Musings

It's 6:22 a.m. and my children are still asleep. I should be opening my Bible first, but I am feeling blogger's guilt. Mixed up priorities? I should say so. Hopefully they will sleep long enough to do both.

It has been good to be back in Bible Study Fellowship. I started BSF seven years ago with the study of John and we are back to it again. It's like returning to an old friend, but with new stories to tell each other. Studying the life of Moses last year gave me such a deeper understanding of the intimate relationship God had with the Jewish people and made reading the words in John that they didn't recognize Christ when He came so heartbreaking. I want to grab them and shake them and say "Open your eyes!."

I know getting back into a schedule is good for me and will be good for the kids, too, but right now, I am feeling quite behind on life. I had to wash and put away seven loads of laundry yesterday. SEVEN loads of tiny socks and minute onesies and umpteen pairs of blue hospital scrubs. I can count how long it has been since I opened the washing machine by the number of scrubs Dean has worn and discarded. It was not a pretty number. Not a good housewifely number. More of a lazy, spending too much time sewing little stuffed birds type of number.

I blame my sister. She came up with the stuffed birds (pictures will follow at a later date) and we spent every spare moment on them when the children were occupying themselves sufficiently that there was no frank bleeding. Every time Molly visits, we have a long list of things we hope to accomplish and literally get not one item checked off the list. This time we were checking things off LEFT AND RIGHT, people. We visited a farm, baked an elaborate Super Girl cake (see above), threw a birthday party, shopped, made dinners, sewed our birds. We were productive! We were so uncommonly un-slothful!

The only fly in the ointment of our accomplishment was the fact that we couldn't really feel good about checking shopping off our list. I don't think anyone could feel good after our shopping experience. In fact, I am pretty sure that some of the Gap employees made appointments to get their tubes tied after our shopping experience.

It was all fun and games while we had the kids in the play area. Jude was doing what he does best, namely sitting with an expression on his face like someone just killed his puppy in front of him, and the girls were wildly careening about. If we had left them there, this story would have a happy ending. Instead we packed them up and took them into the Gap and there made a very crucial parenting mistake. We decided to try things on. With four small children. At dinnertime. Suffice it to say there was a great deal of sweating (Molly and me), screaming (Angry Molly Jo), flinging of large handfuls of crayons (Jude is innocent), injury (Frankie), wild running through racks of cashmere sweaters (Frankie and Sylvie), opening of occupied dressing room doors (Wee Furious Molly), loud sobbing (all participants) and some mutterings about birth control (me).

When you're riding high on the parenting glory of a Super Girl cake, it takes moments like those to keep you humble.