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Concentration

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I spent most of the last two days on the couch or in bed, with a migraine and breast infection. The one good part of that was that I had time to watch the little boys play. As I laid on the couch this evening, I enjoyed watching the youngest playing with some legos. He was totally engrossed in snapping them together. I love the way he sat on his feet!

A bit later, the two little fellows were going to “play bank”, and then it turned into jumping off the stool. I love the way they play together, and the youngest imitates so closely what bigger brother does!

Conversations

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As a mother of seven, ranging in age from 1-15, I end up with quite an interesting range of conversations throughout a typical day.  I was working in the kitchen a few minutes ago, and burst out laughing as I thought about the last three conversations I had with my children, over the past 15-20 minutes.  First, I was sitting at the table, reading a lesson in a sourdough course I’m working through with Esther.  I am quite interested in using sourdough, so I decided it would be a good Home Ec project for her.  We are having fun reading it together, a lesson every few weeks, and trying out the recipes.  While we were doing that, the 4-year-old came in, holding something in his hand, saying, “It can stretch out!”  Turned out he had an earthworm, and was intrigued by how it stretched out longer.  He laid it on the table, and we watched it hitch itself along, and discussed it for a few minutes, and then I was able to persuade him to take it back outside to the dirt where it wanted to be.  Esther and I went on to discuss the sourdough artisan bread we were reading about, and then she went to work on a blog post and I went to work on straining broth off of beef bones.

The next thing I knew, she was telling me, “I need to hack into our printer!”
“What!??!” I said!  Well, she had written a post for her blog several days ago, and set it to publish tomorrow.  Today, she discovered that it had disappeared!  The only way she can get it back is if she hacks into the printer, because she printed a copy for her dad and I to proofread.  That’s what really struck me funny–earthworms to hacking a printer, in a few minutes!  Whether she can accomplish it or not, is another story–we’ll see.

And now, the two littlest boys just came through again, saying hi, and the 4-year-old says, “The sky is straight lines, like stripes!  Isn’t that neat?”  The only reason I haven’t had conversations, simultaneously, about cows and sheep and ride-on mowers and motorbikes and chain saws and Laura Ingalls Wilder and you name it is that the other boys are away with Daddy right now!  Sometimes I feel like my head is about to explode from having to carry on (intelligently) three or four wildly different conversations at once–but at the same time I really wouldn’t change anything.  This time of life is anything but boring!

“I’ll Be Back in a Minute!”

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This morning, as we were getting around to leave for church, I set the baby down and told him (as if he can understand!), “I’ll be back with your clothes in a minute to get you dressed.”

Then, on the way, I picked up a couple of wet diapers to dispose of in the laundry room.

While I was in the laundry room, I remembered I wanted a jar of carrots to put in the soup for lunch, so grabbed that.

In the kitchen again, the carrots got put in the soup, and then the soup needed seasoned.

Then, I noticed that the stove still needed to be washed–it was terribly messy.

Down the hallway to get baby’s clothes–I changed my own while I was there, very fast because our unheated bedrooms are refrigerator-temperature.

Grabbed the diaper bag while I was there, and made a quick pit stop.

Then remembered the original reason for going down the hall, so backtracked to the bedroom to fetch baby’s church clothes!

Then, he finally got dressed!

I think it only took 5-10 minutes to do all that, but it was much longer than originally planned.  Any of you other mothers able to relate to this?  It’s so easy to be distracted from the original job that I was planning to do by all the other things that need to happen.

Peace and Quiet…

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…is a rare commodity when there are seven children in the household!  I find some every day, though!  It helps to get up earlier than the children.  They don’t usually get up before 7:30 when I call them, although #4 does wake up and come out to the kitchen around 7:00 a few mornings a week.  This morning, #5 showed up at  7:00, but he had been asleep for 14 hours so no wonder!  (He fell asleep in the van on the way home from the homeschool gathering we attended yesterday, and only woke up for a few minutes to eat a couple of bites of supper.)

The other place I find peace and quiet is while I milk the cow.  I must admit, I’m rather possessive about “my” cow–I really value the time I spend milking her!  In the summer, the little boys often come along with cups in hand, to get a drink of fresh warm milk, but this time of year I’m generally alone.  Ahh–what bliss!  It is cold and dark while I milk this time of year, with sunrise at 8:00 and sunset at 5:00, but the quiet is worth it.  And, I get to study the stars, and enjoy the moon, and see the first streaks of dawn in the east.

I also get a few minutes alone while I hang laundry on the line; nobody wants to help with that job!  It is a job that I delegate when I need to, but it’s one of my favorites (although on a frosty morning like today it’s not so pleasant!).  There’s just something about being outside and hanging up clean clothes that I enjoy.

Those little oases of alone time are so valuable for resetting my frame of mind.  I’m thankful for them!

My daughter just wrote a blog post about this morning; you might enjoy it!  And, by the way, this was pretty mild–there was a lot more that she didn’t get recorded!  I’m not sure if I’m worthy of such a tribute, although if I do have any patience she certainly helped develop it!  God has His ways of teaching us patience, and I’m thankful He only sent one teacher to me at a time!  Seven at once would have been about more than I could handle.