A Man

First, they pull the grass. Daddy chops off long sideways roots of quack grass that reach into the garden. The children trail behind and gather armloads of clumpy sod, pile it in the wheelbarrow.

Jane pokes a fresh clump with her toe, "I think I need a MAN'S help." She looks around, and then gives the clod a little kick.

Daddy hacks another clean swipe at the garden's edge. He pauses, "Hey Jack, anytime someone says they need a MAN'S help, you should help them right away."

"Oh. Okay." He grabs Janie's clod and tosses it into the wheelbarrow. Jane grins.

Off to the left, another clump of grass, "I think I need a MAN," she looks around for Jack, "because I don't want to bend down and pick that up." She tries not to smile and raises her eyebrows. He slogs it into the wheelbarrow.






At the end of the garden they race back to Daddy. He saws open bags of coffee grounds and scatters long black stripes over the dirt. They wriggle their toes in it.

As daylight wanes we gather garden trowels and buckets, a pair of old blue gloves, and go inside. Jane pauses at the door, "Jack, I think I need a MAN. Will you close the door after Lulie comes in?"

"Yeah, I will." With a sideways grin he turns to wait for little sis, that same long-suffering streak of his father a badge of honor.

Real Gentle

Jack finds me out on the couch. I squeeze my eyes shut and sigh. Nap's over.

"Momma." I sit up and wedge a pillow in my back. He sidles up next to me.

"Hi, bud." We sit and stare into space, snuggle. I check my watch. We stare some more.

He nuzzles his face to me and squeezes my arm, "I'll hold you really gentle," he says, "because I know you have a baby in your tummy." He looks up, "I won't forget."

"I know," we smile and then sit some more.





Five more days. Wonder if she'll come on time.

Tokens of Love

"You're looking so grown up, Momma." Jane scoots over between our breakfast bowls and pats my shoulder.

Jack nods, "You're lookin' just so grown up."



"Your eyes are green." Jack stares at my face when I tuck him into bed. "I love them," he says. Before I can smile, he pulls my face down, kisses the tip my nose.

Green eyes and all grown up.

Break out the GOGGLES!

That's RIGHT!




It's SWIM weather!




Or rather sprinkler weather.




You know, since the thermometer hit almost 70 today.

***
Also, news flash: Jack is totally set on naming the baby OLIVE. Lucy goes back and forth on the name. Jane is against it. And Craig says the only way he will name a child OLIVE is if she is born with a pimiento in her lips. Plus, it's not 4 letters.

Soooo any more name ideas? :)

Jack

"Hey Daddy," Jack looks up from his paper, marker still bleeding into the masterpiece, "when I go up to heaven, I will show my picture to Jesus and explain it to him." Jack furrows his brow and continues coloring. It's a picture of the cross. "This will be my card for God," his voice quiet, it sounds like he's forgotten Daddy and me. "This will be my card for the one who died for me."

The one who died for me. Sort of makes everything else seem peripheral.

Babies

"Momma, I wish Gramma would have a baby."

Mordecai

"Here, just reach out your golden septor when you want someone to come." Jane grabs an old pink hanger out of Jack's hands, and points it at Lulie, "See, like this. You can come now Lulie." Lucy grins and barrels up onto the hearth, a pile of royal pillows and blankies.

"I wanna be Queen Esther," Jack says.

"You can't."

"I wanna be Esther!"

After a spell of yelling and haranguing on the pink hanger Jane settles the matter, "You can't. It's like how I can have babies and you can't."

"Because she's a girl and you're a boy," I call from the kitchen.

Jane raises her eyebrows, "It's like that. It doesn't really make sense."

"Oh, ok." Jack plays Mordecai.

Da Man

Before we left, Jack instructed Daddy, "Jane won't get to come with me, and Lulie won't get to come with me so you'll have to watch over them." He tilted his head, watched Daddy nod.

"I'll watch over them for ya, buddy."

Then we left. Jack took me on a date. Tea and a cupcake with white frosting, warm milk with raspberry syrup, I love dates. We settled into a small table, the room bright with sun. Between the two of us we gathered napkins and straws, a fork and more napkins. He made runs to the trash. Oh, and he paid. Did I mentioned he paid? Daddy gave him money and Jack paid for the date. Those little shoulders squared and eyes bright, he barely peered over the counter. "I'm da man, Momma, so I gotta pay," he explained.

And so I let him.

Jack

"Watch out," Jack calls, "there's a berry strong person coming up the stairs."

Goggles on, baby bottle and hack saw in tow, he pokes his head in the kitchen, "We're playing DOCTOR." He raises both eyebrows, "I'm the DOCTOR." Still for only a moment, he rounds the corner off to work. No doubt Jane or Lulie awaits his miracle cure.

Between peanut butter sandwiches, floors to sweep, dishes and laundry and piles of story books, the day lilts by. Jack asks if we can call the new baby Babe-the-Blue-Ox. He offers to lend Lulie his toothbrush.

When I tuck him into bed I lean down eye to eye with this boy. He brushes stray hairs from my face, presses my cheeks between small hands. I watch those blue eyes. "Who are you gonna be someday, Jack?"

He smooths my hair, pauses. "I'm gonna be like Daddy someday."

Of course, Daddy. I see it there guileless and unflappable.

I remember how Janie called out this morning, "Look, I'm dressed," and raised both shoulders. And as I stare now at my boy I still hear his remark, "Mmm. You're pretty, Jane."

Yes, like Daddy.

These Days...

"Look, I'm dressed," Jane announces.

Jack looks up from a huge floor puzzle, "Hmm. You're pretty, Jane."

She smiles. Half across the room, I feel pretty too.






It's dinner. "Toots are not appropriate dinner conversation, Jack," I say. "Jack?"

Janie raises her eyebrows, "You just whisper, 'Excuse me.'" She smears mayo onto her bread, glances at him.

Jack's all mirth. Sitting up on one knee he leans on an elbow, "Well," he pauses, "I said, 'Excuse me,' in my heart."






"Jane, Janie," Jack calls, "wanna play Jesus-dying-on-the-cross, where I'm Jesus?"

"Yeah, come on!"

Before I know it, they haul off to Pilate, Herod, a cross, resurrection, miracles at my elbow.

Merry Christmas!

The BEST part of {Christmas} cheer...





If any of you who missed Janie's rendition, it's HERE!

And, may the savior himself, {Jesus}, bless each one of you with joy and strength.


{GLORY to God in the HIGHEST!}

Gonna be a MAN

How is it that this sweet boy





wakes up one morning





suddenly a FORCE to be reckoned with?





Watch out world.





He's a BOY.

Baby

3.44 cm and growing. Another little one. Ten weeks and a tiny pomegranate seed of baby has sprouted already to strawberry size. Heart pulsing 160 beats per minute, all the hope and possibility of a person unfurls. Arms, legs, hands, feet. Lead violin sounds high A and in a small concert hall just behind my belly button, the symphony begins. That drum of a heart beats on strong and clear, a metronome of life. The whole body encircles it.






Janie and Jack swear they can already feel the little kicks.

Favorite name: Snoopy.

Bike Rides

This is the girl who wipes down our soap dispenser with a hair bow when I ask her to clean for company. And her side-kick who sits on on the counter and watches with complete adoration.





She always spots the biggest trees.




And he pedals the fastest.





Sometimes this makes for a tangle.





Or a long ride.

Now, I Won't Get Dead

"Now, I won't get dead," Jack announces. "Like some people get dead, I won't get dead." Faith and fact the same to him, he raises both eyebrows, "THAT a good point."

My Dad's kitty died. Just sort of disappeared for all Jack knew. No one noticed. And still, I told him. "Honey, the kitty's dead." In a fumbling sort of hopeful way the story of Jesus and dying, sin and salvation tumbled out. A miracle unspooled there on the bed all gossamer and delicate.

"Do you want to pray about it?" He stares at me. I want to repeat it. I wait.

"Well..." he eyes the ceiling, "that mean I will die?" It's as if he's never considered this. "You pray for me."

In a counterpoint of mother and child we weave ideas. Grace and wickedness, fresh as the dawn, brush against each other. In the afternoon sun my man-child becomes a child of God. I want to hold my breath and not rumple those first understandings. I'm swamped in the simplicity: God died. For me.

"God DIED for me!" When in doubt he shouts. And the whole room shatters into a million tiny slips of ideas like chaff blown away.

Open Wide

"Go wash your hands with SOAP, Jack. Daddy said that WAS poop." Thankfully, picture and quote happened on different days. However, given his soft spot for Lulie we're all singing yippie-yahoo that no one is sick. We seem to have a theme lately on bowels and other grossness. I am getting a little de-sensitized.

On a lighter note, my life is filled with unending sweetness: Jack measures Lulie's pudgy baby arms with salad tongs. He pulls back a living room-sized bed for her and Jane. Janie declares she's, "Just feeling sort of gentle," and needs a Momma-date to Starbucks. The odd kaleidoscope swaddles me up, a corset of love.

Greatheart

It's the suds I see as I pass our bathroom. Mustache-man looks up. "One more," he swishes and spits a glug of bubbles into the sink.

"Honey, are you washing your mouth out with soap?"

Nod. He's already sucking in another swig from a red cereal bowl. It's the frog one with big buggy eyes. He swishes another shot and vaguely aims at the sink. Spit.

"Is that because I said being naughty makes your heart dirty?"

He grabs a rumpled hand towel, grins. "Now my clean."

After scrubbing all the marker off his hands, greathearted one tries to make his heart clean.

It's a little too quiet and ...

...the living room transforms into castles of laundry and a wicker turret. Jack and Lulie, wedged in a crunching basket stare intently at something: the strainer-ball, the one for brewing Christmas punch. Lulie waits. No one moves. The script obviously doesn't include Momma. Jack chinks open the tea-ball and offers Lulie contraband: Quaker Oatmeal Squares. A dilapidated cereal sleeve is mostly empty on the floor. Janie patrols strictly enforcing The Sharing Rule.

A few days later, Daddy finds more cereal rifled through the laundry. Momma's sweet on him for tossing in a laundry load.

Learning to Read

First it's Jack, "That's an A," his smudgy finger pokes an A in a sea of words. Then it's Jane paging through one book and another, another and another for little brother. Her sing-song voice strings together pictures and plot, "See Jack, he's jumping in the water!"

A tiny miracle.

So I tell her, "Honey, if you can learn to read you can learn to do ANYTHING." Gramma used to always say that and she could do practically anything.

Jane opens her eyes up real big. "You mean like how God can just SAY it and it HAPPENS?!" I can see her picturing God, Let there be LIGHT!

"Oh, no." I grin. "That'd be neat, huh?" Her head bobs up and down bouncing blonde curls and a splashy flower. "No, it's more like you can read ABOUT anything to learn how to do it!" (Except not the speaking and it happens thing.)

Later that week she informs us that my hideous sewing debacle is no big deal, "'Cause, Momma, you know how to read so you'll be able to figure it out."

And she's right!

Banana-Banana, Knock-Knock

If I let them, my monkey children would eat a banana at every meal.


















And some inbetween.
























Now that Daddy is home from Kenya Jack continues to pray, "Help Daddy be safe in Africa, A-MEN," constantly.

And Janie informed me, "Hey Momma, you wanna know something that is TRUE?"

"Sure."

Banana in hand, she swallows. I should probably pause at the scary gulpy noise but don't. Eyebrows raised, "Everyday," she blinks, "someone in the whole entire world has to go PEE." Blink. She dissolves into gopher-tooth-grin.

And the fun continues.