Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Saturday smiles

Saturday smiles: Change is good edition

I was thinking of Sheryl Crow when we rearranged our living room yesterday.

“A change, a change, would do you good.”

Now, you’re singing it, too, right?

Even though we’re anticipating a move in what we hope is the near future, we decided to move our furniture around, clean and pack up living room stuff before decorating for Christmas. My thinking is that we won’t have to get the stuff back out that we packed up. Might be wishful thinking.

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Anyway, the change has done a lot of good for me mentally. We’re still in the same house with the same problems, with too much stuff and too little space, but I’m refreshed by the new look. A little change with a big mental impact for me.

This week was full of changes for us. Our son turned 3 on Sunday. And we are now fully engulfed in the preschool years. I can’t call either of my kids babies or toddlers anymore. They are little human beings now. (I mean, they were always human but now they’re more like small adults.)

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As I write this, our daughter, 4 1/2, is teaching her brother about how babies are born while they play with their Little People nativity set. I guess it’s time to start talking about where babies come from!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAShe’s also drawing pictures that look like things now. She drew this for me yesterday. I’m pretty sure it’s her and not me.

Two days this week I got to leave the house. (Did you here the “Hallelujah!” where you are?) By myself. Without kids. For large chunks of time. Grandparents were in town, so twice I accompanied my husband to Lancaster, where he works, and spent the day doing whatever I wanted. One day, I hung out at Panera and Barnes and Noble, reading and writing. Then we all ate together at Chick-Fil-A as a family. Then my husband and I got a mini-date night at a coffeehouse. The next day, I got to spend hours catching up with a friend. Both days it was fun to ride with my husband and just be together. And to order a drink from him at his place of work and sit and read while waiting for his shift to end. So refreshing. A taste of what may come when the kids start school, if I’m not working a job myself.

More highlights from this week:

The 3-year-old and his orange shades. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Yep, it’s bedtime and he’s wearing them while brushing his teeth. When I asked him what he wanted Santa to bring him, he said, “Orange glasses. Because I only just have my orange shades.” Mark my words: He’s going to choose a college based on their colors, and if orange isn’t one of them, no deal.

The girl and her brain. On a day when they watched Super Why, Sid the Science Kid and Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, I asked which one she liked the best. (I’m personally fond of Super Why, and Sid is growing on me.) She said, “You know how much I like Sid? 12 plus 14 plus 1.” Huh? Oh, well. Math skills, here we come!

And a box of love landed on our door Friday. We always love boxes of love, especially though, when they are filled with such awesomeness as:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA pirate eye patches (new house rule: one pirate eye patch per person at meal times)

Ugandan coffee

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAfun cups and bowls

Lush bath product

and clothes for the kids, including some cool winter coats that the kids wore out of the house 30 minutes after we opened the box. Life isn’t about stuff, but it’s the love behind the stuff that we love.

That’s my favorite part of Christmas: not the getting of stuff or the giving of stuff but the showing of love in ways you can see and touch and hold and use.

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Smilin’ today. Now if only I could find an extension cord so I can light the Christmas tree!

Saturday smiles: Orange birthday edition

Our son turns 3 tomorrow and in his short little lifetime, he’s turned our world upside-down. I thought bringing one baby into our lives was a major transition, but when our son made us a family of four, we began a fast-paced, tiring exhausting season of parenting that shows no signs of slowing down.

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Wearing orange on his first birthday.

Wearing orange on his first birthday.

I don’t know when his fascination with orange began, but it is by far his favorite color. So our birthday theme is orange. Orange cake, orange ice cream, orange plates and napkins. Maybe one of the easiest cake requests for one of the kids’ birthdays I’ve had. So, for our son’s third birthday, I dedicate this week’s Saturday smiles to him, with these three thoughts.

1. He stole my heart from day 1. I once wondered if I had enough love in my heart for two kids. I had nothing to worry about. I love our daughter and can hardly remember what life was like before her birth, and she’s unique and funny and creative. As much as I love her, I love our son differently. We share a similar temperament and personality at times. He’s a little more reserved in social situations. He can just sit with me and not have to be entertained or talked to. I try not to play favorites, but I know I can be much more of a softie with our son than with our daughter. I can’t explain the mother-son bond, and I hope I’m not turning him into the wrong kind of Mama’s Boy. We do need our space from each other, though. If he doesn’t nap, I’m super worn out by the end of the day.

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2. He makes me appreciate my brother. I’m the older sister, and seeing my daughter live this role, and given the truths posted in No. 1, I now have much more sympathy for the unfortunate life of the younger brother. (I can’t speak for younger sisters or older brothers.) Sometimes, I feel like I need to write an apology letter when I see our daughter treat our son like I’m sure I treated my brother. (If you’re reading this, bro, consider this the apology because I’d be sending you letters once a week, at least.) Being able to see this relationship from the outside makes me more compassionate, I hope, toward those who aren’t the “firsts” in their family.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnd seriously, our son looks so much like pictures of my brother when he was that age. It’s hard not to compare. And easy to see why siblings born only a few years apart can grow to be friends, not just family.

3. He lets me be wrong. Having a second child meant that I threw out the rule book from the first child, and any other child for that matter. Everything, starting with my pregnancy, was different with him, leading me to believe that there are no 100 percent right answers for how to parent. I was super uptight with our daughter. I’m much more lax with our son. With her, I monitored every. single. milestone to make sure she was tracking for her age. With him, I simply trusted that he was on the right track because frankly, he was keeping up with his sister. Of course, this also means that like a typical second child, there are not as many pictures and I’m pretty sure I haven’t finished his baby book. And maybe I didn’t update his sister’s this year either.

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This kid eats like a champ and plays hard. He’s big but not grotesquely overweight, and I don’t let the WIC nutritionist’s comments bother me like I did with our daughter. (Although I’m secretly dreading his 3-year checkup next week because I know, I know, I know they’re going to say something about him being overweight and for the tiniest of seconds I feel like a failure as a mom. Okay, it passed.) I let him wear dresses when he’s playing with his sister, and he learned to cut with scissors earlier than his sister did. With his sister, I wanted to do everything right to “prove” I was a good mom. There’s still a temptation to do that with him, but most days I just don’t have the energy to live up to anyone else’s expectations, much less my own. I might be doing it wrong, but I’m still doing it.

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Time is flying so fast, and I have a feeling the adventure is only beginning. If the last three years are any clue, then the next three are going to be amaze-BALLs.

Happy birthday, my boy.