I was feeling impatient with our home renovation. I just wanted it to be done.

But as I was looking at these pictures, I think I’ve changed my mind.

Doug didn’t grow up with his dad around, but by God’s grace everything turned out fine.

“Do you think he’ll remember this?” Doug asks me about Tom.

“I don’t know, but I think it will be a part of him even if he can’t remember it.”

I like how this house is becoming a way of telling our family’s story.

I will remember to look back at all that has been done instead of the work that is still to come.

See the comments for this post: The Work Process

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)

I write posts on parenting at Alpha Mom. Join me there to see what I’ve been thinking about lately…

Craft A Halloween Ghost Tree

Advice For New Parents: What To Keep, What To Do

Say No So You Can Say Yes To Something Greater

Make An Explorer’s Kit From Paper Coffee Cups

Play Like A Grandmother

More Purposeful Plans And Family Routines For The School Year

See the comments for this post: Weekend Reads at Alpha Mom

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)

Everything for the past few months has been leading up to this–her first day at kindergarten.

We rushed to find the house so she could go to school, but the house is not ready yet so we’re staying at my grandmother’s house this week.

My grandmother has lived in her house for more than fifty years. It’s the one place that has been the same my whole life. Everything is so comfortingly familiar–my grandad’s recliner, the rug, the guest bedroom. I’ve had many pictures taken during my childhood on those same steps in front of her house. I can’t think of a more fitting place for Lane to have her picture taken on this day.

I’ve tried not to be too sentimental during these last few days because I know that we made the most of all the days in the middle.

New outfit, check.

New hair clips.

New lunch box.

Fun trip to Chick-hooray to celebrate.

I don’t have any more days of not needing to be anywhere by 7:30 in the morning. I’m ready for this new chapter. I’m desperate for routines, feeling settled, and getting to write here more.

I write a little about family at AlphaMom. Read these recent posts:

Craft: Paint Chip Board Game

5 Ways to Make Staying at Home Feel Like Vacation

Making Home in the Temporary

Parenting the Second Child

Help Far-Away Family Members Seem Closer To Home

Craft: Tiny Town from Felt

Here’s to a new week, and a new school year!

See the comments for this post: The First Day of School & a Few Links

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)

If my kids spend every day this summer in the kiddie pool, I think I will call it a good summer.

$5 plastic pool used 4 summers in a row = $5 well spent

She will start kindergarten in a couple of months, and we’ll have plenty of time for plans and activities then.

I write a little about parenting at AlphaMom, and I recently wrote about:

Sail into Summer with Ice Cube Boats – a summertime craft you won’t have to keep.

Claiming Small Victories – “When your child is tired and hungry on the way home, it’s a small victory to find the bag of dry cereal you left in the car three weeks earlier. Win.”

Affirm Your Child’s Heart Through Play Time – Like one friend told me, when you talk to your son, “He’s not your little boy, he’s your big boy.”

See the comments for this post: My Kids’ Summer Plans

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)

Our 1st goal for the new year: Move out of the apartment. Done.

We didn’t want to move during the holidays, so we waited until January 1 to start packing. Moving boxes piled around the Christmas tree.

This was a seven-day move, so we used two guidelines to protect our marriage:

1. Follow our respective strengths. I am good at organizing and planning the details. Doug is good at making sure the boxes are ready before the movers come.

2. Respect the crazy. It makes me irritated to think about items from different rooms being in the same box. Doug uses a lot of tape. The stress of moving makes people feel and do crazy things. Go with it.

We decided what we needed for the next few months and packed the rest. In only seven days, most of our stuff was neatly boxed, wrapped, and stacked in a single storage unit.

We cleaned up. We turned in our keys. We felt so free as we rode into the sunset.

It feels great to have our stuff put away for a while. We’ll be glad to see it again in a few months from now.

We’re staying as house guests for the weeks before we go to Florence. One goal accomplished, more to go…

See the comments for this post: The Move Out (Done in 7 Days)

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)

This post is part of a series “Romance to Real Life” which focuses on some of the struggles Doug and I faced when we first got married. One of those rocky starts was deciding how we would celebrate the Christmas season.

I thought my parents were normal and that I had a normal upbringing until I got married, and then Doug informed me that as much as he loves them, my parents were not normal. What?

I don’t understand the way Doug and his family do certain things, so I guess that makes us even.

When we were engaged I read a book about marriage and an entire chapter of it was on holidays. It warned us that holidays could be tricky, but I thought we had it covered. After all, we had talked about it, and it sounded like we pretty much wanted to do the same things for Christmas.

Then we actually got married, and it was a wake-up call to learn that our ideas of Christmas were not the same at all. Honestly, I think I was holding on to my traditions a little too tightly and having too high expectations for Christmas Day.

Doug said Christmas decorations were tacky.

I wanted to have stockings.

He was used to having presents on Christmas Eve, and I wanted to do them on Christmas morning.

And so on.

It didn’t help that our first bare apartment didn’t reflect the season of joy and family togetherness: no tree and not even a good couch. We tried going back to our parents’ homes, like most new couples do — Thanksgiving with one side of the family and Christmas with the other, and then alternating the following year. That didn’t work so well after a while. Not only did we always have to travel, but one of us would always be a newcomer trying to navigate through someone else’s decades-old family traditions.

Eventually we realized we wanted to start having Christmas at home even though we didn’t own a house yet. We let our apartment become our home instead of treating it as a short-term place. It was more than that, really…we were starting our own family and forming our own traditions, not just trying to repeat what we had grown up doing.

One of the first things we do at the beginning of every Christmas season is ask, “What are three things you want to do this year that will help you feel like it’s a good Christmas?” We try our best and the rest is optional. We don’t always give the same answers every year, but they’re pretty close.

We still go see family, one side every year at Thanksgiving and the other side on a day close to Christmas, but we’re putting down our own roots and keeping Christmas Eve at home.

That doesn’t mean everything is worked out now. We still get touchy about some things, and the news didn’t settle well with everyone, but the process of making traditions for our own family released us from the burden of stress and obligations, leaving us free to richly enjoy Christ’s birth and time together. And I’m not just saying that because it sounds good on a blog. It really did.

Doug eventually came around to the idea of having more Christmas decorations (he likes our tree), so it was a win for everyone.

See the comments for this post: Christmas at Home (Wait…whose home?)

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)

My head has been swimming lately with so many possibilities that my productivity took a nosedive and it’s been hard to concentrate. Normally when that happens I do the one productive thing I can do without thinking: I start a load of laundry.

But this sort of unproductivity was beyond laundry.

It wasn’t about Christmas, even though every one of my friends has talked about the anxiety that comes with Christmas and extended family. I haven’t felt Christmas stress in the last couple of years since I decided to have “Come As You Are” Christmas. If something feels stressful, we don’t do it. I also don’t get organized with lots of lists and charts. What we do is we each think of three Christmas activities that sound most fun to us, and then we do those. We get a lot of satisfaction that way, and anything else is optional.

Two years ago when I didn’t even realize I was pregnant, our Christmas was low-key. Last year was extremely celebratory with our first tree, and Doug and I spent late nights together making handmade gifts for the kids. This year will be somewhere in between. Because we do the things we like, I can’t wait to put the tree up and get Christmas started again.

But something else has been on my mind lately…thoughts about where we might go after the holidays.

I’ve spent many late nights looking on Craigslist for apartments in different cities. Where might our family live? Where could we feel enriched while still caring for the practical and personal needs of our two small children?

Last night our power went off, and that never happens. I could focus and think clearly for the first time in a week. Not having so many activities beckoning, I felt a renewed sense of energy. I got more done in an hour without electricity than I did during the entire rest of the day. I think I’ll remember that during the next few weeks, and turn the lights off early on the nights when everything starts to feel full and busy.

Oh, and did you want to know where we’ll be going?

We’ve decided to move to Florence, and we found a furnished apartment to rent. It will only be for a season, and I’m not sure where we’ll go after that. We’ve been before, and I’ve dreamed about living there ever since.

See the comments for this post: The Night the Lights Went Out

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)

I put a new entry in my Chocolate Notebook, the one that records chocolate I have loved and what I was doing when I ate it.

The Mo’s Dark Bacon Bar, a long-time favorite reserved only for the most special occasions, came from the Saturday afternoon we spent on a quilt on the grass in front of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth.

It was Doug’s 40th birthday actually, and thanks to a sweet day of babysitting we had a really good talk.

I realized that Doug had worked hard for 25 years, and he would likely work 25 more, Lord willing. He could use a break. Suddenly it made perfect sense for him to take a year off work now instead of saving it all for the end when he retires in his old age.

My practical, common sense, saving money nature became convinced, “We can make this work. Let’s do it!”

Now, less than six weeks after that decision, Doug has resigned from his position at work, and in two more weeks he’ll start his year off. I can’t wait to see what he does when he has free time to pursue his own ideas instead of spending sixty hours a week for someone else’s.

This year will cost us, sure, but I consider it an investment in my husband and for our family.

So while I’ve been writing a little less here than I normally do, it’s because I’m getting used to this and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that when the holidays are over in January, we’ll give up our apartment, put our furniture and other belongings in a storage unit, and find somewhere new we want to live. I don’t know yet where we’ll be.

I was way too cautious growing up. I wouldn’t have tried something like this, but I’m excited. It’s going to be an adventure, that’s for certain.

See the comments for this post: Doug’s Year Off (This Might Sound Crazy)

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)

“Now we’re in trouble,” thought Blue Kangaroo.

Some days go so smoothly, I get an amazing amount of things crossed of my list.

Some days when I look at the clock, I can’t believe it’s lunch time because I don’t know where the morning went.

As a mother to small children, it can be hard when I feel like I lose control over my day. It seems like small things shouldn’t take a long time to do, changing a diaper for instance, but everything takes so much time when you add it together.

When a morning presents difficult challenges, like this morning when I cleaned up a mess that is too gross to tell you about, it’s easy to feel sabotaged. How many times have I wondered if my children are working against me? Like when you’re trying to get ready to go somewhere, and your kid takes her shoes and socks off at the moment you should be walking out the door.

In life with small children, interruptions and messes and small things are not disruptions to my day, they are my day, and I should be ready for them. Why would I expect my day to go as I planned?

It’s just a rule of life, along with our family rule of “Don’t put nuts in your nose,” and the advice that it’s simply no use to rush a three year old. So I hope to laugh about it and know that these days won’t last long.

Detective Snow White is annoyed that Tom doesn’t want to go on a secret mission with her, and we need to go to the grocery store, which is an adventure in itself. So here we go…

See the comments for this post: My Day is a Series of Five Minutes at a Time

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)

Did you know sippy cups are optional?

One of the easiest ways to clean a sippy cup is to use the dishwasher, but easier than that is not using one.

Our kids learned to drink from small glasses. (Actually, they’re shot glasses. They are just the right size.) We start by giving them a little water. If it all dribbles down their chin, it’s no worry. It doesn’t take long for babies to figure out how a cup works.

I like that I never discover a three-day-old sippy cup on the floor of the car with milk gunking up the straw.

If you’re worried about glass over a tile or concrete floor, you can use a plastic medicine cup instead.

And our broken glass count? Kids: 1 Me: 100.

Lane, 14 months

One thing that helps us is our household rule to keep food and drinks at the table. The kids don’t wander around our home carrying their drinks.

It’s easier to go places when my kids can drink from a regular cup or water bottle. (There is a small amount of confusion at friends’ houses or the church nursery. All the kids are given sippy cups and my kid didn’t know how to use them.)

See the comments for this post: Never Clean a Sippy Cup Again

© SmallNotebook.org (all rights reserved)