What Have We Done

Someone asked for advice about parenting as they added a new baby to their family and how larger, non-punitive families function. We're pretty dysfunctional, always kind of swirling along like Taz but this was my advice:

My advice is kinda worthless because it's kind of non-advice.

• Keep listening to yourself and trust your instincts.
• Forgive. A lot. Yourself and others.
• Begin again and again and again---as many times as it takes--and it's going to take a lifetime.
• Focus on endurance rather than patience.
• Laugh. A lot. At yourself and others. Seriously as moms we say and do and witness some of the most hysterical things if we can just learn to not take it all so seriously.
• Let go of expectations--they're just pride and are ruinous. Rather have an idea of the goal, but remain detached from results and allow the journey to take whatever course it will take.
• Be in the present--lingering in the past or the future will always make the present a mess and diminish your joy as well as your effectiveness.
• Don't forget that you are a person with needs, too. Include yourself in the plan for meeting everyone's needs. You don't honor yourself, your children, or God by neglecting your own personhood.
• Enlist help. Ask for help. Beg for help. Not asking for help is just pride and is ruinous.

And going from 2-3 means you now have more kids than hands and that is a huge leap. Give yourself time to develop the skills you need to deal with that reality. Every new kid means a new shift in balancing everyone's needs and the immediacy with which we can meet needs---and that always involves grieving through to the resolution stage. And it's hard to grieve with a gaggle of children always needing you.

Poetry Friday....with a twist.

Poetry Fridays where we say:

It's Poetry Friday. Let's go into our weekend prepared "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life". Every Friday post a poem- yours or someone else's.

This Friday I'll post a poem I just wrote. I haven't written a poem in an awfully long time--but part of my Lent is to try to write something everyday and this is what I ended up with.



The blackness of the
fingered
trees
Their tortured grasp of
gnarled
hands
That reach moonward through
blue-black
night
Creak whispers into
changing
wind
As stillness groans just
out of
reach.

2.18.2010

My Lenten Beginning

2/17/2010
There are things which I know I believe.

1. All people after the age of reason have hurts and wounds, vices and flaws with which they struggle.
2. All people have love as a basic need. All people are inherently lovable.
3. We have a responsibility to love.
4. Faith essentially comes down to relationship. Because of that our whole lives revolve around learning how to give love and be loved in healthy interdependence-learning how to enter into and cultivate healthy relationships.
5. Suffering, while not to be sought and always to seek to be alleviated, teaches us compassion and if done well brings us wisdom through humility.
6. We are all connected. Those who live now, those who came before, those who will come.
7. Regrets come from what we leave undone or have done poorly in far greater measure than what we have done.
8. Beginning and beginning again is desperately important. Reinventing ourselves and allowing ourselves to be renewed in ongoing response to our world, our circumstances, and our failures is what allows us to grow.
9. There is no merit in self-deception. Without being open to seeing ourselves as we truly are, we can never become what we hope to be.
10. The road to sanctity is one which is long and arduous. It is the work of a lifetime.
11. Love never ends. The love we share ripples out into the world endlessly.

So that I don't Abandon My Blog--Birthday Pictures!

It's been crazy around here. We seem to have so much going on and Michael has decided recently that he wants to be held pretty much all of the time. I can type one handed--rather proficiently, I might add, but I still find it difficult to blog one handed. It's hard to focus, as well as to navigate added pictures and such.

Last Sunday Jane turned 7!!! We went to the mall to shop and get her ears pierced, the next day she and her daddy went out on a date.









On Wednesday Andrew turned 3! We went to Burger King for milkshakes and to play on the play place. Then he went to the John Deere Store and to Sears with daddy.





One of Andrew's coolest presents was made for him by my dad. It's a box which contains different screws and screw drivers and wrenches. On the other side of the box are the wholes for screwing in the different screws. Andrew LOVES it!

Poetry Fridays

It's Poetry Friday. Let's go into our weekend prepared "to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life". Every Friday post a poem- yours or someone else's.

(Okay I know technically it's Saturday, but they say it takes 28 times to make something habitual--so sometime in the summer this ought to be an actual regular feature on actual Fridays.)

Let's visit a couple poems of Frank O'Hara's.

A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island

by Frank O'Hara

The Sun woke me this morning loud

and clear, saying “Hey! I've been

trying to wake you up for fifteen

minutes. Don’t be so rude, you are

only the second poet I’ve ever chosen

to speak to personally

so why

aren’t you more attentive? If I could

burn you through the window I would

to wake you up. I can't hang around

here all day.”

“Sorry, Sun, I stayed

up late last night talking to Hal.”

“When I woke up Mayakovsky he was

a lot more prompt” the Sun said

petulantly. “Most people are up

already waiting to see if I’m going

to put in an appearance.”

I tried

to apologize “I missed you yesterday.”

“That’s better” he said. “I didn’t

know you’d come out.” “You may be

wondering why I’ve come so close?”

“Yes” I said beginning to feel hot

wondering if maybe he wasn’t burning me

anyway.

“Frankly I wanted to tell you

I like your poetry. I see a lot

on my rounds and you’re okay. You may

not be the greatest thing on earth, but

you’re different. Now, I’ve heard some

say you’re crazy, they being excessively

calm themselves to my mind, and other

crazy poets think that you’re a boring

reactionary. Not me.

Just keep on

like I do and pay no attention. You’ll

find that people always will complain

about the atmosphere, either too hot

or too cold too bright or too dark, days

too short or too long.

If you don’t appear

at all one day they think you’re lazy

or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

And don’t worry about your lineage

poetic or natural. The Sun shines on

the jungle, you know, on the tundra

the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were

I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting

for you to get to work.

And now that you

are making your own days, so to speak,

even if no one reads you but me

you won’t be depressed. Not

everyone can look up, even at me. It

hurts their eyes.”

“Oh Sun, I’m so grateful to you!”

“Thanks and remember I’m watching. It’s

easier for me to speak to you out

here. I don’t have to slide down

between buildings to get your ear.

I know you love Manhattan, but

you ought to look up more often.

And

always embrace things, people earth

sky stars, as I do, freely and with

the appropriate sense of space. That

is your inclination, known in the heavens

and you should follow it to hell, if

necessary, which I doubt.

Maybe we’ll

speak again in Africa, of which I too

am specially fond. Go back to sleep now

Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem

in that brain of yours as my farewell.”

“Sun, don’t go!” I was awake

at last. “No, go I must, they’re calling

me.”

“Who are they?”

Rising he said “Some

day you’ll know. They’re calling to you

too.” Darkly he rose, and then I slept.

The Day Lady Died

by Frank O'Hara

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets

in Ghana are doing these days

I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

A Bright, Bright Sunshiney Day

Yesterday was just a beautiful, fantastic, warm day. It was one of those times where I was just so glad that we homeschool so that we can take advantage when there is a freak 70 degree day in the middle of January after there's been bitter cold and tons of rain for weeks upon weeks. Especially as today it is raining buckets once again!
Yesterday afternoon, I made dinner (we eat our main meal around 3:00), and set it up downstairs for the kids to serve themselves.
.
I set the mussels outside with a bag for the shells. I never would have thought that kids would like mussels, but there must be an allure to a food with its own shell.

We hauled the baby swing outside for Michael, and all sat around in the warm gorgeousness.

One other, most excellent advantage of homeschooling is that your school work can move with you, so that if you are still working while there is a sort of party-picnic going on, you don't need to be left out!

Simple Woman's Daybook

FOR TODAY January 18, 2010

Outside my window... it is still dark, but holds the promise and smell of being Springlike today.

I am thinking... how much I love the room I am sitting in, and how pleased I am every morning when I walk downstairs and see my beloved room awaiting me.

I am thankful for... my Cleaning Club peeps and our new blog adventure together.

From the learning rooms... oldest two have been loving their Teaching Textbooks.

From the kitchen... right now--coffee!!!

I am wearing... my jammies, fuzzy socks and old man sweater.

I am creating... a scarf out of bamboo yarn and a meal plan for the week.

I am going... kind of stir crazy not being able to go out anywhere at night.

I am reading... Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone

I am hoping... to get to read today. It's been days since I've read, and that always spells trouble and yuck in the rest of my life.

I am hearing... nothing. Seriously- it's 7:04 am and all I hear is the clicking of the keyboard as I type. I *love* mornings.

Around the house... I gotta bust some laundry moves and hang the world map I've been trying to hang for three days.

One of my favorite things... my fleece sheets, which I was sure were going to be waaaaay too hot, but are so soft and cozy and just right if I give up my extra blanket.

A few plans for the rest of the week: I got nothing. Momming, wifing....I guess I am trying to start to commit to exercising everyday. Holy string of infinitives, Batman!

Here is picture thought I am sharing...


Join in the Simple Woman's Daybook here:
http://thesimplewomansdaybook.blogspot.com/