Poems from December 2015

This time of year (well, really, all the time), I enjoy reflecting by looking back at old poems and journal entries. These are all from December 2015. So much has changed, so much is the same...

(poem written 12-1-15. Ah, four-year-old Carter! We still have a birthday party with cake for Jesus, but He still hasn't come in person to His party yet.)

Your Cupcake

Mom-Mom, dis is a present!

    ...For someone special!

        ....Whose birthday is coming!

            ...It's Jesus!

Dis is for when He comes

    to His birthday

Don't let Calvin touch it

    because it's for Jesus

I'm sure Your heart smiled, 

    like mine did,

        at Your plastic cupcake present.

I'm sure You love Your gift.

And I'm sure Carter thinks 

    that You're coming soon,

        and we're counting down the days 

            to Your party

        (and who's not at their own party?)

I hope I haven't set him up for disappointment

I hope he always lives in eager expectation

O come, O come, Emmanuel

    God, be with us once again

    Come ransom Your captive bride

And when You do,

    don't forget Carter's gift waiting for You

(poem written 12-1-15)

Your Cupcake (Part 2)

Carter has insisted

    that the plastic cupcake

        is a gift for You    

            when You come

And I got the craziest picture

    that I might see

        that plastic cupcake 

            in heaven someday

That when You come in the sky

    You might pause our gathering 

        for just a moment

            to go receive Your gift

                from my boy

You honor childlike faith

    and boy, does my boy have it!

May he always look to Your coming.

(poem written on 12-19-15. A Covid Christmas is a little different -- less rushing, fewer gatherings with fewer people. We've limited gift-giving, but it can still be stressful to me)

The Holiday Treadmill

Party-planning and gift-giving

    are now consuming my brain

Good things

    can be twisted into bad

        when pushed to the extreme

How did I let myself get carried away like this?

How can I stop this treadmill?

How do I calm my mind?

O come, Emmanuel

You came for the frazzled and the busy

You speak peace to the world and to my heart

You cut away the excess and simplify what is needed

You can be found, not in a city or palace, but in a manger

Quiet my mind

    so I can hear Your whispers

        in this season

(poem written 12-19-15. 2020 would've been the year that Carter started receiving the traditional letter grades. Another reason I'm glad we're homeschooling.)

The Four-Year-Old's Report Card

It's what I've been wanting

    and requesting

        but when I finally got it

            I didn't know how to respond.

Carter's first "report card"

I was overwhelmingly pleased

    with all he knows and how he has grown

        and yet I had this strong desire

            to want to move all his 1's to 2's

                and 2's to 3's

         as if I'm already

             trying to get him aboard the "all A's" pursuit

                that has driven me most of my life

He's 4! Chill! Relax!

It's okay if he hasn't mastered scissor cutting

    and doesn't show much interest in writing

Why do I fixate on the "needs improvement"

    instead of celebrating the areas of mastery?

Thankfully, this inner battle

    didn't spill out into words of "not enough"

        but man, here we go!

Help me learn the balance

    of improvement and celebration

    and to speak the right words over my son

        in these formative years.

(poem written 12-19-15. Strikingly similar now as I'm at my parents' house. One difference is the whole "everyone else is asleep" part. There are four boys now, and they're all awake at that hour.)

His Language of Love

It's 6:41 a.m.

Everyone else in the house is asleep

    except for my dad

        washing dishes and prepping breakfast.

Really, is there any doubt

    that his love language is

        acts of service?

He serves tirelessly

    out of love for his family

Cooking and cleaning as I grew up

    and cooking and cleaning now

This is how he speaks love

    but the question is, how does he receive love?

Because if it's acts of service,

    we haven't been loving him very well

        in his language

Father, bring healing and wholeness

    and let this be a family

        where we give and receive love fluently

            in many languages.

Ten Things Tuesday - Pizza Picnic

1. This picture makes me so happy! Colson shoveling that pizza into his mouth -- ha!
2. For several years now, we have eaten pizza as a family every Friday night. We call it "Pizza Family Movie Night," but we don't always watch a movie. We rotate between ordering pizza and making pizza (or cooking a frozen pizza). Our go-to is Domino's since we all like it, it is affordable, and it is close to our house.
3. Since it was Friday, we stopped by to get a pizza on our way to a park. Daddy was working, which worked out because he doesn't really like Little Caesars pizza.
4. Drive-through hot-and-ready pizza is as convenient as they come! 
5. We are all about pajama pants and mismatched clothes! 
6. Carter's favorite toppings are pepperoni and pineapple.
7. The other boys prefer cheese (for now). 
8. Cooper goes back and forth about whether or not he likes pizza. He's usually excited to go pick it up. "Pizza! Yay! Yummy pizza!" but then 20 minutes will refuse to eat any pizza and says, "I don't yike pizza!" On this particular day, he ate two whole pieces by himself.
9. Calvin likes "the triangle pizza" (not thin crust), but he doesn't like to eat the crust on the end. That part usually goes to Colson or me.
10. As I write this on a chilly day in December, I miss days when we could go to the parks comfortably without coats.

Thankful Thursday - what "schooling" can look like

(I wrote this on Thursday but am just now finishing it on Friday)

The boys would have started school yesterday if they were still enrolled in the public school. Our district, like most if not all of the public school districts in Kentucky, has opted to begin completely virtual. This would mean that Carter and Calvin would have been on the computer with their class from 9:00-11:30 and then work on other things on their own in the afternoon. During that window of time, they were out on the back deck playing nicely together inventing a new variation of Mario chess that involves a goat, cow, and checkers in addition to the regular characters. We also spent an hour in the backyard, and we read books. I'm loving the flexibility that homeschooling provides. While there will definitely be more structure when we start in a week and a half, it's nice to be in charge of our own schedule and learning. 

Usually, "the first day of school" is such a definitive mark in time. This is the day you put on your first-day-of-school outfit and take a picture in front of the door and go off to start your new grade in school. I say that we're "starting" homeschool the day after Labor Day, but that just means we're starting our curriculum. Technically, we've never "stopped" schooling over the summer. We haven't done workbooks, but that doesn't equate with "school." 

Here's some of the "school" just from yesterday:

• Carter tried to make a dessert by melting a popsicle in a sugar cone. What he didn't anticipate was that the liquid would turn the cone soggy.
• Carter also made a recipe that he wanted to make for us for dinner. It involved brown sugar, flour, eggs, milk, turkey, and hot dogs. It was palatable. I think Carter and I were the only ones who ate ours, though.
• The boys made their Mario chess game variation.
• Calvin put one cup of water in the fridge and one in the freezer to see which one he'd like better.
• Whenever Calvin asks how much time we have until we can go inside, I make him figure out the elapsed time himself by telling him the current time and the time we'll go in.
• Calvin's been my assistant in potty training Cooper. We read books to him while we sat and waited.
• They practiced their piano songs and played around on the piano, too.
• They helped with their younger brothers. We tell them it's training to become a dad. :-)
• We observed lots of bugs in the dirt, including a "grub" that looked like just a shell but squirted when I pressed it.
• Colson's "schooling" involved teaching himself how to climb up on the bench and navigate our backyard.

Lord of all, to Thee we raise this our hymn of grateful praise...

41,231. making progress in the backyard

41,232. watching the boys' interactions

41,233. small habits

41,234. lots of time outside

41,235. Carter making dinner for us with a recipe he created ("turkey dogs")

41,236. love my students!

41,237. Carter and Calvin making up chess variations

41,238. Mildred Cable and Kamala Harris on audio

41,239. Cooper peeing standing up

41,240. so glad the boys weren't in "school" online today

41,241. Alice, Teresa, Candy, and Yelena on my schedule today

41,242. working on Titus 1 song

41,243. the discipline of early mornings

41,244. Lucas helping with potty training

41,245. Calvin knowing his way around the kitchen

41,246. Calvin helping to get Cooper ready for bed

41,247. "Hey! Pipe down!" -Cooper during Good Night, Good Night, Construction Site

41,248. Cooper's expanding vocabulary

41,249. lots of potty books from the library

41,250. option of curbside pickup for yearbook, library books

41,251. excited about AWANA: Home Edition

41,252. Scott Co. library had book we needed

41,253. love to listen to audiobooks while I'm working

41,254. Colson able to maneuver around the backyard hazards

41,255. visible progress with rocks and weeds

A Swing and a Hit/Miss

(written 4-27-20)

A swing

    and a hit    

        Carter made a list of verses to memorize

    and a miss

        Carter threw a slobbering fit when asked to play a song on the piano

A swing

    and a hit

        Calvin is super helpful with his little brothers and me

    and a miss

        Calvin is also super buggy/touchy with his brothers and me

A swing

    and a hit

        Cooper can consistently count to 10 on his own

    and a miss

        Cooper's first morning of potty training -- 5 (pee/poop in undies) to 0 (pee/poop in potty)

A swing

    and a hit

        Colson's eating more and more "regular" foods

    and a miss

        Colson wasn't ready for the edges of Cheez-its

Such is motherhood

A series of hits and misses

    but the homeruns make up for the strikeouts

    and you can't get a hit if you don't swing

Potty TRAINed (?)

Well, we've finished the 3 day boot camp.  It was not fun in the middle of it, and I was about to quit after 2 days of cleaning up puddles of pee in the bathroom, kitchen, living room, deck (he "made his mark" for sure!).  Part of what was so hard was the intensity of it -- watching him every second for signs that he was about to poop or pee, taking him to the bathroom every half hour or so (even when he cried about leaving his toys), sitting and waiting (and reading) every time he was on the potty, cleaning up accident after accident, being stuck in the house...

But the good news is... he's officially potty-trained!  Here we are, one week later, and he's only had one "puddle accident" after the first two days, and it was outside.  Occasionally, he gets his undies wet, but for the most part, he makes it to the potty in time.  We've even been doing undies when going out and at naptime, and he's been dry every night the past 4 nights in his pull-ups, so we might be doing undies at night soon, too.  He's been pooping about every other day, and we can always tell because he needs his privacy and asks us to leave.  While spying on him through the door crack, I saw him get up, go over to get a book, and sit back down to read.  That's my boy!  A bathroom reader from the beginning!

The hardest part now is when we're out and about.  I have to constantly be aware of the nearest bathroom and watch him for signs that he has to go.  And, we're in a quandary because he doesn't like me holding him up in public restrooms (or outside, for that matter), and I don't necessarily want to start carting around our potty seat to put on the toilet.  That's why places like church (with a little potty) and Dan and Megan's house (with Abby's potty seat) are the best outings these days.

Yippee!  Hooray for going cold turkey!

(P.S. Just so I remember, my favorite books to check out again from the library are Danny is Done with Diapers: A Potty ABC, The Potty Train, Potty (by the same author as Yummy, Yucky), Potty Superhero, and Big Boy Undies. I also LOVED the Daniel Tiger episode about it. That's how I subconsciously remind Carter about the potty without nagging him about it; I just sing the little jingle "If you have to go potty, stop, and go right away. Flush and wash and be on your way!"  We don't always flush when it's just a couple dribbles, but he does love to sing the song...and get his M&M)

Potty training, here we come!

Today's the big day (hopefully).

Today we start potty training boot camp!

Three days of Lucas-you-take-the-other-kid, chugging-the-fluids, sitting-on-the-potty-every-20-minutes, wearing-undies-and-no-pants, no-trips-outside-the-house. At least that's the plan.

The dispenser is full of M&M's.  Daniel and Prince Wednesday Go to the Potty is on the DVR.  Potty books have been gathered from library branches across Lexington.  Potty seats are ready in both bathrooms.  Thomas undies are washed.  I think I'm as ready as I can be.

I've been dreading/looking forward to this day for awhile.  Most of Carter's two-year-old friends are already potty-trained.  As much as I didn't want to have to deal with 2 kids in diapers, I realized that I'd rather do that than deal with an infant in diapers and a toddler who has accidents.  Changing diapers seemed easier to control.  And so I put off this day until the summer (as suggested by my OB-GYN, mom of 3 boys).  Once summer came, I put off this day until now, my last full week of vacation.  It's now or never! (well, not really -- as they say, there aren't many college students walking around in diapers).

Carter hasn't been super interested; in fact, most of the time he screams "No! I not use the potty!" when I say things like, "This summer, Carter, you're going to start using the potty!"  We've been reading some potty books from the library, though, and he has started to be intrigued. At the end of "Potty Superhero," it says something like "Soon you'll use the potty, too, and wear big boy pants like me!"  To which Carter screams, "NO!!!! Yet's (let's) read it again!"

He's also been intrigued by the M&M dispenser that Melissa Tibbs let us borrow.  I let him try one and then told him that he'd get more once he peed in the potty.  One day, Lucas showed Carter how he peed in the potty and then got himself an M&M.  This was very motivating to Carter.  He promptly sat himself on the toilet and pee actually came out! He's been on the potty several times before and after without anything happening, so that was exciting! I thought that he had made the connection to being able to make himself pee in the potty, but it may have just been a fluke.  Since I don't remember my own potty training experience and can't remember what it was like not to be able to pee in the potty, I'm not sure how to help him understand! (hmm...kind of like how it's hard to help students with something that came easily to me).

Anyway, I've been intimidated by the unknown of this whole potty training deal, but today's the day! We'll see how it goes! (and I'll let you know!)