This is our Together

Always imperfect

Sometimes impatient

Occasionally inept

But this is our Together

It's a busy life

He's got a tired wife

There are moments of strife

But this is our Together

Muddy feet

Muddy walls

Muddy tub

But this is our Together

There are no little things 

Except the ones that are woven 

Together to make our life's big picture 

This is our Together

Noisy toys

Noisy boys

Noisy joys

This is our Together

It's a crazy circus

Squabbles in surplus 

Plenty of purpose 

This is our Together

Occasionally grumbly

Sometimes gross

Always grateful

This is our Together

Thoughts on Snuggles, While Snuggling

I don’t really like it– 

I feel the window of time closing on Premium Snuggle Days.

I still snuggle my “baby” to sleep most days.

I wasn’t going to be That Mom.

I was going to be Mother Efficient.

My kids were going to go to sleep on their own, on my time, not theirs.

Except it didn’t work that way.  Not for us.

I changed my mind about snuggles. 

Snuggles are not just for feeding.

They are for security. Connection. Relationship. Happy, calming hormones- for both mother and child.

And then, OT meandered its way into our journey. 

Since Occupational Therapy days, my little kids get (mostly) unlimited snuggles. They get their arms rubbed, their legs rubbed, their feet squeezed, their hands squeezed, figure eights rubbed on their backs, and they get rubbed criss-cross side to side across midline. 

I don’t always think about what I am doing; I just do it.  I squeeze them as tight as they need, as often as they want.

  

Because all that touching and squeezing and rubbing and midline crossing aren’t just weird things that lovestruck mothers do; they are paving neural pathways in developing brains. 

I think it’s a conservative guesstimate to say that I have snuggled with a child or multiple children an average of 2 hours a day, since I became a parent.  

3,821 days x 2 hours a day = 7,642  hours of my life that I’ll never get back.

I’m so glad I invested those hours in that way.

While I expect that in the next 3,821 days, the snuggle time will fade into oblivion, I hope the connection continues to increase.  

Whatever the activity, I hope my kids always want to gather in, close to me, and Just Be Together.

Just an old church basement piano

Our church has an Upstairs Piano and a Downstairs Piano.  The Downstairs Piano perfectly fit the classic neglected church basement piano stereotype. You'd get a three for one deal-  hit one note and get three different pitches.

The paper inside the piano said it was tuned in 2001. Only God knows if it had been tuned since then, but judging from its sound, I'd guess that's correct. 

That all changed today, when Mr. Piano Tuner came and gave Downstairs Piano a new lease on life. It now sounds like a real piano, not just a twang machine. 

.........

Maybe you find yourself feeling like a classic neglected church basement piano, significantly in need of a tune up. Maybe you are the one whose accepted role is for people (especially young and untrained people) to put pressure on all your buttons, and you respond by belting out loud, repulsive sounds. 

Will you just glumly embrace that as your lot in life? Will you call for- and accept- a good tune-up, so that your life once again has the potential to produce music that will bring others joy? 

I asked Mr. Tuner if Downstairs Piano was even capable of being tuned- is it worth the effort? He said he won't know until he tries.

Neither will you.

It just might change your life.

.............

Pictured: the inside of our sanctuary,  near where Upstairs Piano resides. I love this view! (Our church moved to this historic church building in 2020.)

What I've been listening to

 1. One Year Bible, audio version 

I've been frustrated by the reality that my reading time and space is so limited.  When I'm sitting,  I often have a squirmy child or four squished up against my space bubble. So a goal this year is to listen. I'm listening in the New Living Translation,  which I don't prefer in terms of a precise translation, but it helps bring the passages to life in meaningful ways. It has been helpful to listen to the astonishing accounts and the scandalous sagas and the fierce family feuds and realize that humanity's insanity is not new in 2025. It is refreshing to see the threads of mercy and redemption woven in throughout the ages. May that mercy and redemption be reflected in my life,  and extended to every person I encounter.

2. War-time historical fiction 

I've actually been able to read a few books recently and am intrigued that I am currently drawn in to these books with similar themes. A Place to Hang the Moon, Over and Out, and Lines of Courage all spurred me to research various historical references. 

3. Kisses on a Postcard is a dramatized retelling of a boy and his brother who were London evacuees. I discovered this in my rabbit trail after reading A Place to Hang the Moon.  I have only listened to part 1, but plan to obtain access to the rest.

4. "How Did Indigenous Lands Become Mennonite Farms?" interview with John Ruth on the Anabaptist Perspectives series. These are things not taught in history classes but uncovered when one man traces the history of his family's property.

5. News. I have to choose my news sources carefully, to keep my emotional reactions to a minimum. What works best for me is NTD Evening News. I also listen to Joshua Philipp's Crossroads channel, where he explains current events in a way that makes sense, and generally de-escalates my emotional response to the daily drama. Although I certainly don't agree with all his premises or conclusions,  I generally appreciate his perspectives. Among the many reasons I appreciate Josh are his in-depth investigative reporting and his frequent use of the phrase, "We'll just have to see how this plays out!" He includes a daily Q&A, and has spent 5-7 minutes on my questions,  the couple times I asked them.

6. "Hello, hello! I'm Benjamin Cello!" Hey, it's a good way to get the toddler to hold still for the nebulizer treatments she was on for a few weeks!

7. Mike Winger at biblethinker.org helps me sort through practical questions from a Scripture based perspective.  

8. Noise. Toddler noise. Sibling squabbles. Hammers. Piano. Math lessons. Noise.  

9. Silence. My favorite sound. For awhile.  Then I'm ready for #8 again.

For your mental exhaustion....

Come, take a tour of my brain with me.

Here's the map:

Step on into the foyer of my mind; as you take off your shoes, we can discuss whether it is "foy-yay" or "foy-yer". We'll hang up that conversation with our coats,  and I'll observe whether you toss your shoes on the jumbled pile of miscellaneous footwear, or set them in a neat left-right pattern by the wall.

Enter the kitchen, where new ideas are cooked up hourly. We'll toss a bunch of word salad into the blender and- voila! We have us some Brainstorm Blend. Simmering on the stove is some stuff I've been stewing over- it ought to be good! We'll toss in some "sneezenings" (as our five year old says), and serve up some Deep Thoughts to chew on for awhile.  We'll lay a number of things on the chopping block; when our discussion gets out of hand, we'll just cut it out.

Now that we've ingested things that will take a bit of time to digest, we'll sneak in, quiet as a mouse, to the Book Gallery. What's outstanding about this library is that it contains only books that will be written; none that actually have been.  There's the binder of my Dad's stories that I plan to edit and print. There's a kids' book about people who live in all 50 states. There's a book with all the songs I've written and the stories behind them. There's a book titled "Through My Dirty Window." There are random papers flitting around with unfinished profound thoughts, observations, acronyms,  and lists- lots and lots of lists. The walls are plastered with crayon art, train doodles, and amateur watercolor paintings.

Although the Book Gallery is intended to be a place of blessed quietness, where one can settle in for a silent night, the halls are suddenly decked with balls and hollering. A young lass clickety-clacks past in her tap shoes,  back and forth, back and forth, up and down the halls.  Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack. A rubber bouncy ball bounds from one end of the hall to the other. Hot Wheels vroom down the racetrack. The piano drums out Charlie Brown and Snoopy from the music room. 

The music room! Come- now is the time to worship! There's actually quite an assortment of instruments. Most of them were short term enchantments of mine, but I'm pretty sure I'll pick them up again- someday when my arthritic fingers will need something to keep them agile. A violin that you can fiddle with-after we replace a couple strings. My dad's harmonica. A guitar. Another guitar. A couple recorders. A piano. A piano keyboard. A clarinet. A tambourine. A ukulele. 

After we make some joyful noise, let's step it up a bit, and visit the gym. My expertise is mental gymnastics, but there is a stationary bike for going in circles, and a treadmill on which I tread lightly. There's quite an assortment of bands and light weights. There are balance boards and a step platform. Most of these wonderful plans have come to a standstill.  I really do need to step it up a bit.

That's really only a tour of the ground level, but since the elevator doesn't quite make it to the top, that's where we'll have to end for today.  

Good Day!

In a Jam

 Once upon a day in the universe, there lived a young lady who worked very hard. Well, she wasn't so young. She may have been 40-something. 

She spent her days as a "stay at home mom" (SAHM) running hither and thither, and being made busy by innumerable responsibilities that, really, she began to wonder what exactly the "SAH" part of "SAHM" means. 

One day, this young lady was enjoying the rare luxury of a day spent MOSTLY at home, and was thoroughly enjoying the coziness of her jammies.  

There was a grocery order that needed to be picked up. "You know," said the young lady, with an air of conspiracy. "I can quick-comb my hair and go in my jammies! No one will ever even know!!"  

And she did. 

She quick-combed her hair and strapped in some children, and off they scurried to the supermarket,  where the grocery order was luxuriously loaded right into the vehicle for them.

It was working!

And no one was even going to know!

Then she called her friend with the new house, and asked if she could stop in to look.  Yes, that would work. No, the friend wouldn't care that she was in her jammies. 

So she did. The friend's mom stopped in also. No worries. 

Alrighty then. They headed for home.

Just before they got to their last turn before home, things took a bit of a turn. A pickup was stopped, flashers on. 

The lady slowed to a stop. The neighbor in the pickup came back to explain that a truck had roared by and startled the horse into the ditch. They had detached horse from buggy. The horse was out on the road, the buggy was still in the ditch. 

There was only one decently human thing to do. The young lady hopped out of her vehicle,  jammies and all, and helped the neighbor and the Amish man push his buggy along and out of the ditch. 

The End.