of the house.
(it is possible that i myself need to jump on the bed for awhile for good measure, maybe with a bowl of goldfish in one hand and a wooden sword in the other.)
good enough now
October 27, 2010 | Filed Under familial, ordinary | Leave a Comment
all day yesterday there was a hovering heat in the day, an envelope of the hot hugging us like a furrowed brow of worry. here, there, again for a blink, a cold string of air through the screen. i am sick, my head with a heat and a hammer repeating himself right behind the eyes. i made pizza because i said that i would, humidity on the side of the dough as it ballooned in the bowl, under the towel. later, after dinner and leave it to beaver, after the tucking of children, the stacking of books, after the house is a quiet, sleepy place, after these and finally, at last, the rain. a thousand pulses in watery heartbeats pounding against the house, the blades of grass, the asphalt black beneath. thunder with a shake and a crash. lola woke up. i could hear her through the windows behind me, her cry coming out of her window, through the rain and into mine.
bring me my boots and shoes
October 22, 2010 | Filed Under familial | Leave a Comment
the boys are asleep in this room. there is a lot of love that bursts inside of me when i find them sleeping in this mess and click off their lights and step on legos and small dinosaurs on my way to the door in the dark.