april is the coolest month

the reality of motherhood lives in sacrifice. of time, of sleep, of sanity. the requirements of motherhood are patience, practice, spontaneity and humor. you must have humor. it's the air of motherhood. the redemption of motherhood lives in forgiveness. of ourselves and others. the partnership is with God. 

patience- raising this rambunctious, effervescent girl. i'm glad she's patient with me and allows me to catch up to her pace.  

spontaneity- saying yes to the park and the rec center pool and cupcakes at the bakery all on the same day during spring break. 

forgiveness- me forgetting to bring the diapers to the restaurant in downtown st. simons island where herschel made an EPIC poop 5 minutes into the meal. thomas made a trek to a gas station where they only stocked the lowest quality diapers and wipes.  

humor- thomas had an excellent sense of humor as i dragged the family to a historic site, historic fort king george, the oldest remaining outpost on georgia's cost, built in 1721. the ghost of doug beck made an appearance. 

tears of sadness and gratitude- we sold the yukon. it served us well. it could haul 4 bikes at a time in the back. it was like driving a recliner. i also vowed to stop dressing like a pregnant woman. what's going on with me in this shirt? no. stop. i need to show myself forgiveness for continuing to wear things that are much too big, two years later. 

spontaneity- swallowing my frugal pride and paying a million dollars for the kids to go on the rides at the darien blessing of the fleet fair. 

again, that shirt! i could smuggle hersch into a movie theater in that shirt!

this is a bit of my partnership with God: reagan running in special olympics. 

he won his race, though i would have placed him with a more challenging group. all levels of special olympicness was represented.

humor, patience, spontaneity.

looks great. tasted terrible. i prefer ugly cakes that taste great. 

i saw this on an early saturday run. it was a moment of redemption after a hard week.  

athena blythe's 5th birthday was a sunday. 

another pretty but terrible tasting cake. i'm really off on my cakery lately.

and a small part of motherhood is knowing when to quit. the stress of dealing with so many children and so many activities and so much yelling about not practicing put me in a less than celestial state of mind. out of respect to my partnership with God, we quit piano lessons. i had dreams of children serving in the church through music. but music wasn't serving us. this decision to cease fire means i'm happier than i've been in a while. perhaps our children will learn to serve in the church in other ways besides piano accompaniment of worship.

their final recital was fun and their wonderful teacher was so patient and good.

this little monsterface has tried my last thread of patience. 

abandoning story time at the library for ipad time. 

molesting my birthday chicken and rechristening him "DUCK!"

busting into the bishop's office on activity night while the bishop is meeting with someone in confidentiality. 

messing with every gadget in my car so that it took me a week to figure out how to make everything normal again.

scarlett's end of year play, "alice in wonderland". she was great, but that is a terrible story. terrible.

the end.