steph's stuff

Enjoy it while it lasts

Andrew built a fort in our bedroom this weekend. It started out as a birthday fort for Emily because every 17-year-old wants a blanket fort, right?

It was very sweet and she spent about an hour in it with him. And then he spent most of the rest of the weekend in it. It was so cute to look up from my bed on Saturday night and see him reading like this. 

With every birthday my kids have, I get very sentimental. It may have more to do with my age and hormonal issues that women in their mid-forties go through rather than their age, but for whatever reason, I get sappy and teary and sad. 

And I vow to enjoy every single minute of it while it lasts. 

He can build blanket forts in my room anytime he wants. 

Related links:

Hope Don't Be Jealous Looking for the Joyful Moments In Other Milestones Beth's Epilepsy Story

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Happy 17th Birthday, Emily!

I still remember the minute the doctor put Emily into my arms. She was the most perfect thing that had ever happened to me. 

She was such a fun baby and child! She loved to learn, to experience new things, and was just always happy!

Through the years, she's maintained a few of her favorite things: Pooh, the coast of Maine, being alone (although now it's her room rather than a plastic farm), and dressing nicely. 

But she's also added in a lot of new loves: books, libraries, history, music, and anything related to books, libraries, history, or music. I can't wait to see where these interests take her!

Happy 17th Birthday to my sweet Emily! 

I'll love you forever,
I'll like you for always,
As long as I'm living
my baby you'll be.

The Rubik's Cube is back

This photo is one of my new favorites! The story behind it is kind of long but worth telling.

At Andrew's middle school, teachers give out cards with ten blank squares on them - similar to a bingo card. Teachers award signatures in the blank squares for a lot of reasons including when they see students helping a classmate, being kind and understanding, and exhibiting exemplary behavior.

When Andrew redeemed his first card, he chose a Rubik's Cube from the school store. I couldn't believe my eyes when he brought it home. I hadn't seen a cube in over 30 years! But apparently, they are the new obsession among all of his friends and I've been more than happy to aid him in his pursuit of acquiring new and different cubes. So much better than video games, right?

It took him about two months to solve his first cube and now he practices on all kinds of different cubes in an effort to improve his time. Right now, he can solve a 3x3 cube (that his dad or I have scrambled for him) in 42 seconds and a 2x2 cube in 15 seconds. It's just awesome to watch and I wanted to photograph his cubes for him as a way to celebrate his success.

And look at the photo! One of them has a V in the center! I think I'm going to make it into a poster. :)

Hope

My girls at (nearly) 17 and 14...

I hope their bond survives Emily going to college. 

I hope Beth handles Emily leaving okay and that they find a way to handle being apart.

I hope they're best friends when they're adults and call each other every day. 

I hope they live close to each other and raise their families together. 

I hope they continue to support each other's differences and bask in their similarities. 

I hope they always love each other this much. 

Don't be jealous!

Our kids are responsible for quite a few household chores. They all have dinner chores every night and they also have weekly chores. We rotate every few months so nobody has to do the same thing forever. Plus it's a great way to teach the younger ones how to do the harder chores and to give the older ones a break from always doing the harder chores. 

Right now, we're in the middle of rotating dusting chores and I think I'm going to have to do a bit more explaining. And perhaps demonstrating. 

Here's just a few pictures of the office. 

The left side of Tom's desk:

 

The right side of his desk looks a wee bit better. 

 

And finally, a look at part of my bookshelf. I love the shape of this lamp and the details in the lamp base. And what a nice reflection of light on all those little nooks and crannies on it!

Oh wait. Never mind. It's not a reflection. It is in fact layers and layers of dust. And look! Cat hairs are hanging off the shade!

Don't be jealous, okay?

Looking for the joyful moments

This has been a hard year. Really hard and stressful in a lot of ways. And it's not over. But when I found myself at home again this fall and not working like I had planned, I felt drawn back into scrapbooking. Which led me to take Ali Edwards' photography class "Lens of Joy." It's not a technical class. It's a class designed to help you find your creative voice through photography and it just called to me. 

One of the things that Ali talks about in her class is that she uses her camera to help her find joy, even in the hard or stressful moments. And that got me. I can't control the difficult things going on around me but I can look for the joy in them.

And so I've been looking for joy in the hard moments and decided to write a few things that are bringing me joy this week just in case it speaks to anyone else. 

1 - The joy in saying "yes" to my kids. Emily texted me from Target begging for me to buy her an album. I've had to say "no" to a lot of things but this was one thing I could give a different answer for. And yes, we love the album!

2 - The joy in the newly-fallen snow we got yesterday. It's early, it was unexpected, but it's so beautiful. 

3 - The joy in having the ability to be home with my kids when they are sick. My heart aches for all of those parents who don't have this choice, including me many, many times. 

4 - The joy in being someone that my children share their passions with. As much as I feel like I don't want to hear one more time about how awesome Band XYZ is or how AMAZING so-and-so is at solving a Rubik's Cube, I'm so grateful that my kids want to share everything that they love with me. 

5 - The joy of being present, of being here to watch them grow up. I've had a lot of health problems this year, but none of them are terrible or remotely life-threatening. They're just not fun to deal with. And not everyone is that lucky. This past week, I've heard terrible news about three different people who have impacted my life in some way. They are all facing extraordinarily difficult health issues and my heart breaks for them. So how can I not find joy in simply being here with my kids?

 So go and look for the joy this weekend! It's there, I promise. :)

Teachable Moments

The combination of words + photography have been on my mind a lot this week and I've been very emotional about recapturing that part of my life. This story just spilled out when I saw this photo and I'm reminding myself that scrapbooking can just be this simple. Words + photos = the story of our lives.

Every day, I'm reminded how little time I have left before our house gets a bit emptier. Since she got her driver's license, Emily's world has expanded and her independence has dramatically increased. Along with that freedom comes the opportunity to start making more and more of her own decisions and so my role in her life is slowly changing.

I no longer need to tell her or suggest to her what to do and how to do it. I'm becoming more of an advisor and sounding board and she doesn't need me as involved in her day-to-day life as I used to be. And I'm doing my best to honor her needs yet also make sure that she's prepared to be on her own in 18 months. It's all about finding that balance and making sure I don't miss any teachable moments. 

She recently went on a field trip with her AP science class and was put in a fearful situation. An instructor at the facility they visited mocked her about her fear and then physically intimidated her. It's the kind of intimidation that happened a lot to me as a kid, too, and it infuriates me. Basically, he decided that being fearful was "wimpy" and that the way to "cure" the behavior was to attempt to physically force her into a situation that frightened her. 

That kind of intimidation is one of the hardest to stand up to because you're already scared and then the physical intimidation creates panic. It's taken me well into adulthood to learn how to handle that and I knew that this was something that could be helpful to us both if we dealt with it together instead of letting her handle it on her own. 

I called the supervisor of that facility and explained that what could have been a teachable moment and a wonderful learning experience for a bright young woman had turned into a threatening situation. How awesome it could have been if that instructor had acknowledged her fear and showed her ways that she could overcome it instead of humiliating her and then trying to physically control her. He turned an educational opportunity into a situation about him and his desire to control. And I don't ever want my kids (but especially my girls) to think that that's okay. 

The outcome is a good one - the supervisor was appalled and apologized and agreed that it had now become a teachable and trainable moment for her and her staff. And I hope that maybe I set an example for Emily and she can learn something from it. 

But more than anything, I hope that I still find these teachable moments and do the right thing while I still have her at home with me.

One Month Later | Emily

The kids have been in school a little over a month now and what a difference a month makes. Seriously. It blows my mind how the kids have changed and grown in just under five weeks. I blogged about Andrew and Libby last week and now it's Em's turn.

Emily

- has one foot out the door already. Sigh. She's only a junior but I can already feel the momentum propelling her out of the house and into adulthood. 

- is extremely busy at school taking AP and honors classes, is a student assistant in the school library, works for the school's broadcast network, is on the speech team, and was just recruited to be on the debate team and the mock trial team (but is going to pass up debate, I think).

- is extremely busy outside of school working an after-school job as a nanny and housekeeper, serving on a teen advisory board at our county library, and running a teen knitting group at the same library. 

- is also extremely busy with friends and a boyfriend. You can see why we don't see her often.

- loves having her driver's license and is patiently waiting for me to buy a new car so she can have the current one.

- takes her siblings anywhere I ask and invites them along with her even when I don't ask. She is such a good big sister and Libby and Andrew adore her.

- is hamster-sitting for neighbors who are gone for a few months and LOVES having a hamster. Which I didn't see coming at all. 

- LOVES anything related to the Spanish and German languages - she's saving for two trips abroad before college. 

- along those lines, Enrique Iglesias can be heard from her room at top volume whenever she's home. 

- is an absolute joy to be around when we can catch up with her. :)

One Month Later | Libby

The kids have been in school a little over a month now and what a difference a month makes. Seriously. It blows my mind how the kids have changed and grown in just under five weeks. I'm going to do a bit of an update on each child this week. 

Libby

- is so happy right now that it boggles my mind. Tom and I often look at her and then look at each other in disbelief. Is this even the same child who lived here last spring?

- proves to me every day that you can't take good health for granted. She is a completely different person when she's seizure-free. Completely different. 

- loves being in an honors orchestra. And now being invited to be part of an Advanced Jazz Chamber Orchestra. She is over the moon with orchestra this year. 

- has found so many friends at her new school so quickly that I'm blown away. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that she would be this happy at a new school. 

- is feeling healthy right now. Really healthy. It is such a relief that I could cry. 

- spent yesterday in Indy at the children's hospital for her last visit. We are ready to move on and become completely seizure-free. She's almost there - we're hoping one more med increase will do the trick. She's gone from 5-7 seizures/day in April to 1-2 seizures/week now. Sooo close!

- has too many boys texting her all day long. They're very nice boys and smart, motivated boys but I'm so not ready for a second child to be at this stage of life. 

- has been through more than any child should ever have to go through in the past six months and turns out sassy, happy, and well-adjusted to a brand new school. I've always said she's the bravest person I know and I mean it. 

One Month Later | Andrew

The kids have been in school a little over a month now and what a difference a month makes. Seriously. It blows my mind how the kids have changed and grown in just under five weeks. I'm going to do a bit of an update on each child this week. 

Andrew

- is loving cross country more than he ever thought possible. After two very rough weeks to begin the school year, he has found his groove and and is happier than ever. We don't hear much about school at the end of the day but we know every detail about his practice and his friends from the team. 

- loves having a sister in the same school with him. It's the first time in three years that he and Libby have been in the same building and he feels just a bit more secure with her around.

- also loves telling every 8th-grader on his team that they might know his sister. It's a bit of an in with the older kids. ;)

- is finding the honors math curriculum to be too easy and the principal and teacher are watching him and considering moving him into high school math. He's the only one of the kids to get a math gene so go Andrew!

- loves playing the saxophone but hates practicing it. 

- is never home and loves it that way! The more people he can be around and the busier he can be, the better. 

- does not like being a 6th-grader but only because he's in the youngest class. He wants to rule the school and I have no doubt that he will very soon. He will talk to anybody and everybody he can and feels quite miffed that he's sometimes discounted as "only a 6th-grader."

- may finally be starting that growth spurt that he's been hoping for. 

- still loves to cuddle all of us and I'm praying that he's always this loving and affectionate.