A Still Life

It’s the 4th of July, so I’ll not spend too long reflecting on the past 25 weeks today. Part 2 will come tomorrow, and that will be my final official post in this Master Plan series. I’m sure I’ll have some wellness thoughts in the years to come, but the accountability of getting healthy before an audience has served its purpose and completed its time.

For now, here are the quick stats:

Total weight loss: -21.6 (Goal by July 4 was 25 lbs., and scale on Saturday had me at 23.6. Not a big deal. I’ll be there by August.)
Total BMI reduction: 3.5 points
Total inches lost: -19.5″ (arms, upper waist, lower waist, hips, thighs)

I’ll come back tomorrow to write down some lessons learned, goals for the future, and surprises from the past 25 weeks. Until then, thanks for the lovely support and cheerleading you have offered in the first six months of this year. What will the next six months bring?!

We haven’t gone whole hog with Art Week this week, but we have read some books and enjoyed a couple of backyard projects. We gathered a variety of art books from around the house and kept them close by for reading all week:

Looking at shapes:

We learned via Pinterest about making chalk paint and spent time in the sun smashing chalk, mixing paint, and then painting the sidewalk and steps:

Our biggest project came from the Fancy Nancy book when her parents put supplies in the yard and play music while the kids dance and paint like Jackson Pollock. The Boy and I have done a smaller project before after reading an Olivia book. Yesterday, however, was more full body. I started by mixing slightly watered-down paint in disposable coffee lids:

Then cut a large piece of Tyvek paper and arranged it in the yard with the paint and brushes:

I’m glad we used Tyvek because regular butcher paper would not have withstood this dancing, stomping, sliding good time:

Things got messy:

And I am showing great restraint by not posting every painted body pic I took yesterday:

The sliding sweet feet eventually turned the middle of the masterpiece a blue-grey. Living in Richmond, we most be absorbing all of this Civil War energy. I somehow didn’t get a photo of the finished piece, but I’ll add that after we figure out where in the house we can possibly hang an 8′ long Tyvek painting!

The Girl also created a lovely red crayon on yellow wall piece yesterday called “I Will Not Take A Nap”. I need to document that one, too. Overall, we had fun with our small activities but wish we’d done a bit more. If we add more in the next couple of days, I’ll say that counts as part of Art Week. Next week’s theme: In The Garden.

I am really excited about our Summer Books this week. A crazy trip to the library (we were bullied a bit by one of the desk clerks because The Girl does not understand the quiet rules) led us to this Fancy Nancy story:

Reading about Fancy Nancy and her creations then reminded us of this great book, Look! Look! Look!:

We have several projects in mind and will likely celebrate Family Fun Friday with an art show. How are you spending your Summer days?

Life being wild and unpredictable (see: yesterday), I failed to update our FFF: Father’s Day Books. We picked up three dad/granddad related books as we prepared to celebrate My Love for a couple of days. The fellas went on a Daddy-Boy adventure to D.C. for two days as part of the celebrating, and I have no photos to document a thing. We read The Daddy Mountain, The Toolbox, and My Pop Pop and Me.

The Boy chose this week’s book from his shelves and suggested a couple of activities to go with it: Houses and Homes by Ann Morris and Ken Heyman.

The book highlights a range of homes from Buckingham Palace to a woven hut in Papua New Guinea. After talking about the various supplies people use for houses and the different ways people live (no walls in the Bali photo, then a typical brick suburban American home), we decided to gather supplies and make a couple of houses of our own.

We assembled a house and started painting:

And a lovely family of panda bears has moved in:

While we waited for paint to dry, we built some tee-pees out of foam craft squares:

They are a good hangout for Power Rangers:

As usual, we’re off to the library today to swap out books and officially sign up for the Summer Reading Club. How are you keeping time this Summer? At our house, some days are better than others. I’ll keep working on my adaptability skills.

This week has not been what I expected or what I’d planned. I envisioned quiet afternoons with The Boy playing alone while The Girl napped, and I would work on a sermon. But about three weeks ago, just as Summer break began, The Girl decided she was done with her crib. She escaped three times in one day, so the side came off. Within the week, she was only taking naps 50% of the time. As of today, she hasn’t napped in four days. I am thinking through all of this today.

When I feel like my reasonable choices are quite limited, I begin to feel completely trapped. Finding balance when I have a decent amount of alone time each week is achievable. Feeling balance when Summer is heavy with togetherness is difficult for me. It’s a daily task in Summer to find routine, to lean into peace, and to wrap my head around giving energy to even the smallest part-time job. I am not always very good at this adaptability business. I do not think creatively about either the work before me (in this case, biblical theology and story telling) or alternate routines and strategies when I am overwhelmed by the noise and stuff (seriously, where does all of this stuff come from?!) and destruction (tornadic, I tell you!) of our preschool frat house. Deep breaths in this time of lesson learning. A breath to center, a breath to calm, a breath to balance.

Today I am reminded that the recurring lesson I am being taught by#motherhood is not #balance but#adaptability. I’ve not learned yet.

Wading through a year of pics on my phone, here are latest sightings.

Water painting in the early morning.

Homemade cherry limeade, unsweetened.

A 15-yard bolt of fabric made in a South Carolina factory; purchased at 50% off + free shipping.

Pentecost decorations for a lively worship with a loving crowd.

Enjoying the completed walls of art as I come-and-go from the Y.

My favorite part of baking bread.

A quiet spot out front.

Not bad for mid-June. I’m delighted to think of all we’ll notice together this Summer.

If you’re following along, then you know that Summer marks the return of Family Fun Fridays (FFF) and that we are creating weekly themes all Summer based on children’s books. If I’m diligent, I’ll share our activities each Friday in hopes of sticking with the idea for our family and of sparking ideas for those of you keeping time with little ones.

Our first book was Pinkalicious. If you haven’t read it, Pinkalicious is the story of a little girl who eats way too many pink cupcakes on a rainy day at home. She sneaks even more and then turns pink. While she thinks this is pretty fantastic at first, her tune changes when the birds, bees, and butterflies all think she’s a flower. Her doctor instructs her to eat only green food in order to turn back to normal, but Pinkalicious doesn’t following the instructions until she eats even more pink cupcakes and turns red. Cute book, fun story, easy activities.

First, we gathered several children’s magazines for photos of insects and birds:

We cut out a couple dozen birds, butterflies, and other insects and glued them to file folders (because I have a box of them!):

Next, we cut out each critter, punched a hole, tied a string, and hung our storm of animals that swirled around Pinkalicious:

(This would have been cute if hung low enough for the kids to stand inside the bugs, but The Girl wanted to rip them all down. Of course.)

We made the obligatory pink cupcakes and dealt with the subsequent begging for cupcakes:

And on on last day, we ate an all green lunch of spinach quiche, steamed edamame, green peas, and broccoli. The Boy requested pickles after his meal and ate one third of a whole quiche. The green lunch was a huge hit!

And I participated as well:

The last two cupcakes are being consumed as I type, and then we’re off to the library to refresh our loans. The Boy and I agreed this morning that we’d look for a good book about fathers and use that as our next Summer Book Week theme in preparation for Father’s Day. Happy Summer!

Inspired by folks like Meg who give some intentionality to their mothering days with activities and themes, I decided with The Boy that we would pick a book each week this Summer to guide a couple of projects. This won’t be a super heavy-handed motif for hours each day but will give us three or four activities each week to approach meals or afternoon quiet time creatively. This week’s book: Pinkalicious. Do you know the book? We learned about it through my friend April who threw a great Pinkalicious birthday party for her eldest child one year. She even made pink cake pops like these. Oh, those were really good. Maybe we should do that.

But the plan for now is to make pink cupcakes, of course, as well as a meal of all green foods. The Boy has already decided on green peas, guacamole, green grapes, green apples, and pickles. He loves pickles. And our third project actually began this morning as we started looking through our stack of Ranger Rick and children’s outdoor magazines for pictures of birds, bees, and butterflies. The critters don’t know that Pinkerella (does she have a name? I’ll have to read it again) isn’t a flower. We’re cutting, pasting, then hanging our animal friends to create the swirl that surrounds her in the park. Fun stuff, right? I’m excited to add a small touch of order to our Summer fun. What are you doing to pass the time in these weeks of leisure?

I can’t believe another five weeks have already passed, and I’ve now completed a full 20 weeks and three days of active, healthy living. There have been moments of frustration and boredom, but I’ve also discovered the joy of sweat and that illusive exercise high I’d always heard about but never experienced. If it takes at least 3 weeks to develop a habit, does 20 weeks mean I’m successfully into a way of life? I hope so.

One of the lessons I’ve learned is that I work well in 6-8 week chunks. When I set a goal, work diligently toward the goal, visualize the results, and coach myself to succeed, then it happens. I’ve also thought a lot about the Sears’ Family’s parenting advice to “beware of baby trainers.” Ultimately, the Sears’ teach new parents “to be discerning of advice” and to trust their own instincts. In pregnancy, women are suddenly susceptible to horror stories of everything that can go wrong. In newborn months, mothers are grilled on pacifier or thumb or transition object; breast or bottle; crib or cosleeping; cry-it-out or comfort to sleep. The best advice really is to glean the pieces of advice that match your instincts and your family’s needs but to ignore the rest.

Read the rest of this entry →

It’s Day One of our summer break, and we are bumping along as we figure out new routine and ways to be purposeful in our three months of leisure. One such task is feeding the kiddos and avoiding a rut. Somewhere this morning I saw a photo of someone who made pb&j sushi with her little ones, but now I can’t find the image or remember who posted it. I’ll keep searching my Safari history for the inspiration and will update should I find it.

Till then, here’s my version of peanut butter sushi!

STEP ONE: Roll a slice of bread as flat as you can.

STEP TWO: Add thin layers of your preferred flavors. I made two rolls with creamy peanut butter and strawberry jam, and I made two rolls with creamy peanut butter and banana. Get wild with it, if you want! Next, tightly roll the bread to create your sushi roll.

STEP THREE: Slice, plate, and serve!

The kids enjoyed these, but The Boy was slightly suspicious I’d mixed peanut butter and fish. I had to promise him it was ordinary, and that kind of took the steam out of things. Nevertheless, a fun treat.