Mother’s Kisses

Posted on May 11, 2008 by Barbara Harper

They’re good for bumps and good for lumps
They’re even good for dumps and grumps,
They’re good for stings of bumblebees
And barks from shinnying cherry trees.
For splinters, sunburns, “skeeter-bites,”
For injured feelings after fights,
And scratches, scratched while Tabby hisses —
Mother’s kisses.

There’s naught so pure, there’s naught so sure,
Indeed, they seem a heavenly cure,
For pounded fingers, and stubbed toes,
And all the long, long list of woes.
Yet did you ever think it queer
That while they’re fine for every fear
They’re just as fine with all the blisses —
Mother’s kisses.

~ Annie Badcomb Wheeler

A few other poems for Mother’s Day are here.

My tribute to my mom, written last year, is here. This is one of those days I most miss her.

Happy Mother’s Day!

(Graphic from Anne’s Place)

Mother’s Day Funnies

Posted on May 10, 2008 by Barbara Harper

WHAT MOMS REALLY WANT FOR MOTHER’S DAY

* To be able to eat a whole candy bar (alone) and drink a soda without any “floaties” (ie, backwash).
* Five pounds of chocolate that won’t add twenty pounds to her figure.
* A shower without a child peeking through the curtain with a “Hi Ya Mom!” just as she puts a razor to her ankle.
* For her teenager to announce, “Hey, Mom! I got a full scholarship and a job all in the same day!”
* A grocery store that doesn’t have candy/gum/cheap toys displayed at the checkout line.
* To have a family meal without a discussion about bodily secretions.
*To occasionally get to sleep late on the weekend.
*To take a hot bath without her toddler suddenly screaming, “Mommy, I have to go potty!” as soon as she hits the water.

Laws of Parenting:

1. The later you stay up, the earlier your child will wake up the next morning.
2. For a child to become clean, something else must become dirty.
3. Toys multiply to fill any space available.
4. The longer it takes you to make a meal, the less your child will like it.
5. If the shoe fits… it’s expensive.
6. The surest way to get something done is to tell a child not to do it.
7. The gooier the food, the more likely it is to end up on the carpet.
8. Backing the car out of the driveway causes your child to have to go to the bathroom.

MURPHY’S LAWS FOR PARENTS

1. The tennis shoes you must replace today will go on sale next week.
2. Leakproof thermoses will.
3. The chances of a piece of bread falling with the grape jelly side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.
4. The garbage truck will be two doors past your house when the argument over whose day it is to take out the trash ends.
5. The shirt your child must wear today will be the only one that needs to be washed or mended.
6. Gym clothes left at school in lockers mildew at a faster rate than other clothing.
7. The item your child lost, and must have for school within the next ten seconds, will be found in the last place you look.
8. Sick children recover miraculously when the pediatrician enters the treatment room.
9. Refrigerated items, used daily, will gravitate toward the back of the refrigerator.
10. Your chances of being seen by someone you know dramatically increase if you drive your child to school in your robe and curlers.

(Authors Unknown)

The Mother at Home

Posted on May 10, 2008 by Barbara Harper

When my older children were little, a book making the rounds among young mothers at church was The Mother at Home by John S. C. Abbott. It was originally published in 1833. Some of the principles discussed in that book were foundational to my parenting.

For instance, he instructs mothers (and this would go for teachers as well) to punish for disobedience, not the results of disobedience. He writes:

Never give a command which you do not intend shall be obeyed. There is no more effectual way of teaching a child disobedience, than by giving commands which you have no intention of enforcing. A child is thus habituated to disregard its mother; and in a short time the habit become so strong, and the child’s contempt for the mother so confirmed, that entreaties and threats are alike unheeded.

“Mary, let that book alone,” says a mother to her little daughter, who is trying to pull the Bible from the table . Mary stops for a moment, then takes hold of the book again. Pretty soon the mother looks up and sees that Mary is still playing with the Bible. “Did you not hear me tell you to let that book alone?” she exclaims. “Why don’t you obey?”

Mary takes away her hand for a moment, but is soon again at her forbidden amusement. By and by, down comes the Bible upon the floor. Up jumps the mother, and hastily giving the child a passionate blow, exclaims, “There then, obey me next time.” The child screams, and the mother picks up the Bible, saying, “I wonder why my children do not obey me better.”

…Is it strange that a child, thus managed, should be disobedient? No. She is actually led on by her mother to insubordination; she is actually taught to pay no heed to her directions. Even the improper punishment which sometimes follows transgression, is not inflicted on account of her disobedience, but for the accidental consequences…. Had the Bible not fallen, the disobedience of the child would have passed unpunished. Let it be an immutable principle in family government, that your word is law.

He describes a better way to handle the situation, then comments, “I know that some mothers say that they have not time to pay so much attention to their children. But the fact is, that not one-third of the time is required to take care of an orderly family, which is necessary to take care of a disorderly one.”

There are many other good principles here, among them: “Never punish when a child has not intentionally done wrong.” “Allowances must be made for ignorance.” “Guard against too much severity.” “Every effort should be made to make the home the most desirable place.” You might not agree with every point (I disagree with his suggestion to have the child ask forgiveness a second time), but overall it is a very helpful and thought-provoking book. I wish I had read it about once a year.

Your Picture is Worth a Thousand Dollars Contest

Posted on May 1, 2008 by Barbara Harper

The 5 Minutes for Mom site is hosting a series of contests to celebrate Mother’s Day, and this one is being sponsored by Egg Beaters: entrants can post or send a picture of what motherhood means to them, and it can include their own mothers or oneself as a mother.

This is one of my favorite pictures from my children’s childhood. With all the ups and down and challenges of parenting, this is what I hope stands out and what I hope we carry with us: the love and the joy.

For more information on this contest, click here.

The Dog Pillow

Posted on April 29, 2008 by Barbara Harper

One day when Jesse was about 5, we spotted pillows that looked like animals in K-Mart, and he fell in love with this one.

One of the joys of his young life was when his pillow was washed and dried and came out plump and fluffy.

He carried that thing everywhere: to our bed or the couch if he wasn’t feeling well, to camp, on trips. Once as were were boarding a plane, one of other passengers saw this little boy carrying his big dog pillow and smiled.

It has held up better than any pillow we have ever owned. He’s had it for almost ten years.

But he is 14 now and has been in the gradual process of “putting away childish things” over the last few years. When we hosted his twelfth birthday party, we took the last of the bear pictures off his bedroom walls before the kids in his class came over. We’ve been pulling books and toys off the shelf a little at a time that are no longer receiving any attention. I believe he took a “regular” pillow to camp last year. And just recently he told me he wanted to put away his dog pillow and get a normal one.

That’s a good step, a right step, an expected step. I wouldn’t want to him to cart his dog pillow off to college or his honeymoon.

But as a parent, there is a bit of a pang as each vestige of childhood is laid aside bit by bit.

When they are little we so anticipate the next step in their development; we sometimes even devise ways to “help” them sit up or begin to walk, and we coax that first word out with great enthusiasm! But after the long days and sleep-interrupted nights of babyhood, the blossoming curiosity of toddler days, and the busy school years, it seems like their growth is a train hurtling ever more quickly to that time when they will stand on their own two feet as an adult. We know that’s the desired end result of our years of love and training, but it comes all too fast.

There is nothing we can do to stop it, and we don’t really want to hold them back. But we smile wistfully as we remember a little boy’s delight in a warm, plumped up dog pillow fresh from the dryer.

Time Travel Tuesday: To Grandmother’s house we go…

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Barbara Harper

My Life as Annie’s weekly Time Travel Tuesday asks this week:

Travel back to grandmother’s (or aunt… or ?) house.

What are the smells you remember walking in when you were young?

What are things you remember seeing every time you were there?

Any special things you always did with or at grandmother’s house?

We spent some time living with my mother’s father when I was a child. He loved to tease and had a very distinctive laugh. That laugh is what always comes to mind when I think of him. Later on when we moved to another town and he remarried, whenever he came to visit he always brought Dunkin’ Donuts, and when I woke up in the mornings he and my mom were always visiting at the kitchen table.

My grandmother tended to move to be near different ones of her children at different times, so I don’t remember a particular house associated with her. But for some years when she lived near us, I very often went to spend the night with her. We shared a love of reading, and one of my delights was staying up late to read when I spent the night with her. She must have had an additional bed in her room, because I can remember us both being in our respective beds with a book and a lamp on until late at night. Her children were scattered from Texas and Louisiana to Alabama, and she would spend some part of the summers driving around to visit them. Two or three of those summers she took me with her, and though I don’t remember a lot of specifics, I remember that as a special time with her. She also loved to crochet and was almost always working on some project or another if she was sitting still. Sadly I don’t have much of anything that she crocheted except a few coasters and a doily and one baby blanket. But I remember the industriousness and always associate crocheting with her.

Happy Birthday, Hubby!

Posted on March 6, 2008 by Barbara Harper

Today is my husband, Jim’s, 50th birthday!

He was very nice to me on mine, so I will return the favor and not tease him — at least not much. 🙂

Hope you have a great one, hon, and a great 50 more!!

Time Travel Tuesday: 2013

Posted on January 15, 2008 by Barbara Harper

My Life as Annie’s weekly Time Travel Tuesday looks ahead this week:

Where do you see yourself in five years? Will you be living where you live now? What’s going on in your life five years from now???

Five years from now my kids will be 28, 25, and my baby will be 19. I can hardly believe it!! The older two will likely have moved from home, probably will be married, and may even have a child or two by then. Jesse will be in college. So we’ll be well on our way to an empty nest.

It’s funny that I looked forward to an empty nest when my kids were little and I was sometimes overwhelmed, but over the last several years I have been dreading it. It’s not that I won’t have plenty of things to occupy my time and attention, but I just can’t imagine missing them as much as I know I will. It will be sad that part of my primary occupation will be over.

But….that’s how life is supposed to go. And I am looking forward to new phases of marriage and grandchildren. Since I have been living with all males for 28 years, it will be nice to have some females around when my guys marry. And I am so excited about having grandchildren some day that I can hardly stand it!

I have no idea where we’ll be living. We’ve learned long ago that, with corporate takeovers and buy-outs, closings and downsizings, the days of a lifelong career with one company seem to be over, so who knows what will happen with my husband’s job in the next years. I do love this area and hope we can stay in the southeast. But I do hope to be moved from this particular house. Though we’ve improved it from what it was when we first moved in, there are some problems with the layout, particularly in the kitchen/dining area, which can’t be overcome without a lot of money and time and trouble. And I’d like a home with a little more space around it.

In five years I’ll be 55. I can hardly believe that, either!! I hope to be in better shape and at a lesser weight than I am now: I’ve started taking baby steps that direction in the last few months. I will probably still be doing much of what I am now: being a homemaker, reading, blogging, helping with the ladies’ ministry at church, hopefully doing more writing.

Thanks, Annie, for this opportunity to stop and look ahead a little. The next few years are sure to be quite eventful! I am thankful that the Lord knows what is ahead and has promised to be with us every step of the way.

Saturday Photo Scavenger Hunt: Skinny

Posted on January 11, 2008 by Barbara Harper

PhotoHunt

Theme: Skinny | Become a Photo Hunter

The first and only subject that came to mind for this category is my youngest son, Jesse.

This was on his 14th birthday last September. He’s about 5’9″ or 5’10” and weighs 134 lbs. (though I am surprised it’s that much). When he was younger his brothers used to tease him about using him for a starving kid’s commercial. Somehow he got all the skinny genes that the rest of us missed — and he munches all the time.

Believe it or not, he started life as a 12 lb. baby. It was kind of funny — he was born in a women’s hospital where the only babies were newborns, and they didn’t have any diapers that would fit him. Someone had to go out and buy some. We’re not sure where the weight then came from — I didn’t have gestational diabetes that pregnancy and my weight gain was the most moderate of the three, and the quickest to get back to normal afterwards. He didn’t look fat when he was born — just bigger than you average newborn.

Christmas traditions

Posted on December 24, 2007 by Barbara Harper

Earlier in the month someone, I can’t remember who, was hosting a meme about Christmas traditions. I didn’t have time to write then, and didn’t think we had all that many, but as we have gone through the month I’ve noted several things that we almost always do, and I guess that’s what traditions are made of. 🙂

Jim doesn’t like to put the Christmas tree up after Thanksgiving, especially years like this one when we have an extra week in November. So we try to aim for the first Saturday in December. We all go out and pick the tree, always a real one. When we lived in GA we found a place where you could cut your own, and that was fun. Then we bring it home and the boys get the Christmas boxes from the attic while Jim gets the tree into its holder. We put on a Christmas CD (this year a new one of piano renditions of both sacred and “fun” carols called “It’s Christmas” by Kenon Renfrow); Jim and the boys figure out the lights while I put out some of the decorations, and then we all put ornaments on the tree. The boys enjoy putting out the ones they’ve been given over the years and of course we all enjoy commenting or exclaiming over various ones each year.

Through the month there are various programs and recitals in connection with school and church. It got to be a bit much when we had kids in high school and elementary school and therefore double the things to go to. They were always enjoyable once we got there, but just the number of evenings taken up with such things got to be kind of stressful. One year we had church Sunday night, the elementary piano recital Monday night, secondary piano recital Tuesday night, prayer meeting Wednesday, elementary Christmas program Thursday night, and secondary Friday night. That about did this homebody in. 🙂 Now I do kind of miss the elementary ones — but not enough to go to without having a child of my own in them. Our kid’s choirs at church do usually do a Christmas program one Sunday night in December that we enjoy, and the adult choir does a cantata every year. Our adult Sunday school class has a party and the kids’ classes usually have some kind of party of Christmas event as well.

The last few years we’ve gone to Hollywild Animal Park’s Holiday Lights Safari and seen all the neat light displays and fed animals.

I like to watch some Christmas movie every year, but not always the same one. We’ve varied between A Christmas Carol (the George C. Scott version), It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas.

I make Harvest Loaf cake every year, but usually a couple of weeks before Christmas. Often I give away extra loaves of it. I don’t know how it got started, but Jim loves Chicken in a Biscuit crackers around Christmas time, and I get the canned spray cheese for them. My mom used to send those sausage, cheese, and cracker packages, so we’ve gotten into the habit of having something like that around for munchies during December, along with store-bought eggnog (I can’t stand the stuff, but Jim, Jason, and Jesse like it). We used to make Christmas butter cookies every year — we had gotten away from it just due to busy-ness, and now the boys are probably too old for it. I don’t know — they might still enjoy it. I also have a recipe for gingerbread teddy bears that I make sometimes and wanted to this year, but haven’t yet.

No one here wants a big sit-down breakfast on Christmas morning, and since we like to take time opening presents and I have low blood sugar, I can’t wait til afterward. My solution the past few years has been to get one package of Sister Schubert’s sausage rolls and one package of the same brand of cinnamon rolls, warm them up in the morning and set them out with some fruit, and everyone wanders in the kitchen and gets some whenever they feel the urge.

Christmas morning we gather in the living room and Jim reads the Christmas story and prays. Then we open gifts usually one by one or each person working on one at a time, and we show each other as we go along. We like to take our time and enjoy it along the way rather than just having an opening frenzy. The Christmas tree and presents are in the living room while the stockings are downstairs in the family room (there’s a mantle and fireplace there), so ate some point when all the gifts are open we go down to investigate the stockings.

When the boys were little I used to make a birthday cake for Jesus to help them remember in a way they could relate to whose birthday we were celebrating. We haven’t done that in a number of years. Usually on Christmas day we have ham, either mashed potatoes and gravy or some kind of cheesy potato casserole, either a salad or steamed broccoli or a vegetable mix, rolls, apple and pumpkin pies. We eat around noon or 1:00, then fix a plate of leftovers or sandwiches in the evening.

Then usually in the evenings we’ll call grandparents. This is when I miss my mom the most.

Jim usually has vacation days enough left to take the whole week off.

We’ve never done Santa Claus. I was originally going to write a whole separate post on this, but wanted to do it before Christmas, and time’s running out. I used to be militantly against Santa, but I have known some godly people who do incorporate him into Christmas in good conscience and still feel they keep the main focus on Christ, so I have softened up a bit. It’s one of those things that each family should consider and do as they feel led before the Lord. But for our family we felt that a strong emphasis on Santa put the wrong perspective on the holiday. We do look forward to gifts, but when the kids were little I hated that they were met everywhere with, “What’s Santa bringing you for Christmas?” Plus, though rewards aren’t in themselves wrong and every parents has used them, the whole idea of being good so you can get presents felt wrong to me: I wanted to teach my children to be good as unto the Lord. Though gifts are a big part of Christmas, we wanted the main focus to be on God’s gift to us of His Son ad the salvation He freely offers.

I do have problems with trying to get children to believe this whole false mythology about Santa (and some put an awful lot of effort into getting their kids to believe) only to have their kids find out it all wasn’t true. I don’t know if any kids have been seriously traumatized enough by that to disbelieve everything else their parents taught them, but, still, it just doesn’t seem right to me.

And besides, I don’t want to give Santa the credit for bringing those gifts! I want my kids to know they came from us because we love them.

I think it is good to teach about the original real St. Nicholas, but I do think young children have problems connecting that to the Santa figure of today.

Over the years we’ve regulated Santa to a fairy tale character. We’ve watched Rudolph and other specials and tried to keep our kids from spoiling it for other kids. I think when children are young they want to believe in something like that. I remember when the boys used to watch Superman cartoons, once Jesse said longingly that he wished there really was a Superman. I was startled and tried to explain that God is so much better in so many ways than any made-up superhero, and I do think he agreed and understood, but he was still a little reluctant to let go of that wish. I don’t want my children so enamored of a made-up character that the real wonder of the real God — who loves us and has done so much for us and is ready to hear and answer every prayer according to His will and meet every need — loses its luster.

Well, those are our traditions. We kind of hold loosely to most — I think traditions help family cohesiveness, but I never want to become enslaved to them or to the thought that it just won’t be a “perfect” Christmas if this or that isn’t done. Whatever we do we try to keep the main focus on love — God’s for us, ours for Him, and ours for each other.

May you have a wonderful Christmas celebrating God’s love for you.