My little flock

"He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young."

Isaiah 40:11

Today, I am reminded of the great blessing and the tremendous responsibility I have been given as the mother of these little ones.

Today, I pray the Lord would gather these lambs in his arms and carry them close to his heart all the days of their lives. And I praise Him for gently leading me as I care for them.

Today, I thank Him for the mom who raised me to never give up. This has been an invaluable piece of practical advice for a young mother to heed. Some days, the only reason dinner makes it to the table is because I know better than to give up.

Today, I thank Him for the mom who raised the man I married. She told me once that she's prayed for her children's spouses from the time her boys were born, and some days, knowing she's praying for me is just what I need to get me out of bed in the morning.

Today, I think of all the grandmothers and mothers in our family tree who cared for their own little flocks and ultimately contributed so much to my own.

Today, I pray that my daughter would grow to be a woman who is discerning and beautiful (1 Samuel 25:3), and that she would delight in her heavenly Father as He delights in her.

Today, I pray that Caleb would be faithful, that like his namesake in the Bible, he would stand out as one with a different spirit who follows the Lord wholeheartedly (Numbers 14:24).

Today, I pray for Jacob, that God would keep him wherever he goes, and that the Lord will not leave him until He has done what He has promised (Genesis 28:15).

Today, I pray for Levi, that God alone would be His inheritance (Deuteronomy 10:9), and that he would be fully satisfied in the Lord and His plans for him.

Today, I look forward to eternity, to that day when my faith will be made sight, and when I will finally hold the babe who was never meant for this earth and who I miss so very much on this Mother's Day.

Today, and every day, I am blessed to be a mother. Humbled and thankful, often weary and sometimes sleep deprived, but very, very blessed.

Buds

Have I mentioned how very much I love these boys?

Or how very much they love each other?

Well I do. And they do. And I'm pretty blessed, if I do say so myself.

Higher-level mathematics

She calls it "Daddy Math" and it's what happens when Daddy works from home and has a little extra time to spend with us in the morning, or if I'm sick and Daddy takes over homeschooling for the day.

Sometimes, it's parenthetical equations. Today, it was decoding. Soon, I've been told it will be some simple graphing and basic calculus.

As far as I'm concerned, the Fisher Preparatory Academy for Excellence in Learning is going to stay focused  on reading, writing and basic arithmetic for now.

Daddy Math is an extracurricular activity. And I'm leaving this one up to Daddy.

Ask the experts

My kids are a little obsessed with paper airplanes. Abby started it, and armed with an instruction book on how to make hundreds of different types of airplanes, she and her brothers could easily spend an hour folding and throwing and tweaking and testing to make the perfect plane.

And when the planes don't turn out just the way they hoped, my kids do what I've taught them, and ask for help.

It just so happens they have two retired fighter pilots named Papa and Granddaddy to turn to for assistance. 

It's good to have friends in high places.

Life imitates art

As it turns out, a smart phone has nothing on a muddy yard, a perfectly shaped stick, and a stuffed Angry Bird ball.

For the record, Caleb says his backyard version of Angry Birds is a lot more fun.

I'd have to say I agree.

The end of the tunnel

It's official.

The playground is way more fun when you can scoot.

(Especially for mom, who no longer has to wear 20 pounds of baby on her back while chasing everyone else around.)

Big sister and the big brothers are pretty pumped about having another playmate at the park.

Who needs play dates when you have all these siblings?

Oh, brother

Jacob will share his toys, he'll share his room, he'll even share his seat at the soccer game.

But he will not share his Thomas the Tank Engine Sunglasses.

Big brothers have to draw the line somewhere.

Breakfast of champions

The biggest problem with fourth babies? They get treated like fourth babies.

In the beginning, I read every book, knew every recommendation, anxiously anticipated and documented every milestone, and even introduced foods at appropriate times.

That was almost six years ago. And if I have time to read a book these days, I promise you it will not be anything about what my baby needs in his first 12 months of life. It feels a little like being a first time mom again, only with some experience. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I know I've done it before, so I'm working on the assumption that my instincts will guide me in the right(ish) direction.

These days, I'm worse than a first time mom. I'm a first time mom who's never read BabyWise or What to Expect The First Year, organizing naps around my schedule and feeding my infant frozen chicken nuggets and graham crackers because that's the best I can do in a pinch.

So nine months may be too early to introduce bacon and cheesy scrambled eggs to Levi's diet. Or maybe not. I'm sure it's in one of those books somewhere.

What I know for certain is that he loved breakfast this morning, and had no problem devouring more than his share of the bacon.

That's my boy. We'll figure this baby stuff out together.

Not sharing

The question was, "Jacob, may I have one of your waffle fries?"

The answer, apparently, was no.

And for the record, he can fit one entire small serving of waffle fries in his mouth at once.

Just in case you were wondering.

Chalk and crayons

For a four-year-old with no formal instruction, I think Caleb's doing pretty well with his letter writing. Why just today, he wrote his name on the driveway all by himself.

Upside down and backwards, I might add, but all by himself, nonetheless.

What he lacks in penmanship, Caleb more than makes up for in heart. The kids wrote thank you notes to the neighbor who shared his crawfish boil with us, and since Caleb couldn't figure out how to draw a crawfish, he decided to draw a picture of the neighbor's dog, Arnold, instead.

This is Arnold, pooping. (I asked, just to be sure, before sharing his artwork.)

It's all right. Pre-K is just around the corner, and we're going to straighten those letters right out. But something tells me that pictures of animals pooping are here to stay.

Jill of all trades

At 11:15 this morning, I was just finishing up giving the baby a bottle and preparing to get started on lunch for the five of us. Not because we like to eat lunch early, but because it takes a minimum of 45 minutes to actually get lunch on the table these days.

The timer was beeping on the oven to alert me that my two loaves of delicious homemade whole wheat bread were ready. (It had been one of those rare productive mornings, and I was feeling pretty good about all the schooling and baking we had accomplished so far.) I slid the loaf of delicious homemade gluten free bread aside and was removing my two newest loaves to the cooling rack when cries of panic alerted me that I was needed upstairs.

I tucked Levi under my arm and dashed up the stairs to Caleb's room, where I found Jacob gleefully tossing the little sponges we use as quiet time blocks high into the air.

"Jacob broke my tower!" Caleb calmly and quietly informed me.

No, actually he screamed it. But I wish he had calmly and quietly informed me, because then his screaming wouldn't have upset the baby, who proceeded to scream along with him.

I took stock of the situation and noticed that not only had Jacob completely demolished whatever Caleb had been working on, he had also torn the corners off of most of the sponges and left them littering the floor like tiny pieces of confetti.

With the baby still under my arm, I headed to get the vacuum cleaner while calmly instructing my children to put the sponges away.

No, actually, I barked orders at them over my shoulder as I ran down the hall. But looking back, I should have calmly instructed them instead. There's always next time.

When I returned, the sponges were miraculously put away, leaving only the confetti for me to vacuum up before I could get back to the lunch-making that had been interrupted.

I made one pass with the vacuum, then listened as it sputtered and died. A faint smell of smoke filled the room.

Turns out not all the sponges had been put away, and one had managed to wedge itself into the belt in my vacuum cleaner.

I know this, because that is where I found it when I disassembled the machine to find an explanation for the smoke and smell of burning rubber.

A moment later, Justin called to see how my day was going. Unable to put it into words at that moment, I took this picture to try to explain.

Eventually the floor was clean, the family was fed, and naptime came, as it always does, to reset my afternoon.

And now I've kept my promise to myself, the one I made to write all this down so that one day I'd look back and remember: it doesn't just feel like I'm taking one step forward and two steps back. Some days, I actually am.

The trouble with bookworms

Oh, Abby. I know you love to read. And I know you love to sneak out of bed and read until the last slivers of daylight have slipped through your blinds.

And honestly, I have trouble reprimanding you for staying up way past your bedtime reading Alice and Wonderland and The Boxcar Children and your newest Encyclopedia of Astronomy. That's why we bought you the book light, Abby.

So that on nights like tonight, when you simply can't go to sleep until you've finished the whole book, you can read in your comfortable bed and nod off on your pillow, not on the floor where you collapsed when your eyes tired of straining to read by the dim light of the moon.

It's 10:30, Abby. Go to bed. Your book will still be there in the morning.