Nancy Wilson's Blog, page 37

One Week Already!

It’s hard to believe that this sweet little dude has been here for a week already! Babies are such a unique kind of love – a sort of raw love. There is still so much that you don’t know. So few actual things that you can know about them at the outset, but there you are with a huge bucket of love to ladle out on everything you find. Love the scrunchy-nose dream smiles when the milk thieving mystery has been resolved at last. Love the frantic madness about wanting to eat. Love the surprise of having a child who will take (occasionally) a pacifier. Love the funny cries, the fuzzy head, the kicky feet. Love who this little man is on his way to becoming. Love every last thing he does. Every cross-eyed gaze is met with affection and enthusiasm. Just so. much. love.

So far we know he is a brilliant problem solver. I know that he and I have a different definition of “game time,” and he wins. The same contraction that made me think we would have a baby in ten minutes made him think “no, thanks.” When I thought the head moving down was progress, he thought “I bet I could get out of here and plug this problem area with my buns.” It was a great victory for him – my belly wildly thrashing about in a break between contractions. Success for Shadders. He faced off with our wonderful OB in a great and glorious effort to turn him – an effort that for some reason totally cracked me up. I think it was having two OB’s, an ultrasound tech, a number of nurses, and my husband hopping into scrubs – but all gathered around my belly in fierce concentration. A big greasy belly that wouldn’t behave. I said I felt like the greased pig wrestle. But I had to stop laughing – I was starting to side with my man child. They did get him to turn first one direction, then the other. But his buns remained stuck in the proverbial oven. He pivoted on them like a fancy break-dancer. Our OB said as he pulled him out there was an audible pop as he was completely locked in. Stubborn? I don’t know yet. Brilliant? Doubtless. Action oriented? We’ll see. A winner? Absolutely.

The OR staff and nursing staff and our doctors were all so great. The anesthesia team took the pictures for us that Mom put up – and all of them went above and beyond to make the whole thing not only safe and comfortable, but sweet as well. We are very blessed. Recovering from a c-section has been a little different, but not so bad. I didn’t know you could stifle a sneeze by having a mild panic attack instead. But things are great. We have a sweet healthy new man to add to our posse – we are rich. God is good. Shadrach is adorable.

P.S. I will answer the laundry/dresser questions soon, but brace yourselves to be disappointed. I’m afraid the whole question has gotten a lot of mystique on accident. I mean, it’s brilliant, but not earth- shattering. Effective, but not gorgeous. Wonderful, but, well…. you’ll see.

Welcoming the Arrival of….

As you can see with your own eyes, the Jankovics are rejoicing over the birth of their second son, Shadrach Aaron Jankovic. He weighed in at 8 pounds 14 ounces, and he is  21.5 inches tall. And handsome.

We are so thrilled to welcome grandson #6 and grandchild #16. God has blessed us beyond all measure and our cup is slopping over with joy and gratitude.

Yes, it was an unexpected C-section. Hoorah for C-sections! What a merciful God who gave Rachel a chirpy attitude, a flexible birth plan, kind nurses, skillful physicans, and a healthy baby boy who had (at the last minute) wiggled himself into an impossible position. Actually, she told me her birth plan ahead of time. It was this: to be grateful. And she is.

On never being done.

I’ve been getting lots of questions lately about how we structure life around here, or how I get it all done. Really the answer is that I don’t get it all done. But it is worse than that I think – I don’t even try. One of the biggest personal lessons I have learned in housekeeping and child raising is that “done” is a total myth. The more I have adapted to that understanding the better. The more I embrace a lot of my daily work as a cycle that goes on and on instead of discrete tasks that need to be completed, the better. Not only does it relieve a lot of tension surrounding what you are trying to do in a day, but it actually gets much better results.

I don’t keep it a secret that I know what it is like to step on jam blobs, or face a mountain of laundry that harbors a mysterious yet hideous smell. It is basically daily that I marvel at the volume of what I sweep. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and I frequently fail in my quest to be in the ballpark of both of those things. But the truth is, it isn’t so much about “getting it all done,” it is about keeping on doing it. Much like sanctification, it is not something at which you arrive. Not anymore. I used to be a person who loved to make everything perfect and then enjoy it without messing it up. God wanted me to get a bigger perspective, so I have a lot of children.

I am a very unstructured person by nature. I am not a person who enjoys schedules that follow the day around in 15 minute increments. Some people love that, but it doesn’t work for me. I tend to juggle things, in a constant mental state of triage. So the question about when I clean, what the kids do, and how it happens is something that has no easy answer. It has changed many times through the years. Our kids give up on napping while two. I usually keep them having a “reading rest” for a while after that if possible, and that has long been a time that I use for getting something, anything, done. Blaire is the only napper in our house now, and so the other four are out and about all day – stuffing backpacks full of dress ups, launching complicated scissor work at the dining room table, reading, doing puzzles, playing high speed tag, setting playmobile pieces all over the floor, making a restaurant in their closets with all the duplos they can find, dragging “cozy blankets” through the house to set up caterpillar camp in the living room, and generally living large. I try to keep things orderly mostly by keeping a spot things can go back to.

I have greatly enjoyed the help of housecleaners at different times – I have  them come when I can turn on a show for the kids, and the youngest is sleeping, then we clean together. It makes me feel like I got on a moving sidewalk. I am still cleaning, at the time when I could have anyway, but I get a lot more done! Sometimes I would leave for the last little bit and run to the grocery store while the cleaner babysat. I have hired younger girls who didn’t mind mopping and vacuuming at night to be date-night cleaning sitters. Kids in bed, we go out, she stays and cleans out the fridge, or the bathroom or something. That was a good idea, and I should start doing it again.

The kids help  me pick up what they have been playing with, as well as what they haven’t been playing with, and I tolerate quite a lot of daytime mayhem so long as the attitudes are good. When the kids are all being cheerful and having a wheeze of a time with the huge set up all over the family room, I am o.k. with that. Play is their work. As they have gotten older, so has our strategy for teaching them to help. The older four are now capable of good help, so we use it. I don’t want them to just follow directions though, I want them to find their own ways of doing things. Usually when the playroom has gone thoroughly to seed, I call the four of them to report for duty. Then, I tell them to go down and look at the playroom and pick something that looks big to clean up. They have to come report to me what it is that they are going to take responsibility for, and then they go do it. Each of them has to do five different picking up jobs, and our theory is that twenty jobs should always be enough to clean up the playroom. Sometimes for fun I take pictures of the playroom every 5 minutes and we enjoy the slideshow of what they did when they are done.

But I think the fundamental thing that helps me deal with this is that I see two of my roles as being very similar, but a little different. I am a housekeeper, sure. The cleaning and the management of basic household flow is my job. But the other side is that I am a homemaker. And a homemaker does what? Makes a home for people. So when the mess is alive and growing in our house, I try to balance the roles of homemaker and housekeeper. Nothing is more homey to children than a rollicking good time. Nothing is more homey goodness to them than being welcome.

I don’t mean to give the impression that I am all about maniacal messes. I like the house to be orderly, but I am always trying to find ways to make it  hospitable to its first guests, the ones who live with us.

This might also explain why I do things like paint a mural (a speedy hustle of a painting job on a Sunday afternoon). I see that as being one of the homemaker kinds of jobs, because it was something that I wanted to give to my girls. It is not indicative that I had a ton of time when every other part of the housework was completed and at rest. The truth is that I probably had some digging out to do on Monday morning. But tomorrow always has more to do in it. Sufficient unto the day are the housekeeping jobs thereof.

I streamline some things very dramatically (sometime I’ll tell you about how we have no dressers), and other things I complicate for fun (like getting a sweater for one child done over two weeks and a lot of hours). I keep a tall plastic laundry hamper in the hall closet for all the kids’ jackets, sweatshirts, and outerwear by season. Because they can get things in and out of it, dump it out, pick it up, and stick it back in the closet. Because we don’t have time to hang coats up. Because we want to make a huge mess in the kitchen making pasta. I could write a very lengthy post about the journey to the system that I currently use for the laundry. But I’m still hoping that I can weather the storm of a new baby with the laundry staying on track.

The truth is, this is my life work. I’m not supposed to finish everything in one day. I am supposed to get better and better at it. And believe me – there is a lot of better that I could be at it.

Summer as found in the iPhone photo library.

There has been so much to love this summer. So many funny people running around our house stretching their longer legs and newer skills. While Daphne has been able to read for a while, she has really started reading on the fly this summer – catching passing road signs, and enjoying her new ability. All of our girls have learned that they have a passion for gymnastics, as well as the sparkly suits, and we have had to break it to them that they are already pretty much taller than all the gymnasts. Luckily, Visa made a commercial about the olympic gymnast hopeful who got too tall for gymnastics and had to become the best female pole vaulter in the world. So there is still hope for the people who run and leap and dance about the house in their nighties.

I have found yet again, that I really love two years old. So funny. So rich. So absolutely fun. I find that most of the pictures on my iPhone are Blaire doing various sketchy deeds. Such as this one.

Or then there is this one. She climbs on counters and gets into sinks, colors on things that aren’t paper, tells jokes that all of her siblings find unbearably hilarious, and generally keeps us on our toes. Just last night she came and got in bed with us (worst bed hog ever), and was full of news about the snake that had apparently troubled her dreams. After a while, when we were both sure she was asleep again, she suddenly said  ”All gone snake!” and sighed heavily.

But it isn’t just all the growing up of two that we love. Having a near eight year old has been a whole other level of delight. She is so funny, so full of beans, so capable, and completely delightful. She knows how to text from the iPad, and sent me this little gem the other day:And while I am afraid that this particular text got her nowhere in her baking crafting dreams, she has been putting in a lot of hours knitting, crocheting, weaving, baking banana bread, reading manuals to sewing machines and asking me intricate questions about the feed dogs, as well as reading prolifically. She has shown a flair for the medical side of life, asking me to tell her what placentas look like exactly, going over how they work, and wanting to hear all the news I can think of surrounding them. On the side she writes hilarious texts and bits of work that summarize our life. From today’s writing:

“I love my mom.  I can’t wait till baby brother is born.  Mama is getting lot’s of contractions.  We’re all bustling around getting ready for him.  Mama’s bustling around making him. Hahaha.  Now where was I?  Oh I was at the Hahaha part.  Now what’s MY name?  It’s EVANGELINE!!!  Oooop’s.  So,

want to test my knowledge eh?  ” What is 4+4? “  4+4=8!  ” What is 8+8? “  8+8=16!  “  Now I’ll ask you questions!!!”

As you can see, we are getting very grown up around here, but not so much that we don’t bust out of bed in the morning and climb in a cardboard box right away.

And all that bustling around she spoke of? Well – I am happy to report that some things have been done! It’s amazing but true. Some tasks have been checked off. We have moved the big girls into their own room, having first painted and put in new flooring. It’s not totally finished yet, but it is great. Here is a photo of the mural that I painted with the bedding piled up underneath it, but you get the idea.

Our room has been refloored, de popcorn ceilinged, painted, and generally made more habitable and less coffee stained beige carpet. That is good news especially for me, because I rely on a clean and clear master bedroom once a new baby arrives. I even finally finished a knit pillow that I knit over a year ago, but never finished all the way off. It is now on our bed, reminding me that sometimes, something gets done, eventually.

I have been knitting other things too – a new hat for our baby man on the way, baby socks for the new babies at church, and finished a scrap sweater for Chloe for fall. I have to say that the scrap part of the sweater is a bit of a false hood. I have a lot of yarn. I love to use it. So I started a sweater with the plan to use up a bunch of my super wash merino. But, after the first set of stripes I felt that solid stripes would not please me as much as heathered grey. So I ordered two new skeins of yarn to knit the stash busting sweater. Oh well! At least I only had about a yard and a half of it left so  I didn’t add anything to the yarn room. Not that I would mind that.And there you have it. Random tour through our summer, as found in my iPhone photo library. I hope soon to be filling up the photo library with some new subject matter!

The Guarded Heart

My mother-in-law Bessie Wilson wrote this as part of an article written in The Hammer years ago, and my father-in-law recently posted it.

Most of these articles on the heart have been written to stress the importance of keeping a right heart before God, because this is what our God is concerned about. We could continue this indefinitely because the Scriptures abound with such references. However, this month we shall consider His gracious provision for the “guarded” heart. He can make our heart a garrison.

This is found in a very familiar portion, Philippians 4:4-7:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

In this passage we are told to do several things: 1) rejoice, 2) be gentle, 3) reject all anxiety, and 4) present our prayers, petitions, and requests to God with thanksgiving.

Although it is our responsibility to do all these things, it does not mean it is our work. Rejoicing, gentleness, and thankfulness are all evidence of the fruit of the Spirit. It should be natural for us as Christians to produce such fruit. Anxiety, however, is the antithesis of thanksgiving. It can best be described as a fear, an uneasiness of mind, usually over an impending or anticipated ill. Anxiety can only be displaced by faith. The writer of Hebrews in 3:12 calls it a “sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” Faith is a fruit of the Spirit. It is our response to a faithful God. Romans 10:17 tells us, “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word of Christ.”

When we respond in obedience and, by the grace of God, choose to rejoice, choose to be gentle, choose to reject all anxiety, and present our prayers to God with thanksgiving, then the “guarded” heart is promised. It is His gracious provision to keep us from the attacks of the enemy.

In the final analysis, the indwelling Christ produces in us, by His Spirit, all the spiritual benefits which are also required of us for the “guarded” heart.

Isn’t that just like our God? He only requires of us what He enables us to be by His Spirit. Someone has said, “God’s commands are His enabling.”

In very simple terms He tells us not to be anxious about anything, as He will enable us not to be anxious. He tells us to pray with thanksgiving, and He promises His peace as our garrison. Having the peace of God guarding our hearts and minds in our turbulent world will be a great witness to attract others to the Savior we love.

A Few Friends and Their Doings

From time to time it’s nice to link up to a few spots you may not know about. So that’s what I’m doing now.

For example, many of you are familiar with Valerie, who comments regularly here. She has her very own blog and today she wrote a piece called “How Not to Comment on Blog and Facebook Posts.” This is Valerie at her best, on a total spree!

Next is a little webstore called Arrayed and Adorned devoted to modest swimwear for little girls. Bet you weren’t aware of that one! Crystal is also an occasional commenter here, and even though summer is half-way over, it’s not too late to take a look at her stuff. Who knows? Maybe some will even be on summer clearance.

Finally, another commenter, Hannah, has a blog worth reading. I’m betting she will produce a book some day. She’s a mother of many sons and has much wisdom. Fun to read too.

Well that’s all for now. Happy browsing!

Snicker

So I’ve been reading Geoffrey of Monmouth. (Yes, yes, I know you’re jealous. What better on a gorgeous summer day than a little 12th century history text?!) My motive for reading good old Geoffrey is another story entirely, and not that interesting. But the reason that I bring this up is that yesterday I ran across a passage about King Arthur which was just so poignant  I needed to share it with y’all.

“Then, girding on his Caliburn which was an excellent sword

made in the Isle of Avallon, he graced his right hand with his lance, named Ron . . . “

I laughed. I did. Right up there with naming your toys Punko and Petunia is naming your weapons Excalibur and Ron. But you’ll be happy to know that Ron was “hard, broad, and fit for slaughter.”

You Asked

You wanted to know what Fatty looked like. Here she is. She is the one in the bizarre position second in from the left. I didn’t have the heart to round up all 37 of her pilled jumpsuits to show you, so instead I grabbed a few of her colleagues from about the house. From left to right, Sally Dot Dots, Fatty the Doll, Punko, and Petunia. I was unable to locate (I admit it, I didn’t try hard), Saucy, and Petunia’s baby cat, Patina.

Back in the USA

Ben and I rolled in the door from England recently . . . or rather, rolled into the Seattle airport. The plan was to hop in the car and dash home (for those not familiar with distances in the northwest, that’s about 300 miles.) But by the time we were on the road it was  7:00 p.m., we had been awake for 22 hours or thereabouts, and delirium was setting in. (On the other hand, this was absolutely nothing to some of our previous trips!) We were cruising along, radio on, windows down, trying everything to stay awake, and me diligently iphoning up distances to the nearest Starbucks. We were still in the game. Slapping ourselves from time to time in order to scare our eyeballs back into the correct positions after they started to cross. But then we hit a small and understated sign which read, “Road Closed for Blasting.” And, sure enough, as we came around the corner we found ourselves deeply ensconced in a very major traffic jam. Eventually we realized we could turn off the engine. Shortly thereafter, Ben popped his seat back and took a nap while I kept watch to make sure he would wake up once traffic started moving again. I needn’t have worried. After a smallish power nap he woke up again. People were beginning to get out of their cars. We decided to join them. We sat for a while on the concrete barrier, enjoying the summer twilight, watching as some enterprising souls up the road decided to seize the moment to go swimming.A hippie bus up ahead of us unloaded, and we watched as a guy with a guitar began to thrum out a little tune as he strolled around the road. A game of frisbee started up. People took their dogs out for runs. The guitar chap was joined by a second guitar chap. Oddly enough, a trucker actually busted out a ladder, climbed to the top, and began to adjust things on top of his rig. Bongo drums came off the hippie bus. And then a tambourine. And a sax. The hippie bus was turning out to be a sort of large scale version of Mary Poppins’ purse. Soon there was a full on hippie concert in progress. A very cute little toddler began to dance. The whole thing was weirdly surreal, especially since I was watching it all through eyeballs that staunchly refused to cooperate with each other.

Eventually the blasting finished and we all hopped back into our cars. The strange moment of unity and solidarity with our fellow travelers came to an end. I began once more to google for Starbucks, and the sorry truth was that there was no way we were going to reach one before it closed. We were defeated. Without appropriate and judicious megadoses of caffeine we were definitely not going to make it 260 miles. So we cheesed it and slept at a truckstop in Ellensburg.

Memoirs of a Yard Sale

I can’t put my finger on how long it has actually been that I have been trying to clean out the house. This is probably due to the fact that the housework around here uses very little punctuation. Run on sentences are our game. When one might have reached a semi-colon in the laundry tale, there is always a parenthetical remark about the state of the fridge shelves. But in spite of all that, I carry on. One piece of punctuation in my housekeeping life has been for many years the summer yard sale. It is the time of year when I start deciding that no one needs the purple snow pants anymore. I decide that I will not save all the maternity clothes from last time because I never want to see them again, and because if there is a next pregnancy I will buy new shirts to make baggy.

I can be a merciless purger, and we have enough children to produce a mighty load of cast offs. But that is not all – we go in with friends. We advertise our sale with the number of children represented in clothing from infant to grade school. It is usually in the thirties. We always have furniture and baby gear and home decor, and the yard sale has grown in song and legend. I have had checkers at the local grocery store ask me if it was coming soon. It has a reputation.

Well, traditionally I begin sorting and pricing and purging and cleaning the whole house out mercilessly weeks ahead of this event. I try (and have had various levels of success) to have the house all clean and together by the time the actual sale rolls around. Last year I didn’t. We had moved into our house not long before – there were whole rooms that had no furniture, and no destiny. There was a lot of muddle. As I recall I failed to price anything in advance. I somehow lost all grip on the housework around this time. And as the house deteriorated, the yard filled up with all the cast offs of all the land. The garage was end to end children’s clothing tables, and whenever I looked out the window I would see the husbands of friends pulling up in pickups to unload the things that had been haunting their houses. It was shaping up to be a great sale, and everything was fine except the interior of our house. I had done some purging, but it had left a mark.

In the heat of all this yard sale prep, my children were revving up enthusiasm for a bake sale. So somewhere between all the last minute pricing in the darkness, and the walking over broken hangers in the living room, I fired up a batch of cinnamon rolls. I think I put the dough in the fridge so that it could proof overnight, and when I got up in the early dawn to join the ladies with sharpies in the front lawn, I threw them in the oven. There was some running in and out and spilling frosting on the counter, and the kids were all up by then and spilling cereal and milk on the table and floor. But the cinnamon rolls were done! And they were going to sell them!

My sister in law brought over a little card table, cash box, and chairs for the cousins to sit at and sell their goods to the line of customers waiting to cash out. There were a lot of people in the yard, and the kids were turning quite a profit. The goods were flying off the table. But what this foolish mother did not realize was that the children were spending their money as fast as they got it. They wheeled, and they dealed.

When I discovered the dark deed, it was too late. I came in our front door for something, and lo! Scattered about the entryway was a doll with a wide assortment of pilly acrylic clothing. When I enquired I found that this doll was already named Fatty, and she was already much beloved. She had been purchased with the bake sale profit. She was ours. As I realized that the short people had been buying and selling as fast as the big people, the nightmare became a reality. Heather barely caught Lucy trying to purchase herself a run down old bridesmaid dress. Titus had laid out money for a broken plastic electric guitar toy. Chloe had bought a white pony stuffed animal with a Wells Fargo bandana. We had some new beanie babies. And we had so many clothes for Fatty the doll. There were other things too, but I can’t remember them all.

This year we didn’t do a yard sale, although I’m sure we will be back at it next year. Maybe next year Fatty will be available once again, to bring her acrylic pills to someone else’s home. Next year, when the yard sale rolls around, we will have an even bigger problem on our hands. Because now the people who can’t wait for the yard sale are the short people. It has gone down in their book as the day of all days – when the selling and the buying were at their finest.