we have arrived.

Spring is here, really truly here.   Flowers and daylight are in abundance, the songbirds are returning, and the trees have begun to leaf out.  The rhythm of our days has shifted, and we are now spending our time almost entirely out of doors in the garden, at the park, in the woods.   Spring is the season of a muddy footed mama.  I spent Mother's Day, the entire day, out in the garden.  The work of moving earth, shaping beds, pulling weeds, planting seeds may not be everyone's idea of a perfect Mother's Day, but for this mama, putting my hands in the earth is good medicine.  I spent the day listening to the birds, feeling the cool air moving in, and working a small piece of our yard into our future garden.  It was a perfect day.  Here are some photos to celebrate the arrival of spring.

Come on in.

Note:  This post was originally written in January after my kids were sick.  I never posted it.  But as things have it, we are in the middle of a house rennovation project, and this post again feels very relevant.

Two years ago, I would have never done this.  I am about to welcome you into my home as it was last week.  You see, after two weeks of taking care of three children with the flu, my husband and I were tired.  We were tired of the endless piles of laundry to clean, fold and put away, the dirty dishes that seem to multiply on the counter, and the toys that scatter themselves all throughout the house after a hard day of play.  And so, for the week after the flu, we stopped.  At the end of each day we didn't wash laundry, do dishes, or pick up toys.  We, instead, spent time together.  We watched movies, we talked, we drank tea.  We stopped at the end of each day being parents (except when small children woke, which was frequent), and instead we were partners.  While this time was amazing for our relationship, it was not so great for our house.  One word we use to describe this state: Squalorville. 

Normally, this state is short lived and is never, I repeat NEVER, seen by anyone outside of my own home.  But this week was different.  It seemed like everyone chose this week to come over, to come in and see the spectacle of what happens when two parents take the week off.  In years past, I would have been horrified, I would have kept guests on the front porch making excuses why they couldn't come in. I would have run through the house and swept everything into closets.  Not this time; this time I ushered people in. Something has changed for me.  I am not concerned with pretenses, or looking like I have it all together.  I am more interested in being seen and accepted fully.  Some days you will come into my home and see that my new-found love of order and minimalism has taken over and there is space, and some days you will see that I have three really creative kiddos who like to dress up and imagine ALL over the house, and some days you will see that my husband and I have taken a break.

So today I welcome you in, I am inviting you into Squalorville to see what my home looks like when we've taken a break to remember our relationship is more than simply co-parenting, or when we are immersed in the care of a newborn, or when we stop busying ourselves with chores to be fully present with our children.  I am inviting you in to see that life with three small children is messy, sometimes delightfully so and sometimes frightfully so, but this is my life and I love every little pile of it. 

muddy footed mondays.

A moment each week to celebrate family life intimately entwined with earth.

 

Happy Earth Day!

a chicken by any other name.

Three years ago, we picked up eight little chicks from a farm supply store.  I had every intention of naming each of them.  As chicks they were easier to tell apart, but as they grew their distinctions lessened.  Truth be told, I couldn't tell them apart at all.  So we fondly refered to them all as "the girls."  Owning chickens has been a learning process for us, and overall we are thankful for having had the girls in our lives.  They taught my children about reproduction and about the food we consume.  They taught my husband and I that we are not and can never be farmers as we are much too soft hearted. 

Three years later, illness and predators have taken most of the girls.  Only two remain.  These two, because they are different breeds with very different appearances, I can tell apart.  Today as they followed me through my spring cleaning in the garden, scratching through the leaf piles I had just raked and making for entertaining company, I realized these ladies are much more like pets than farm animals.  They were ready for proper names.

When we got those eight little chicks three years ago I had intended to name them all after female artists.  With only two chickens, I had to pick my names carefully, and there were the opinions of the wee folk in the family that also needed to be taken into consideration. So today I proudly introduce you to Frida and Lady Dorothea: two of my favorite Surrealist painters, and two lovely lady birds if I do say so myself.

Frida and Lady Dorothea

                        

Frida



Lady Dorothea



peepers.

Yesterday was a crazy day.  I spent the day remembering just how heavy rocks are as I moved several to redo a garden bed.  I moved rocks through mud.  This muddy footed mama loves working in mud.  It makes me feel real.  As the afternoon rolled on, I promised the rocks and mud I would be back soon. I cleaned up and went outside to meet my yoga students for our afternoon class.  They greeted me with the news of Boston.  It all felt so unreal.

I watched as my husband loaded our three children into the car to take them to the park, and I remembered our car radio was set to NPR.  My children would hear of bombs in Boston, too close to home.  They would hear of a child lost.  They would hear of too many injured.  I ran to the car and told my husband to turn off the radio, and in hushed voices and the spelling out of words I let him know what had happened. 

Too frequently I have to turn down the radio when my children are present.  Bombs in Boston and daily in the Middle East, shooters in schools, and seemingly endless tales of war.  Sometimes as a parent it can be a lot to hold.  We hold this information, contain it within ourselves so that our children feel safe.  So that the world they step out into each day is one of magic and beauty.  We contain it within ourselves so that we preserve their childhood, for just one more day.  But sometimes it can feel like too much to hold.  Sometimes our hearts break under the weight of the information we are holding and we wonder, Is their any magic and beauty left in the world?

Last night, still holding, still listening to the news on the radio, I drove home from the grocery store.  As I drove down our backroads, I heard something coming from outside that competed with the news from Boston.  I unrolled my window and stopped the car.  I heard spring peepers.  A chorus of hundreds or thousands of small brown frogs that sing out in the evening to herald the beginning of spring.  The sound of peepers has always been one of my favorite sounds.  As I sat on the dark road, feeling the cool air rush in, I let go not of Boston, but of my fear that there was no more magic and beauty in the world.  This is what I am protecting for my children.

There will come a day when I cannot keep the world's news from them.  I know this.  But when they hear of news that breaks their little hearts, I want them to be able to go and roll stones through mud or to hear peepers in the night to know that they are real and that beyond their fear, there is still magic and beauty in the world.  The peepers last night taught me that this world is indeed beautiful and the events in Boston reminded me that our time here is so very precious.


Click here to listen to spring peepers.

the waiting place.

I do not usually turn to Dr. Seuss to wax philosophically, but his description of "The Waiting Place" perfectly describes the place where I have been living this past month. 

     The Waiting Place..

      ...for people just waiting.

           Waiting for a train to go

            or a bus to come, or the rain to go

            or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

            or waiting around for a Yes or a No

            or waiting for their hair to grow.

            Everyone is just waiting.

           (Dr. Seuss, excerpt from Oh, the Places You'll Go!)

We have been waiting for confirmation about allergies

(yes, the baby has a tree nut allergy).

We waited for the sap to flow, then for our reserves to thaw,

only to have it all go bad.

We have been waiting for the snow to melt so we can plant our fruit bushes 

that arrived three weeks early.

We have been waiting for signs that spring might really come after all.

We have been waiting, and in the process it seems like life has been on hold, or at least my inspiration to write about life has been on hold.  But we are moving on from The Waiting Place. Even though it still feels like winter here some days, the robins and crocuses are telling us otherwise. We are looking, and more importantly, moving forward, no longer waiting, but reminding ourselves to live in the present moment. 

This moment has us tearing down walls, hosting a steady stream of visitors, off roading with strollers down muddy abandoned roads, slopping through the garden slush envisioning what spring might actually look like when the waters recede enough to let us dig in, learning about epipens, and while we are mostly out of The Waiting Place, "a most useless place," we still find ourselves waiting on spring. 

are we there yet?

March can feel a little bit like the final stretch of a long family road trip.  The novelty of winter has long warn off and the snow boots that were just a little snug at the beginning of the season, that we hoped we'd get just one more winter out of, are now two full sizes too small.  Spring, or signs of spring, become a long awaited destination and so we ask ourselves, each day, are we there yet? 

As I shoveled our paths one more time today and I looked around at the feet of snow still blanketing the earth, as I checked on the frozen drops of sap held in time at the end of the taps, I have to answer, no we are not there yet.  March is an amazing time of year, really.  The month starts off fully in winter and ends in a bow, introducing a long awaited spring. 

As we transition between winter and spring, I find myself both holding on to the joys of winter: shoveling meandering paths, warming by the woodstove, vowing to get out for one last snow shoe, and inticing spring: filling the house with flowers, taking a pick mattock to our icy paths to invite the mud, and ordering just one more packet of seeds. 

                                           

Just as I repeatidly tell my children on that final stretch, I now gently remind myself: soon, we will be there very soon.  Relax and enjoy the ride.