Ordinary Time

The prayer our pastor prayed this morning in church . Oh God of compassion & justice, In your wisdom, you created all people in your image, without exception. Through your Spirit enables us to see the dignity, beauty, and worth of every human being. Help us to see each person just as you see them. Call us to repent of any racist attitudes or behaviors which bring harm to others. Fill us with courage that we might seek to heal wounds, build bridges, forgive and be forgiven, and establish peace and equality for all in our communities. Strengthen our resolve to work for the peace and prosperity of the neighborhoods and cities in which you have placed us. Where we have been blind to injustice and the suffering of our neighbors.. Open Our Eyes Lord Where we have been deaf to the cries of the vulnerable and oppressed among us… Open our ears Lord Where we have kept silent and not spoken out against injustice… Open our mouths Lord Where we have been deceived and believed half-truths ...

I just couldn't be light-hearted and blithe yesterday; the world was too sad a place. It still is too sad a place, but we have to keep moving forward, don't we? They say gardening is good for the soul, so we did quite a bit of soul work these past couple of days. The weather has been gorgeous and we took advantage of it. First I want to show you the before pictures of the area we have been working on. This is looking towards the front of the house from the drive. Do people really live here? You'd never know it, huh? The "garden" across the front of the house. There really are peonies and iris in there somewhere. This is the small garden right in front of the parking spot for the van. That same area looking the other direction. This is looking toward the front yard from the sidewalk going up to the house. Same spot, looking across the front. Here was the front yard after yesterday's work. We managed to cut do...

There are a couple of truisms that you will run across when you begin to investigate a connected style of parenting. One is that children (and I would extend this to people in general) do the best with what they have. Sometimes what they have isn't very much, though. The second is that behavior is communication. All behavior, particularly what is considered bad behavior is a person's way of trying to communicate something. Sometimes the person isn't even sure what the exact message is except that they are feeling very upset and do not have words to put to what they are feeling. Younger Me would have had a lot of difficulty with both of these concepts. Older Me thinks they are spot on, and I wish I could have gotten them through Younger Me's head a whole lot sooner. But to someone who hasn't really struggled with the ideas before they can be hard. They mean that how children (and people) work is not quite so cut and dried as we would like to think. There are far mo...

In the adoption world, people like to remind each other that so much of what goes on... past trauma, behaviors, meltdowns, hurt, pain... isn't really about us as parents. It is the working out of a child's past hurt and pain and fear. We cannot take it personally because it isn't. And I agree with this 100%, though I will also be the first in line to say that it can be very difficult some times to remember that I am not the center of the drama playing out around me. But I think there is something else that goes on when doing hard parenting that we miss if we hold the 'it's not about me' line too hard, because sometimes it genuinely is all about me. It's all about me when my assumptions or fears or expectations or pride are getting in the way of helping my child exist to the best of their abilities. I know you all have heard this before, but when we first began adopting, we had it all figured out. We were good parents. There were certain things that good ...

After three years, I finally have the garden beds around the shed finished and looking as though someone actually lives here. One side of the front with one of the new forsythia bushes. When I planted the annuals I still was digging up garbage. I'm hoping I have finally come to the end of the garbage dump. This side I did first, so it is pretty established. The iris I brought from the Big Ugly House, which had been brought from my parents' house in Arizona. Other than the iris, this is also an edible garden bed. I have herbs (oregano and thyme, with sage seeds being planted because my sage plant didn't survive the winter.) The leafy things on the left are sunchokes (or Jerusalem artichokes as they are sometimes called.) You can eat the tuber of them, and they like to spread. A lot. It's hard to tell, but right at the corner I also have growing a large horseradish plant, also brought along from the Big Ugly House. The back... clamatis that after two years ...

I've never pretended that math is my favorite subject. While I can do it, it has always taken more work for me to do successfully, and we all know that I like to do the things I feel successful at. Numbers are funny things and they just don't stick in my head without a lot of effort. One number can sound very much like another number to me. My children have learned over the years that reading a math problem to me and hoping for help is just not going to happen. I absolutely need to see the numbers written down. This is is also probably why I didn't really finish memorizing the multiplication tables until I started to teach D. how to multiply. Finally, after going through school (up through honors trig) and teaching four other children how to multiply, the last few multiplication facts stuck with the fifth child. I don't really adore math. I will also say that having to teach math to my children that I have discovered that I appreciate it far more now than I ever did w...

It was hot and sunny here today, and the forecasted rain never showed up, so B. and A. decided that what really needed to happen was to create a giant water slide in the yard. They headed off to get the necessary supplies and then made this. The yard where they set it up has a definite slope to it, so it worked pretty well. It kept people busy for a long time, though I'm afraid that some people may be waking up more than a little sore in the morning. And some of the spectators.

I got to spend most of the afternoon sitting outside in the shade and reading. It was pretty heavenly, as this doesn't happen all that often. Most of the people had gone on a bike ride. J. had taken M., B., D., K., Y., G., and L. on an excursion to a nearby forest preserve, where they biked about 7 miles. But first they needed to find 8 working bikes from the 3,297 bikes we seem to have lying about in various states of disrepair. They did this, and then they needed to figure out how to transport 8 bikes in the van. Thankfully, one of the (many) items that were left behind in the house when we moved in was a bike rack hitch. This is the photo I took of everyone figuring out how to transport bikes. They had a great time. J. took some pictures while they were biking. I, on the other hand was quite content to sit and read. TM had taken H. and R., who couldn't have managed the bike ride, to get some ice cream, so the house was pretty quiet. I finished an ...

So very often in my life I feel a bit like a square peg in a round hole. The things I enjoy doing, the books I read, the choices I make are more often than not a bit outside what is usual. In some instances they are a lot outside what is usual. Since I cannot remember I time I didn't feel like this, it is usually something I don't bother much about. And then there comes along something that highlights how very different I view things. Now, I hope you all know that I don't think everyone should homeschool. I am totally fine with every family making an informed choice about what is best for their family and going with that. I happen to think homeschooling makes a lot of sense and has real benefits, but that would make sense being the educational road we chose. I'm happy to talk about our educational choices and very often do here, but you'll get no grief from me if you have chosen differently. There are some things that I happen to believe, based on a lot of exper...

I guess I'll jump right in. I spent the day finally finishing planting the vegetable gardens. This year we're trying tomatoes, cucumbers, ground cherries, cabbage, okra, sugar snap peas, a whole bunch of greens, beets, kohlrabi, fennel, dill, hot and sweet peppers, eggplant, shiso, basil (Thai and sweet), green beans, beans for drying, watermelon, pie pumpkins, Chinese long beans, celery, green onions, leeks, yellow onions, luffa squash, and zucchini. Now we just sit and wait. The greens I planted a month or so ago and doing quite well. See? We've been enjoying radishes and radish greens in our salads already, and the other greens are almost ready to start being used. Look what arrived today. It was a surprise gift from another adoptive mom, and I cannot wait to read it. I've already read the introduction. It's actually a collection of papers on the topic, so each chapter (paper) has it's own bibliography. Am I the only who gets excited ove...