HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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In Case You Were Wondering
This is Piper. Someone, we can only assume it was a person under four feet tall, gave this not-yet-two-year-old an open box of Cheerios to look at during breakfast. I had to use the restroom during our breakfast. Silly me. Why can’t I just plan a little better? (And why does every bad/mischievous/injurious/disobedient/dangerous event occur while I am trying to spend two and a half minutes using the restroom anyway?!) I returned just in time to hear the sound of Cheerios cascading from the box to the table, to the floor, to the tiny space between the table leaf. Before I could clean up the mayhem, I heard Otto Fox…
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The Magic’s in the Music . . . .
(Photo disclaimer – another photo that has very little to do with the post. But it’s Piper and that little unnecssary, but adorable, ponytail. Well, calling that sprig a “ponytail” is a stretch, I know!) When Bergen Hawkeye was a baby I finally had a good idea to help him differentiate between day time naps and night time sleep. Mosely was dependent on a blanket and that was really a bad idea because blankets can be lost (she has lost two) and blankets can be forgotten on road trips. And lost blankets add up to sleepless nights for Mosely and everyone else within earshot. So with Bergen I wanted to…
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I’m Not Making This Up
Today . . . . . Piper wore a tiny, tiny ponytail in her hair – Pebbles-style. It was unnecessary. But it was cute. Bergen came running into the house this morning carrying a dead bird. “Hey, Mom – I found a dead bird,” he announced. This was also unnecessary. And not cute. Riley had to receive five shots at the public health department for her upcoming adventure to Kenya. The facility was ugly, windowless and depressing. The nurse acted as if the two of us had single-handedly, purposefully set out to ruin her day. I hope if our government ever decides to choose universal health care they can figure…
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Greener Ideas
I’m not a radical environmentalist – whatever that is – but I have been trying to trade in some of my earth-harming habits for some greener choices for a few years now. For me, it really comes down to what I believe about God more than what I believe about the earth. To make it simple – God made the earth. He made people and told those people to take care of the earth. So here I am. And if I am doing a less than stellar job of stewardship, than I am basically saying I am not concerned with the gift and responsibility God placed on my head. There…
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Be Still
For the first few days of his life, Otto Fox Wilder spit up what looked like the entire contents of his tiny meal at every nursing. At his first doctor’s appointment at only four days old, he had already lost a substantial amount of weight. It seemed as if the little man just couldn’t keep his food in his new tummy. For the next two days I tried a new tactic. When he nursed, I kept him sitting in an upright position. After each feeding Riley or Kevin or I would hold him upright for twenty to thirty minutes following nursing. We figured maybe gravity just needed to work its…
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My To-Do List
I like lists. (And the photo of Mosely has nothing to do with that. I just think everyone should look at my kids more often. ) As a kid I made loads of lists. Lists of my favorite names (I was collecting them even back then.) Lists of my favorite books. Lists of places I liked to eat, places I wanted to visit, stuff I liked to collect. I had lists of my stuffed animals’ names and everyone I could remember having ever met. (Seriously.) I typed my lists out on my cool Smith Corona typewriter. I loved that little piece of technology. All this to say, it is no…
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The Experience
Some Great Things About the Birthing Experience Uh . . . The dining staff did bring us a cake and a bottle of sparkling cider afterwards. (Of which I did not partake from either. I think the Look Up Lodge summer staffers may have, however. It’s okay, guys. I really didn’t want it anyway.) The remote control to myself ? No. I didn’t even want to watch endless, mindless television. I was pretty sleepy. The doctor’s anatomy lesson directly following the birth of my beautiful son. Gosh, I wish I could really go into details here but I am not entirely sure who reads this blog and I don’t want…
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Rule Breaking
Before I had children, I had a lot of good ideas concerning how to raise small people. Now that I have children, I guess I still have some okay ideas about what SHOULD be done, but my theories have not always aligned with my actions. We have broken a lot of our own self-imposed Child Rearing Rules. And it seems like the more kids we have, the more rules we break. At London’s first birthday party she was offered an organic, sugar free tower of stacked, neutral-colored “cakes”, consisting primarily of carrots and wheat germ. At Piper’s first birthday party she had a tower of box-mix cake layered with pink…
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This Bowl
Growing up, every spring for longer than I can possibly remember, my mother made strawberry jam. It was delicious. We never had Smuckers at our house, we only had homemade strawberry jam. I am not entirely domestic, but the strawberry jam tradition has been one I really wanted to continue. Now, every spring I find myself picking strawberries and making oodles of batches of what my husband refers to as “red gold”. I don’t buy Smuckers for this house either – I prefer the fresh strawberry goodness. Here’s the funny thing. Many years ago my mother gave me the particular bowl in which she always prepared her strawberry jam. (Which…
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Cannon ball!
Lately, when Bergen takes a dive onto our big red slacker sack in the living room, he shouts, “COTTON BALL!” (The image of the splash a cottonball would make into a pool of water never fails to amuse me.)
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This One
I just don’t know if you have seen enough of this kid lately. At dinner Mosely is frequently guilty of bringing her prized blanket to the table. Blankets are not allowed at the Keigley meal table. (Yes, that is a real rule at our house.) Kevin told her to store it somewhere special so she would not misplace it. With great pomp, Mosely arose from the table, carried her blanket across the kitchen and opened the china cabinet. She lovingly placed her blanket on the shelf so she could see it through the glass doors during the entire meal.
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Whose Idea Was This?
Potty Training. It’s really a funnier topic than we think. Who thought up the idea of that little plastic miniature toilet-thing that is designed to sit in your bathroom to entice your child to defecate into it? At the beginning of our potty training experience we purchased one of those fabricated devices because it seemed as if that was the choice everyone should make. We didn’t think through the purchase thoroughly, I guess. We set it up in the bathroom and London did what we asked – she deposited her poop and pee inside the plastic enclosure. And that’s when it dawned on me. So now what? There is no…
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What It All Comes Down To
Why do we say the things we say to children? No wonder they grow up a bit confused and have to find out so much for themselves in the long run anyway. The breakfast table topic this morning was birthdays – whose was next and what that child wanted to do. In our house, that discussion always leads to a discussion involving Chuck E. Cheese’s. (We’ve only dared enter that establishment twice in our children’s lives, but it has unfortunately clearly made a large impression.) As they bantered about the games, the ball pit and the pizza that you can eat while watching a show, London wisely surmised the experience…
