Our big boy! (from one year ago)

When Matthias was born, I felt like he grew and grew and changed every day. By the time he was a few months old, he seemed to have weeks where he would "sprout" and change, and then plateau. I figured it would stay that way, becoming more and more gradual as he got older. But at about a year, he started growing in leaps and bounds again! I figured it's about time to chronicle what he does now, at 14 months old:

He knows his animal sounds: sheep say baa (he will whisper "baa" if I do, haha), puppy dogs pant with their tongues out, kitties say meow, and monkeys say "ah, ah, ah." He also thinks that cows say "baa," as well, so we're working on that one. I think he also says "buh, buh" for chickens clucking. Not exactly an animal, but he points to tractors, semis, and anything that runs and makes the sound, as well.

He knows body parts: Matthias will point to Mommy's nose and belly button (hooray :P), as well as his own belly button, ears, knees and toes.

He knows words: Mama, Dada, as well as his own word for "Grandpa," "Te-deh" for Teddy, Poncho, and Jewel, and says "git-git-git" when Mommy is going to "get" him (wash his face and hands, that is).

Matthias loves to climb the stairs, is learning to throw a ball, can climb up on many chairs and couches, loves to play the piano and sing (wa, wa, wa), and also began singing in church last week, to the delight of our pew neighbors. This morning he "sniffed" a piece of cedar wood on my command, and when I asked him to "sniff" Mommy, he happily obliged by sticking his nose in my face and inhaling deeply. Good thing I had brushed my teeth! Oh, and he gives kisses, too!

He has also decided to become more of a "big boy" lately and refuses to be rocked to sleep. Well, I think really he wants to just get down and play, but I give him the choice to rock with Mommy or be in his crib, and he consistently chooses to be in his crib, and then falls asleep on his own.

More Sweetness

At long last, I've decided it's time to write down the day's events, mostly because I don't want to forget some of the cute things Matthias has been doing lately!

I'm convinced he's in a growth spurt--he's been sleeping through the night all week and eating portions that are much larger than usual. After today I think his mind is also experiencing such a growth spurt!

Luckily Jon got home from work early today so he got to enjoy many of our little man's antics. At about 11:30, Matthias called to me from the window, saying, "Daddy home! Daddy home!" Considering he's "the boy who cried wolf" when it comes to Daddy actually being home, I told him he was being silly and that Daddy might be home for supper. Then I heard the basement door shut and realized that it hadn't just been wishful thinking on Matthias' part!

In some ways he really takes after Jon. I'm finding this to be mostly a good thing, especially when it comes to cleaning up his toys. Tonight before bed he took all his toy equipment from the stairs and tucked them out of the way by the piano, saying, "night night" to each piece of equipment. I didn't even have to ask!

However, Jon regularly claims to have OCD. I tell him that OCD is a real condition that can be quite debilitating and that I doubt he is actually afflicted with it. Sure, Jon may have the overwhelming urge to say a word in a "New Joizy" accent if he hears me say it, and he may drive around the yard a few times occasionally so that the mileage on the vehicle "looks right" when it is parked, but what I'll call his "quirks" are far from serious.

I caught a glimpse of Jon's "quirks" tonight with Matthias. He insisted on taking his own socks off at bed time, and wanted to know where to put them as the laundry hamper was downstairs. I showed him the spot on the floor and he took off his first sock and laid it neatly on the floor. When he took off his other sock it was crumpled. He immediately went to his other sock and crumpled it up so that it matched the other sock. I almost cried with laughter.

Shortly afterward he decided that he must be feeling a little shaggy, for he grabbed the clipper from under the sink and took it to Daddy, declaring, "Haircut. Haircut!" He was satisfied when we told him he'd get one in the morning, and put the clipper back in its spot.

Matthias is also becoming quite a polite little man. He now says "Dee-doo," (Thank you) at almost every opportunity, and reminds me to say it, as well, when he gives me something. He greets people with a firm handshake, although when asked for his name generally smirks and says, "Outdoor," which is his nickname for his kitty Kermit. Oh, to be two.

Other than the sock thing, my favorite part of today came after nap time. He slept for two and a half hours, a little less than his usual three, and just wasn't ready to get up and face the world, so we snuggled for a half hour (bliss!!) in the chair. Snuggle time with Matthias is something I find particularly heavenly! He usually still enjoys being "cheek to cheek" with Mommy, and often showers my cheeks with kisses, although lately there has been an abundance of what he calls "kitty kisses," which are slobbery licks. Yuck! At least the cats have dry, sandpapery tongues!

I try to use our snuggle time, whenever I can get it, to remind Matthias how much we love him and how wonderful a blessing he is to us. There are some days when I feel like my threats of, "Mommy will give you a swat" put my parenting skills in the camp of the cigarette-smoking, pajama-clad woman at Wal-Mart cursing at her children. But then there are days like today, when it hits me that maybe he really does hear what we say and take it to heart!

Precious Moments

I know pride is a sin, but I like to take pride in my ability to appreciate the "little things." Ask me the same thing at 6 in the morning when Matthias is ready to start the day after being up for three hours at night, and I will likely forget I ever said such a thing. But tonight's "little thing" moment was a precious glimpse into the sweet person Matthias is becoming.

We went to MOPS today for the first time in about a month. I had long ago decided to give up on Moppets, the childcare provided there, for the time being, since one, Matthias screams and screams every time and ends up hanging out with me upstairs anyway, and two, I thought I'd be kind to the volunteers and stop expecting them to devote such a large chunk of their time to my screaming child, along with trying to juggle the other children who were moved to tears by Matthias.

He sat nicely with me most of the time. Toward the end, when we were doing our craft, he spent some time playing with his little friend from our Lutheran group. "Gunny," two years old, was gesturing wildly to Matthias to follow him, and Matthias just didn't get it. What a difference six months can make, I thought.

For the past couple weeks I have felt like Matthias has been on a "plateau," one of many he has experienced. He has known his colors for a couple weeks and all his body parts for a few months, and knows a few of his shapes, too. He also "teases" me when I ask him to show me a color. I will say, "green." I see his eyes scan the green, crinkle up with glee, and point to the blue. He looks at me, squinting and smiling the biggest cheese smile as if to say, "I'm a funny little man, Mommy!"

When it was time for prayers this evening, I told him we would pray. He immediately folded his hands, but then thought better of it and unfolded them. I continued, "Dear God, Thank you for today..." and Matthias interrupted me by singing, "La, la, la!" He wanted me to sing. Usually that's after prayers. I decided to compromise with him and sang The Lord's Prayer. He seemed satisfied. After I was done, he sang what appeared to be some words from a song I couldn't make out. I sang him "Zacchaeus," and he did his "action" for it (pointing up into the tree).

Finally, I asked him if he'd like me to sing about kitties. Why yes, of course! Anything to do with kitties is hugely popular with this fellow after my own heart. I sang "Kitty, Kitty," a song I thought up when I was in kindergarten. It was an immediate success, and he sang "Tiddeh, Tiddeh," almost on key, to tell me he wanted to hear it a couple more times.

The bedtime routine was rounded out by a generous cheek-to-cheek snuggle, my favorite. He was probably wondering why my cheek was wet. I'm not one given to sentimentality or fuzzy phrases, but there is one about how being a mother is to have a part of your heart walking around outside your body. That phrase came to me just then as so true. This little guy has my heart in a way that I never thought possible.

Teacher retirement...with a lot of old pictures!

NOTE: I'll put some (TOTALLY) random pictures in between so you don't get too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of text.

It's been a year since I've "officially" become a stay-at-home mom and our family has gone single-income. For a while I had braced myself for the possible cutting comments that I might receive because of choosing to stay at home with my children, a choice I made way back in my college days. In fact, I've only had two in the past year, two rather rude ones, the first being, "Are you sure you can *afford* to stay home?" (Yes, would you like me to provide a financial statement?) and "Well, that's too bad that you got that degree and you're not planning to use it." (Um, I used it for five years and plan to use it, well, forever) 

I think only two rude comments is pretty good and possibly shows a shift toward more acceptance of women choosing to take this role. I mean, wasn't that the whole point of the women's "liberation" movement? That women should have a greater choice of careers? Staying at home being one of them?

Uh, *yeah*...

As I was rocking Matthias for his nap this afternoon, I thought about how I am just as thrilled today, a year later, as I was last year about getting to stay home with him, see every milestone first-hand, call my mom every morning and report whatever cute thing he's been doing, go home to help with farming, and the list goes on. The newest question, "so when are you planning to go back?" is usually met by laughter by me and the statement, "I'm retired," which isn't totally true...

 because I also thought about my friend whose son is the same age--to the day--as Matthias. She homeschools her awesome, big family (which by any standard except that of the past 30 years isn't that terribly large), and I think, "I can't wait to homeschool. Just five more years!"

 But then it hit me--I am homeschooling. I'm a homeschooling mom right now. Enter the next barrage of comments (I'm sure I'll get more than two in the future). "Well, you might change your mind." "*I* could never do that." "Why in the world would you want to do that?" "Don't you worry about...??" Well, yes. But doesn't every parent change their mind? Doesn't every parent have something they couldn't/wouldn't do? Doesn't every parent worry about xyz when it comes to their children?

I'm blessed to be able to watch my friend and her children, as well as my sister and her children, homeschool and raise well-adjusted, highly socially-competent children.

I was fortunate to spend an afternoon with my two nieces in July, and was so proud to see how polite, sociable and genuinely happy these two children are, not just because they're homeschooled, as there are just as many sweet public-schooled children, but because they are loved. But I digress (and I just don't have any pictures that make sense to this post so bear with me!).

...and here we are in January and I realized it's been quite forever since I've written a post. My sister wrote a post that was way better than this one about homeschooling, so I'll just cut that topic off right now instead of going on and on. So here you go, a very belated, very poorly-written and random post that doesn't even come close to capturing the changes Matthias has gone through since I last published anything. I just don't want to "waste" the pictures I used precious internet to upload and the time I spent writing this.

Happy New Year!

3-layer cakes and the "good old days"....

I've been thinking a lot lately about the "good old days." How are they defined? Growing up I would, from time to time, hear about an era and think to myself, "those must have been the good old days that everyone talks about." Then I'd hear about something terrible associated with that time period. For example, that cocaine was routinely prescribed for fussy Victorian-era babies. Or you could Google the term "twilight birth," which was routine from the 1920s-1960s. Time after time, I have been disappointed. Every era has its downsides.

Now, I am struggling not to launch into too much of a tirade describing my recent enlightenment about the "good old days." I'm going to try to focus on two things that have been going on in our lives lately.

The first is that I have had the great privilege of translating some World War II-era letters from a mother and father in Watford City, N. D., to their son who was a soldier. After reading Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, I was pretty sure that, if not the "good old days," the people that lived in that generation were somehow "different" than people today--nobler, tougher, and much more morally fibrous.

What I found in the letters was eye-opening; the son, who wrote to his parents in English, described the service, where he didn't seem to quite "fit in," as there was so much smoking, drinking and swearing by the rest of the troops. When this guy would find a "good Christian fellow" to "chum around with," he would write happily to his parents about it. Sounds a lot like my college experience. Of course this guy was a lot more "holy" than I am in that he also avoided the wicked temptation of "the picture shows" and all the filthy sin that was portrayed therein.

In his parents' letters back to him (which were written in Norwegian) I found a distinctly more familiar form of faith expression--simple words like "God bless you," "God willing," etc. Although this guy (who was 26 at the time) grew up in a Christian home, he displayed a lot of the same exuberance about his faith that a lot of young Christians do when they are first "out in the world." Hmm. It just seemed so familiar.

I also learned of the family's trials, spread out over the years 1942-1945. The family had lost a 9-year-old son in 1941 to a burst appendix, and another son in 1945, "skyt i hjel av tyskerne" (shot by the Germans), just when things were beginning to settle down. "Kindly" gossip is interspersed about who married whom, who didn't get an inheritance because he is "pickled" far too often, and who was moving west in the great North Dakota outmigration.

It has been such a privilege, a wonderful experience, to be able to get to know this family through their letters. It's helped me brush up on my rapidly-deteriorating Norwegian and helped me remember that the "good old days" are now, while we are making them.

2 pounds of powdered sugar? I don't know what that is, but it sounds yummy!

Okay, now to the other event--Matthias' first birthday. I'm not one to make a big show of celebrations--usually the harder you try the more things there are to get messed up, which really does make for good memories down the road but a lot of work in the short run.  So after poring over pictures of elaborate John Deere cakes, I chose to continue my grandma's and mom's tradition and make Matthias a 3-layer white cake. I doubt my grandma used a cake mix, but my mom did and so did I, but I made this frosting by hand with almost 2 pounds each of butter and powdered sugar!

Obviously, this is not the cake. The picture of the cake is on my camera's hard drive and I can't find the cord so here's Matthias' cupcake.

I actually made a "practice cake" and took it to my Lutheran Women are Awesome group (where three other gals and I read the Lutheran Confessions together while our children wreak havoc). That was probably the most time-consuming thing I did, other than the frosting.

My mom always sighs when I ask for the 3-layer cake. It never turns out quite "right," in her opinion. Either the top layer slides slightly to the side, or splits apart altogether. I'm not sure how my grandma got her 3-layers to turn out so well. I'm not sure, either, how Matthias' 3-layer turned out so well. In the world of cake decorating, this one might be considered a "fail," but it was definitely a "win" for me!

Now, to prove that my ramblings have a common thread, I will close with it. The things that we remember about special occasions like birthdays aren't how the green of the plates matched the green of the frosting, or how there is a perfect shot of the birthday child sticking their head strategically into the strategically-made "smash cake." At least not for me. The things I remember and treasure are the cracked top layers of cakes, oozing with Mom's powdered-sugar frosting, the time that powdered sugar was used to thicken gravy instead of flour (whoops!), and the prescence of loved ones. Make the pictures black-and-white, and one might even think that the party happened in the "good old days," which, of course, it did!

Branding fun!! (Auntie Linda-friendly) :)

Okay, Auntie Linda (and Maria!!), I promise that there will be no actual pictures of calves being branded in this post--so you can look at it! I actually forgot my camera, so you guys are just lucky.

A friend took some really cute ones, though, of Matthias playing with her 6-year-old boy, and I just had to share.  They were both having a ball.

Chief of Sinners though I be....

Behold, the Chief of Sinners.

Whoa. Am I the meanest mom or what? To put a picture that perfectly describes Matthias'....perfection, and caption it thus?

I often have the lines to the hymn of the same name in my head....Chief of Sinners though I be, Jesus shed his blood for me...I can't rightly remember the rest of the verse, but I find the hymn powerful, even spine-tingling, whenever I hear it. Once I posted the lyrics on Facebook, only to be met with a volley of comments assuring me that I couldn't be the Chief of Sinners. You're a good person, they assured me.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm not. I'm the Chief of Sinners. To burst it further, so is Matthias. So are you. I have been reminded of it a lot lately in my role as a parent. I love-love-love Matthias so much that I could just squeezehimsniffhimkisshimlovehimup all the time!! I am constantly bragging about how Matthias is the Sweetest, Cutest, Snuggliest Baby on Earth. But how fair is it of me to bestow him with this title? To put him on this high pedestal?

For Matthias has been learning the meaning of the word "no" lately. With a roomful of toys at his disposal, he finds my plants, my antique radio, and my cell phone among the most tantalizing things in his little world. "No," and I lead him away. "You can have this, or this, or this. But you can't have Mommy's plant." Sometimes a flick of my finger removes his grip on the leaves. Sometimes he grimaces, sometimes he laughs in my face, sometimes he cries. But to the plant he returns.

Am I saying Matthias is a "bad baby?" No way! All my previous comments still apply. But it's so apparent to me, as the mother, why Matthias can't have the (fill in the blank). But he wants it. It reminds me of the garden in Genesis, where our ancestors Adam and Eve coveted the ONE THING they were instructed not to have....and how, as adults, we continue in that same pattern, not understanding when or why God tells us, "no."

What I'm getting at is this....Matthias, no matter how earthly-perfect of a little person he may be, has a sinful nature. It is unfair of me to hold him to a standard of impossible perfection, poor critter. You, I, all of us...no matter how earthly-perfect we may be...have sinful natures. Doing good deeds, donating our money, "being good people," can't change it. If we think that our puny deeds can erase the dark mark of sin, we are stuck. Stuck. It is only through the saving grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we have any chance at all. And by "any chance," I mean "eternal life." Whoo-hoo! It is such a relief to know that Matthias and I and anyone else can rest assured knowing that we don't have to earn our trip to Heaven, for that would be impossible, because we're the Sinners-in-Chief, after all.

By God's grace we can do good things--be a sweet, wonderful baby, an attentive mother, a conscientious worker.  But we don't have to rely on those good things for our salvation. All we have to rely on is Jesus!

In this Easter season, I say that calls for a Hallelujah!