You gotta love Sally Clarkson!

Wise words from a seasoned mom with perspective:

I used to say to my children over and over again. “Daddy and Icannot make you into great people. You have the power to determine how strong you become by how you exercise your will. We can train you and teach you how to be good and how to be righteous, but you have to decide to obey and you have to decide that you want to become a person of godly character. God made you such a wonderful child, so I hope you will decide to do your best to become all that you can be. It is in your hands. It is yours to decide to respond, but I am praying and hoping that you will.”

When we appeal to our children’s hearts for excellence and choices of good behavior, then we are giving them the will and desire to be excellent all for themselves. Their desire comes from within and their motivation is from their heart. But if we train them behaviorally by always forcing them to do what we want them to do because they might get a spanking, or another kind of threatened discipline, then their motivation is to avoid spanking or harshness but not to please God or to please their parents, by having a good heart and responding in obedience.

This works itself out practically by helping them to train their wills to develop strength and self control. Our children always remember us saying all the time, “You have a choice to make. If you obey me, then you will be blessed. But if you choose to disobey me, then you are choosing disciplinary consequences that will be unpleasant.”

Don't miss her whole message.

New Life as we Know It

Many, many thanks for all your prayers and good wishes for our new baby. You asked about a due date (though some of you caught the ticker in the sidebar;-). Remember that novena my children prayed before the Feast of the Immaculate Conception? The baby is due December 8. Of course, I have had only one baby on my due date. The rest are mostly late. But that one baby was my December baby. And there are oh so very many wonderful December feasts that I'm pretty much assured of festive little bundle.

Hyperemesis Gravidarum has set in with a vengeance. What's that mean? It's Greek and Latin for "Mommy is throwing up all the time. Please be quiet and good." It also means that I obsess about the the perfect food that I'm sure will make me feel perfectly well within minutes. And then I eat it and then--well, I never want to eat it again for the rest of my life. It means I can't eat any sugar or any fruit. If I eat a carb, I need twice as much protein to go with it. It means, in the words of someone who knows, "steak is my friend."  Hyperemesis is getting up at four o'clock every morning because my blood sugar bottoms out and I need to eat. The rest of the day hinges upon whether or not I can go back to sleep. It means that when my husband calls to ask if he can bring me anything on the way home from work, I wish for a fleeting moment that I had Sarah's husband and I ask if he could bring me an IV. I don't even know Sarah's husband; I just know he actually can bring her an IV. Ah...to get hydrated without having to swallow.

Hyperemesis means that my inbox is stuffed to full but it's really hard to put two words together on a consistent basis. I'm much better at reading than writing. So, if you've sent me an email in the last six weeks and I didn't answer, please don't take it personally. I read it, but then I had to leave the computer to throw up;-). And now you know why I didn't get to go see the Pope. I was too afraid of being sick on the Metro or in the crowds.

And what about all those housekeeping resolutions? Well, in all honesty, the major cleaning out was spurred along at break neck speed because I thought we might be looking at major house changes as of  June 1st. We're not. Another long story. For now, let's just say that St. Joseph and I are tight and all heaven had mercy on me. But I'm so glad I put so much effort into cleaning and creating calm. It's stood me in good stead. The house isn't quite what it was a couple of months ago, but it could be if I had, say, a second trimester reprieve. Oh, and the ironing? I haven't touched it in three weeks. The smell of ironing spray makes me gag. But my mom is coming in a couple of weeks and she likes to iron. There's hope.

Patrick has taken over all the cooking. He's a beast in the kitchen. At least that is what he tells me and he tells me that's a good thing. One of his soccer buddies has a chef for a dad. Paddy's taking notes. The kids assure me they're eating well. I'll take their word for it. The kitchen is to be avoided at all costs, save for desperate 4AM runs when I pray all the way down the stairs that the children cleaned up well after dinner and there will be no surprises in the sink.

And what about "school?" We're limping along. Marisa and Colleen are helping to write Serendipity and we are moving oh-so-slowly. Fortunately, it's beautiful outside and we usually spend lots of time outside this time of year anyway.Rebecca continues to keep us supplied with botany lessons. I've planned for it. We will buckle down again in the second trimester when it's 100 degrees outside with 95% humidity.

All in all, I'm grateful for nausea. It's a constant reminder that I'm still pregnant. And really, the view from the couch isn't all that bad.

Gosh, I'm glad she wrote this post!

Dawn has written a clear, inspiring post all about how she makes seasonal plans. And it sounds very much like the way I plan, only way more and way better. It's a beautiful, articulate post that is destined to be printed and pasted on the inside of my planner. Don't miss it! And thanks so much for sharing, Dawn.

The Bluebell Fairy and Friends

My hundred thousand bells of blue,
The splendour of the Spring,
They carpet all the woods anew
With royalty of sapphire hue;
The Primrose is the Queen, 'tis true.
But surely I am King!   
Ah yes,
The peerless Woodland King! 

Loud, loud the thrushes sing their song;
The bluebell woods are wide;
My stems are tall and straight and strong;
From ugly streets the children throng,
They gather armfuls, great and long,
Then home they troop in pride-   
Ah yes,
With laughter and with pride!
Flower Fairies

It was such a wonderful day; the air was full of golden light and the sky of such a blueness as never had been seen before. Out of the palace gates he rode and he wore his crown, and his eyes were more brilliant than the jewels in it, and his smile was more radiant than a sunrise as he looked about him, for every breath he drew in was fragrant, every ugly place was hidden and every squalid corner filled with beauty, for it seemed as if the whole world were waving with Blue Flowers. The Land of the Blue Flower

For a week every year, our whole world waves with blue flowers.  We go, day after day, down to the banks of a well-loved creek and plop down in the midst of an endless carpet of blue. The first day there, the children delight in re-discovering familiar landmarks. There is the tree that Trip and Christian hauled out into the middle of the creek years ago. It's still there, still bringing back memories of lots of time in the woods with faraway friends.  There is the fallen trunk where we line up all the children for a picture every year. It's crumbled quite a bit in the past year. I don't think it will hold them all next year. We spread the blanket and break open the lunch basket. Even the food is always the same: cheese, crackers, grapes, and lots of pistachios. We sketch blue flowers and little white "Fairy Spuds." Someone always "accidentally" falls in the creek.  We fill our winter-weary souls with the crisp blue breath of springtime. And it's never enough. We never want to leave and we always want to return.

Last year, after the bluebells had bloomed and faded, my friend Louise sent me an extraordinary book. The Land of the Blue Flower  was written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, beloved author of A Secret Garden. I read the book myself and then forced myself to wait to share it with my children until the bluebells bloomed this year. It is a classic fairy tale of love and hope and how we are nurtured by nature. In the Land of the Blue Flower, singular things came to pass.

Those who had wasted their days loitering or rioting were obliged to get up in the morning to work in their gardens, and finding that exercise and fresh air improved their health and spirits, they began to like it. Court ladies found it good for their complexions and tempers; busy merchants discovered that it made their heads clearer; ambitious students found that after an hour spent evening and morning over their Blue Flower beds they could study twice as long without fatigue. The children of the princes and nobles became so full of work and talk of the soil and their seeds that they quite forgot to squabble and be jealous of each other's importance at Court.The Land of the Blue Flower

And so it is every year at the bluebells. This year, we wandered down there a very winter-weary crew. Some of us still coughing, Karoline a full five pounds lighter than she'd been before the flu, tired to the bone of being cooped up inside and sick. And over the course of the week, we all bloomed. The sunshine and the sheer beauty of our surroundings worked a magic that medicine can't.

I was talking to my friend Linda around the middle of the week. I told her how I had it in me to pack everyone and everything up, hike the short hike into the woods and plop down on a tarp for the next few hours. Then, I had enough energy to walk back to the van and get us home. This was all followed by a nap. But while we were there, I smelled the fresh air and watched my children play. There was no agenda, just a creek to wade in, trees to climb, a natural world to get to know a little better. She told me she'd tried to persuade a couple of friends to come with her but they begged off, saying they were too tired and too stressed to take a day off. And Linda and I knew that that is precisely when one needs a day in the Land of the Blue Flower.

This week has been a beautiful medley of blue flowers and the sights and sounds of the papal visit. God is very near indeed. I see Him in my land of blue flowers. I hear Him in the voice of the Holy Father.

Burnett writes, "The earth is full of magic...Most men know nothing of it and so comes misery. The first law of the earth's magic is this one. If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought there will be no room in it for an ugly one. This I learned from you and from my brothers the stars. So I gave my people the Blue Flower to think of and work for. It lead them to see beauty and to work happily and filled the land with bloom. I their King, am their brother, and soon they will understand this and I can help them, and all will be well. They shall be wise and joyous and know good fortune.The Land of the Blue Flower

Everyone should have a Land of the Blue Flower, a place where Fairy Spuds welcome her and waving blue flowers remind her that hope and love are eternal and always within reach. Squinting across the creek at the endless fields of blue, I whispered a little prayer for the people who shun fairies. I do hope that they don't shun flowers, too.
 

Never Too Many Flowers or Children

How can there be too many children? That is like saying there are too many flowers. Mother Teresa

It was another glorious day today! Here's a whole new bunch of pictures, courtesy of Mary Beth. One of the funniest things I've ever seen was Nicholas running across the creek to the "island," carrying Paddy's shoes high in the air. Paddy is notorious for wanting nothing to do with mud or water. He's great at suggesting all sorts of dirty, wet things for Nicky to do and then standing back and having his curiosity sated while he watches Nicky get dirty. Nicky left Paddy barefoot on the banks and took his shoes across the creek. Then, all the other kids stood on the island and taunted "Come get them!" until Paddy was forced to wade into the water.Karoline was much happier today, too, though she still remains firmly opposed to getting wet or dirty, either.