Ordinary Time

(The numbers go backwards, but the tune goes forwards, just like usual. Add your own motions if you like.) On the 12th day before Christmas, my to do list said to me...      fold and put away the laundry. On the 11th day before Christmas, my to do list said to me...      iron tablecloths,      fold and put away the laundry. On the 10th day before Christmas, my to do list said to me...      finish Christmas shopping,      iron tablecloths,      fold and put away the laundry. On the 9th day before Christmas, my to do list said to me...      take a family picture,      finish Christmas shopping,      iron tablecloths,      fold and put away the laundry. On the 8th day before Christmas, my to do list said to me...       Bake... Christmas... Cookies        take a...

Yesterday was spent making tamales... 120 or so of them. And they were good. Really, really good. Certainly worth the all-day effort they took. Up until yesterday, though I love tamales and grew up in Arizona, I didn't know how to make them. My great-aunt did, but I never got in on that, much preferring to spend the day digging in the yard outside with my brother. One of the joys of opening your home to others is that you get to share in their traditions and learn from them. When I asked HG what her Christmas traditions were and she answered making tamales, I jumped on it. "You know how to make tamales?!" I asked. "Can you teach me to make tamales? Do you want to make tamales in December? Please, please, please?" (I don't think I was quite that pathetic, but it comes pretty darn close.) So we agreed to make tamales. We picked yesterday and HG helped bring in the necessary supplies. Now, when I say 'we' made tamales, what that really means is that...

(I have to add a tag to the title, because it turns out that years and years ago, I used this title once before .) I like to keep you guessing as to what you're going to find here on any given day. (It also gives you a window into the workings of my brain.) To that end, we're going to jump from parenting and adoption to my favorite British authors who wrote between WWI and WWII. This is all due to the fact that I have been working my way through Dorothy Sayer's Lord Peter Wimsey series. I have been thoroughly rereading these books. I have loved it so much that it has made me think I need to move to some of my other favorite authors from this period and reread them. It also made me mention to J. that if someone forced me to become a historian and choose a historical period to focus on, these years between the wars in England would be what I chose. (To which he raised his eyebrows and asked, "Forced?" I admit that having to do research in a library on a topic ...

I have written before about how it can take a while for real love, the happy rainbows and happy trees love, to develop when adopting an older child. It's not surprising, really. You are bringing a stranger into your family who you don't really know and who really doesn't know you. Often there is not a shared language or culture or experiences. Plus, since adoptions can take so long, there is the imaginary child who grows in the adoptive parents' minds and who usually doesn't have any basis in reality. The process of falling in love with you new child involves burying the imaginary child and getting to know the real one. It can take a while. I can remember the first time I felt that "I'm in love with this child" feeling about K. It was at least a year (maybe even two) after he came home and he came running into my bedroom one morning in his usually exuberant way. I watched him run through and I can remember the thought of, "Oh, isn't he just ...

You might have gathered from the bloggy silence last week that it was not the best of weeks for me. There wasn't anything that was necessarily worse last week than in previous weeks, it just felt that way. I had felt as though I had lost hope; that nothing was every going to change or get better. I had no peace. You know, we Christians are great about encouraging people to say yes to God, to be willing to do the apparently crazy things He asks of us. The act of obedience is lauded and truthfully, while scary, feels good. Because you feel as though you are making a difference, you are living out what you say you believe, you are being radical. What we are not so good at doing is talking about what comes next. This voluntary change of lifestyle is not a one-time thing... it's permanent. The choices we make are the ones we have to live with, and we are not so good at reminding people that it won't always feel as cool as it did initially. What we don't talk about is whe...

Ask my mother, I've always suffered from Champagne tastes without the checking account to go with them. In some ways it's served me well because I'm willing to pay a bit more thing items that are well made and that I know will last the 5-10 years that I'm going to be wearing them. In other ways, it's just a bummer, and I've had to learn to scale back my desires a bit. And it's not just my own clothes. I have a thing for well-made, classic children's dress-up clothing. I think that what passes for much of today's children's dress clothes is a bunch of tatty schlock that isn't worth the price tag they put on it. (Not that I have an opinion or anything.) It's one of the major reasons I like to sew for my girls. I can make what I want at significantly less than I can find the same styles ready-made. If you've seen my children in their everyday clothes, you know that I've pretty much given up the well-dressed-all-the-time-dream. Bu...

M. has been doing an independent study this semester on puppets and puppetry. (Yes, she thanked me for teaching her how to make a class about anything. Homeschooling teaches you a lot of things.) She designed the class herself and studied puppets and puppet traditions from around the world and her final project was to create an original puppet. She designed and built this 8 foot tall puppet which takes three people to make work. The puppet man is dancing with the woman in grey. I wish I could show the short video I have, but it has someone's very cute little toddler in it and it's poor form to put someone else's child on a public blog. As part of the project, the puppet has two performances... this is from yesterday. That's, M. with the blue hair. At least it's blue in back... she's looking very colorful these days. My talented girl.