When I woke this morning, the first thing I did was pull my knees back under the cocoon of our Christmas colored quilt, because the cold morning air was making them numb. Then I grinned a very sleepy, stupid grin as I realized that the air was cold. Fall's almost here. Good riddance, summer.

My little girls were sleeping in "daddy's spot", all nestled in together like little spoons in a drawer full of dishtowels. They're so different in personality and traits, but when they sleep they're comically similar. Curled up on their sides, one arm tucked under their body across their chests, the other cupped under their chins in a thinker's pose. Mirth's eyes tightly buttoned shut, Lark's half open so that her enormous eyes peek from under a long, tangled bramble of lashes. The elder's mouth pooched into a rosebud, the younger with a whimsical half smile on her face. Both of them with the rowdy hair of unkept pixies.

Cold air in the morning always makes me half expect to wake up in my grandmother's chilly upstairs guest room, with the oily fog of bacon and eggs creeping up the stairs to mingle in my nose with the smell of fabric softener and cedar. It makes me smile. I imagine I can hear the laid back, balsa wood-soft voice of my Papa drawling away downstairs, and I picture him making jokes as worn out as a lazy old hound as he scrambles eggs and bakes biscuits. I hear my mom laugh, and my dad clear his throat before he takes his first sip of coffe, wild bear hear poking out everywhere.

I imagine my Mimi padding into the kitchen in her embroidered robe and slippers, her face still shiny and soft with cold cream, asking me, "Did you see what Santy-Clause brought? Are you hungry? Did it get too cold up their for y'all last night?"

I always lie, no, we were just warm enough, thank you, ma'am. The truth is, it WAS cold, but I don't tell her, because she'd fiddle with the heat and roast us like turkeys. It can always stay chilly, as far as I'm concerned. I like snuggling under the quilts, feeling the cold air on my eyelids when I blink.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

My Jack and Jill

I've always despised violent nursery rhymes for small children. Humpty Dumpty falls down and irreparably breaks into pieces, everyone falls down from the plague at the end of "Ring around the Rosies", London Bridge is destroyed, Mary Contrary's garden is filled with torture devices, Jack and Jill break their heads while falling down the hill...gruesome stuff. It used to make me shiver with protective indignation. Such stuff seemed wildly inappropriate for such innocent little people.

Then, my children became old enough for me to realize that there are some annoying traditions I cannot protect them from. Trying to keep them from absorbing those crazy poems (which mostly originated as political statements) is like trying to keep candy a secret from them. :OP They catch things from our culture that I wish I could simply disappear by waving my magic mommy hands and Avada Kadavra! But, in reality, it's simply not possible, much to my annoyance.



Anyhow, I've found that most of the creepiness goes right over the head of a child under, say 4, and once that age is reached, they get a chance to process their newly found understanding of permanent damage and death in form of a silly game or rhyme. It's not all terrible. If they don't have gory songs to sing already, they'll make up songs and stories themselves.

Case in point: Mirth tells us a bedtime story right before bed...

"Once upon a time, there was a team with a mascot. They were (thinking hard with nose wrinkled) the Northeast Bears. Yes. They were bears that lived in the Northeast. They EAT people who live in the Northeast. All the northeast people were dead. The people got scared and SHOT the Northeast bears. Then, they were dead. :) And the team didn't have a mascot. The end."

I suggested the "Northeast Goldfish", and Mirth agreed that fish were a better idea. "They just swim in a fishbowl all day, doing nothing but swimming. Goldfish don't eat people."

Suddenly, Humpty Dumpty seems tame.


And, true to form, she generally finds a way to redeem the characters in her fantasies. She's the eternal relational optimist, and loves to bring peace and solutions to tricky situations, as a way of bringing peaceful, safe feelings to her own mind about the subject. I love it about her. I love it about that age. She'll have years to grapple with the realities of life, but in this moment, she embraces fantasy, the magical and the terrible.

She explores the fantastic with gusto and ease, and fleshes out every possibility, from extraordinary peace to dismemberment, without a bat of an eye. It's constant. A character might die and be resurrected five times within a day, and she uses her magic words to change their fate, which is as capricious as a fairy tale.

Yesterday: "This is my little brother Jack (pssst! Mom! It's REALLY just N'omi, don't worry!) and I'm the sister Jill. But we don't ONLY go up the hill to fetch pails of water. Sometimes, we feed BEARS, too. They're not scary. They're sick. We put them into bed, and feed them soup. We make them scarves. See? They live in shoes. They hibernate there and eat fried corn. They're friendly bears."

And, in Mirth's world of bright eyed wonder, everyone gets to live happily ever after. Or not. ;)

Angry Dance.

At our house, when someone gets really, really angry, we suggest doing an angry dance to let go of the tension...and we've seen some really great ones in our day. I've done quite a few myself. They usually end with a fit of giggles.

I have to say, this one takes the cake in the "Elaborate" category, and it makes me giggle the most. I love these guys. :D

Words are Magic

There are so many things in my almost 4yo's day that seem disconnected, but stem from the same basic developmental behavior. It's so interesting and earthshaking for me when I finally have that, "Aha!" moment that gives me insight into her behavior and how she's processing the world...and connects all the things that have me mystified with a common, very practical thread. These are the moments I long for as a parent, because they make sense of SO many seemingly crazy behaviors in my preschooler.

She falls apart completely, because her 2yo sister tells her she can't eat any dinner. She insists that flowers can regrow after they die if you put them in water, because her little friend said so, and cries for an hour when it doesn't happen. She looks at me in astonishment when she tells me something will happen, and I say "No". She insists she didn't do something I know very well she actually did.

Words are MAGIC to her. To Mirth, if you say something out loud, it HAS to happen, because words make it so. Sometimes, she catches nuance or joking, but the vast majority of the time, saying something makes it absolutely true...in fact, it can even reverse what's already actually happened!

It's making for interesting conversation, and also a really fun time to allow her to explore her imagination, and process and teach through fantasy. :o) More, later, maybe...our 2yo is teething and fussy..



Here's an excellent article by a friend of mine on the subject. :o)

If I were Juno McGuff today, I'd be barfing in Brenda's urn. That is all.



All I've eaten is half a piece of cold cheese pizza (gack), some puffed millet, and a bowl of rice chex.

No blue slushies.

I managed some laundry, cleaning the kitchen, but nothing beyond that, really. Everything's a blur.

Heard today when Lark was hitting her sister on the head and laughing, and Mirth was very, very angry (but restrained herself from hitting back):

"You stop it RIGHT NOW, you little....BUCCANEER TEST!!!"



** scratching head and laughing ***

Viva la differance! (Positive Intent)

As I was folding all five loads of piled up laundry in my rocking chair this morning, my brain was chewing on something I've been struggling with for a while: assuming the best about myself and others.

One of the driving forces behind my personality is a strong sense of "should", although I'm relieved to admit that the older I get, the more that idealism is able to expand, recognize the complex, and be shaped by growing knowledge and compassion. Even so, I tend to be very optimistic when I'm feeling safe, and something of a fatalist when I'm feeling fearful, quickly assuming that behavior that I can't easily understand comes from the darkest place possible in the other person's heart.

Thus, when feeling overwhelmed, I can become very hard on myself and others, even when my intuition is telling me there's more at work than meets the eye.

However, I'm cheered to discover that I'm growing in the area recognizing human complexity and having the patience to carefully ponder all possible motives/causes behind a behavior. (This I've always understood in theory, but in practice, it's a much more slippery notion! To know something for fact is one thing, but to automatically apply that knowledge when emotion involved is so much more "twicky!", as my 18mo likes to say. )

I'm finding increasingly that there is more often than not a very real rationale behind most human behavior, and the root issue is rarely as nefarious as all that. Much of the time, the person is acting out what honestly seems like the most reasonable reaction to whatever they're facing.

Obviously, weakness and sinful nature come into play somewhat, but truthfully...in the end, I think the greatest underlying sin is simply the unwillingness to trust Christ for perfect provision-something that I can only imagine God meeting with an ocean of compassion and gentleness. As a friend put it to me recently, I believe God treats those who struggle with fear with special patience and compassion!

And, I believe that more often than not personality strengths often set the person up for acting in ways that don't make sense to others who don't share (at least not as strongly) those characteristics.

Case in point: My good friend Lindsay has a head for people details. Seriously, she's amazing. She remembers Suzie Q's birth stats, whether I live in a town where there's a certain store, what kind of hairspray you use, her friend's kid's birth months. She just knows it. It sticks in her head like glue, and it's *amazing*. It makes the people around her feel loved and special. (shout out to Linds...I love ya! <3)

Not so with me. You could tell me how old you are, and I might forget, say, two minutes later. I don't often remember how much gas is, when your birthday is, my own measurements, or even street names on the way to my house. I've learned how to focus on details in my own home and with my own family, and I do it well...but beyond that..pfttt! Forget it!

Is it because I don't care about details of those around me? Nothing could be further from the truth! It's because when you're talking to me, I'm busy hearing the "feeling" phrases, what seems the most emotionally significant to you, and reading your body language. I'm distracted by your feelings, and I'm feeling them, too. Therefore, I sometimes stink at small talk. (Or at least stink under the surface...I can do a good job of pretending to listen on the surface by murmuring "mmmhmm"s and reflecting your facial expression back to you! *blush* It's genuine emotion, because I can resound with you while my brain being completely elsewhere. *more blushing*)

Half the time, if I seem to zone out while someone is talking about what they ate that day, it's not because I don't care...it's because I'm chewing on whatever profound thing you said five minutes ago. **blush** And if you hang in there with me, I might be able to offer some insight.

I can't tell you how many times those around me have assumed that I'm stuck up, unintelligent, airheaded, inattentive, or impractical. (And, in fact, none of those things are true about me...it's just that in an emotional situation, my intuitive side tends to take the driver's seat, followed by deep internal thought!)

I'm also slow to make friends, and tend to only have a few truly close ones at a time. I know I've hurt the feelings of others before when we fail to start a friendship or be as close as I'd like. I can be aloof, vague, evasive and even curt towards those I feel would cloud my emotional receptors. I tend to hang onto the emotions of others as if they were my own. Sometimes, I simply have all the relationships I can handle at the moment, even though I seem energetically friendly.

Only recently have I come to realize that this doesn't make me a defective person. I needn't be so hard on myself, while realizing, of course, I need to keep a careful watch out for going out of balance.

I realize tend to make quick judgments of others in my life, too, my husband in particular. He's similar to me in some ways, but he tends to feel out the world in concrete/in-the-moment way. He's good at creative problem solving, and at what it's going to take to fix something. If I philosophize around him, he has a tough time paying any attention at all until I get around to the practical, "Here's how this plays out in real life" area. And then, he's very, very honest about whether he perceives it as a good application or not. It's his strong suit, and it's extremely helpful as long as I view it as him working within his area of strength.

But if I sense boredom from him during my emoting, or if he fails to instinctively know I'm feeling (in other words, if he fails to be *me*), it's very easy for me to interpret that as apathy or annoyance.

And that scenario plays out with endless possibilities. It would be easy for one personality type to assume that another is selfish, indulgent, negligent, overbearing, heartless, lazy, non-committal or any number of harsh trait assumptions. It's so very easy to believe that others are acting out of sin (which is indeed a small part of the equation), but it's so much more complex than that.



This is part of the reason I take issue with Christians who fail to acknowledge psychology, personality type and human development as part of their faith. *muse*

Whenever I hear someone say, "That's just plain old sin!! Don't feed me any of that psychological mumbo jumbo!" (as I've said before in the past), I can't help but hear, "I don't have the energy, knowledge or resources to expend to find the real cause of this...and I really wish a good old alter service would make it go away!" Which is a totally understandable sentiment-who hasn't wished for an easier, less exhausting way of dealing with a problem?? I totally wish I could find MY magic wand. :OP

I feel greatly encouraged and buoyed by the voice in my heart that prods me towards the harder road, the road that enables me to develop and use all the fruit of the spirit in my life. Magic wands don't require thought, insight, patience, peace, gentleness or love. Learning as much as I can about the unique workings of my friends and family certainly does. And it's wonderfully humbling to discover and acknowledge the beauty of the working of the gifts and minds and spirits of others who are SO unlike me.

The more I understand that, and the more I understand what makes those around me tick, the more I realize I NEED others desperately. <3