Enjoying the Game

My oldest is 7.  He's always been very creative, detailed, and into sports.  Nearly every day for 4 years he's played some sort of a sports game:  baseball outside, basketball inside, or with one of his several sets of "guys" (hockey, baseball, football, and basketball to be exact!) he loves to play with.  While he loves his friends, he loves to play alone and get lost in his games.  He is an introvert at heart.

In his room you will find jerseys from all of his favorite teams in home and away colors.  Each day he comes home from school with his schedule showing the game for the afternoon.  Some days he even brings home tickets he's made for the stuffed animals that will make up his crowd. If he's going to play a game, he'll change into his uniform, set up a stadium, bring the fans to the game, and get the music prepared.  If he's going to play with his guys, he'll complete all of these steps except for changing!  For as long as I can remember, he has just loved sports...period.

At times, I admit, I find this frustrating.  He enjoys this part of his life so much and gets so into it, we run into disappointment, and often some tantrums, if we can't fit a game in on any given day. These games can take hours.  He loves to report to us who has scored, how the game is going, and any other little details he finds important.  There are days when I get annoyed with the reports every few minutes.  I struggle with feelings of guilt because I don't sit and watch them like I used to.  It's such a big part of his life and I know that someday it will abruptly stop and I will think to myself, "I wish I would have taken the time to watch him."

When it comes down to it, I think it's just his way of dreaming of things yet to come.  It's his creative outlet and a way for him to put all of the sports knowledge swimming around in his brain to good use.  Today I caught a glimpse of how much he wants someone to pay attention to his game.  How important it is to him to be noticed.  It was the seventh inning of his baseball game and I realized soon it would be time to sing the 7th Inning Stretch:  "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."  His voice got louder as he approached the third out in the top half of the inning and he looked around to see if anyone would watch what was to come.  I've seen this hundreds of times over, but it still brings a smile to my face.  I can still see this sweet little boy playing his games in the backyard when he was just a preschooler.  The little boy who sang the "National Anthem" to start his games, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" in the middle, and if we were lucky, "Go Cubs Go" on a winning game day.

These will be the memories that will be engrained in my mind when I think of my oldest son growing up.  I often wonder what he'll be when he grows up:  a baseball player, a sports announcer, a sports writer.  If his profession has nothing to do with sports I will be shocked!

I love my little boy and his imagination.  I just need to remind myself to stop and soak in some of the games while they last.  All too soon the sounds from the stands will be gone...

2014-7 years old!

2012-5 years old!

2010-3 years old!

Nostalgia: Birthdays Are Hard...

Birthdays are always hard for me.  Some days seem to last forever, but in the blink of an eye another year has rolled around.  This year I am struggling even more than normal.  You see, my girls' birthdays are just a day apart.  Last year I was impatiently awaiting the arrival of our little surprise bundle of joy and now I am preparing to celebrate a fifth and first birthday.

Five seems so old, after all she will head to kindergarten in the fall.  No more carefree days at home relatively shielded from the reality of the real world and the not-so-pleasant experiences she will more than likely encounter.  Oh, I know it's not all bad, there are plenty of wonderful experiences and opportunities that go along with heading off to school, but there are also tough, sad moments along the way, too.  My daughter is a sweet, sensitive, imaginative little beauty.  She is so excited to grow up and her mommy would just love for her to stay innocent forever.  It's so hard to watch them grow and leave the nest, if only for awhile.  Sigh...

My sweet little baby is turning one.  That first year is one I'd love to be able to freeze forever.  I've struggled with all of my baby's first birthdays, but this one is even more difficult.  There is a good possibility this is the last first birthday celebration we will have.  The last baby of my own that I will hold so close.  The last firsts we will experience.  The last sweet snuggles.  I love, love, love babies.  I may be hours and hours behind on sleep and yearning for a bit of me time, but I wouldn't trade these years for anything.  For as long as I can remember I dreamt of having a lot of kids.  I was never certain how many, but I knew I would love a big family.  We are fortunate this has been our reality.  I'm just not so sure how I could already be at this juncture in my life.  I had dinner with some ladies this past weekend and one of them put it so simply, "I think we always thought about having children, we just never thought about being done having children.  It's so final."  

It is so final.  I'm just not ready to close the door just yet.  Ah, it is just so hard.  

This weekend I will do my best to hide the tears I know will come.  I've felt so emotional and anxious since the calendar switched to April.  I will celebrate all we have been blessed with and count my lucky stars that I get to be "Mom" to these four sweet little kiddos.  I'll also do my best to imprint these memories in my mind and remind myself on the days when I feel like I'm going to go crazy that I wouldn't want my life to be any different.

Happy Birthday to my sweet little daughters.  Your mommy loves you so!

Princess #1

Princess #2

The Quest for a Simpler Life: Being Okay with Swimming Upstream

Intentional living.  Recently a friend sent me a blog post about a newly released book called Notes From a Blue Bike:  Living Intentionally in a Chaotic World by Tsh Oxenreider.  I knew I wanted to read it and am so happy I did.  For me and for my family, it is time to quiet the noise.  To sift through all of life's distractions and decide what is truly beneficial and what needs to go.  To live simply in a way which reflects our values, priorities, and purpose.  To be okay with swimming upstream.

Our society encourages us to fill our days to the brim.  The busier the better.  Young, old, or in between; no one is immune.  We are encouraged to buy, buy, buy.  To fill our homes with so much "stuff" we find it difficult to appreciate what we have.  Work follows us home and we are accessible all.of.the.time.  In our culture, less is definitely not more.  Family time is spent on the go and so often our children are robbed of the opportunity to simply be kids.  We're all chasing this idea that our worth is defined by our achievements and to achieve great things we must go, go, go.  Work more, sleep less, enroll in an abundance of extracurricular activities, always say yes.  How far from the truth is this way of thinking?  Far, very far.

By nature, I am an organizer and a busy body.  I enjoy being involved in my community, working on projects at home, and keeping up with my kids.  I have a hard time sitting down and just relaxing.  I feel like I am doing my best to balance my role as a mom with the need to be an individual too.  I spend the majority of my time at home with my family, but need to do a better job of quieting some of the noise that distracts me from my purpose for this season:  being a mom to four impressionable young children.  Saying no to the opportunities outside of the home that aren't a priority, limiting social media, and ignoring the pressure to keep up with the Jones'.

In our home, family will always be number one.  It is time to focus on our priorities in many different areas of our life (examples taken from the book:  food, education, travel, entertainment, and work).  The decisions we make each day should coincide with these priorities.  Our children may not be pleased when we tell them no, but there are times when it needs to happen.  For our family, time for free play, eating dinner together, and early bedtimes mean we limit our extracurricular activities and schedule them to work with these priorities.  Limited screen time may mean saying no to the technology that may interfere with reading, cultivating creativity, and outdoor play.  Taking a family vacation may mean saying no to costly local entertainment in order to save up for a bigger adventure.  

Slowing down may seem like such a challenge.  Ridding our homes of excess "stuff" may seem impossible.  Living simply takes work.  Our decisions may be different than our neighbors, friends, or extended family and that's okay.  The key point to remember: to be confident in our decisions and keep our priorities at the center of our decision making process.  Slow down.  Quiet the noise.  Remember our priorities.  While we may be swimming upstream, we are putting our family first and holding true to our beliefs.  You just have to own it and carry on.  As the old saying goes, "To each his own."      

  

    

       

Marinated Pork Tenderloin and Sauteed Asparagus

What we eat is so important to us.  We do our best to cook using organic, dye-free, and Non-GMO products, so we've been trying new recipes to replace the pre-made marinades and sauces you can purchase at the store.  Thus far we have had great success and I am looking forward to grilling season to try even more!  I wanted to share a few great recipes we made for dinner a few weeks ago:  marinated pork tenderloin and garlic asparagus.  Making your own marinades is so quick and easy, not to mention more cost effective.  I encourage you to try some out!  I know I feel much better about what I'm serving my family when I know precisely what ingredients are used and avoiding all of the artificial dyes and fillers that go into these products.  Enjoy!

Marinated Pork Tenderloin

1/4 c. olive oil*
1/4 c. soy sauce*
1 clove, garlic minced
3 T. dijon honey mustard
salt and pepper to taste
1 (2 lb.) boneless pork tenderloin

*We used organic products that can be found at Target or in the health aisle at your local grocery store.

Whisk together all of the marinade ingredients.  Place the tenderloin in a Ziploc bag and pour marinade into bag.  Seal it up and give it a shake.  Marinade at least one hour (longer if possible).

Place tenderloin in baking dish and pour marinade over it.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to one hour, until center is no longer pink.

Sauteed Garlic Asparagus

3 T. organic butter
1 bunch asparagus
3 cloves garlic, chopped

Melt the butter in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add garlic and asparagus.  Cover and cook for ten minutes, stirring occasionally until asparagus is tender.  If you like it more well done, continue to cook until desired tenderness.

*We also used this recipe to saute the mushrooms and zucchini shown in the picture.  Yum!

Oven Fried Chicken Drumsticks

My oldest son has recently discovered that he loves fried chicken.  I decided to test out a recipe for oven fried chicken to see if it would pass the test, as buying a bucket of it from the grocery store is quite expensive!  After searching for a bit, I found a recipe for "Better-Than-KFC" chicken and decided to give it a try.  The end result?  It passed the test, though we all wished it were a bit crispier.  I will admit, though, my house did smell like KFC, but the chicken tasted better!

Better-Than-KFC Oven Fried Chicken
Recipe from:  Adapted from Clarks Condensed

1/2 c. butter
8-12 drumsticks
1 1/2 c. flour
1 t. pepper
2 t. paprika
1 1/2 c. milk

Soak chicken in milk for at least 30 minutes.  Longer, up to 3 hours, is better.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice the butter into 8-10 pieces and place around a 9x13 dish.  Melt in oven while preparing the chicken.  Mix together flour, pepper, and paprika in a large bowl.  Take a drumstick, shake off excess milk, and dredge in flour mixture.  Bake for 20 minutes, flip each piece, and bake for another 20 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink.

 

Young Children and Lent

Lent has begun and we are doing our best to make it more meaningful for the kiddos this year.  While I decided to give up dessert and my daily chocolate consumption (let me tell you, this was a lot of chocolate!), my husband and I thought our kiddos were a bit young to partake in giving anything up.  Instead we have decided to bring out our kindness jar again and focus on kind acts both in and out of our home.

While this takes some extra effort on our part to "catch" those moments, it is well worth the journey for all of us.  At times I feel like I notice more of the undesired behavior than the desired, kind behavior my kids demonstrate.  This may be because when my kids are not kind to each other there is a lot of crying, screaming, and fighting involved and when they are getting along it's so peaceful.  Well, as peaceful as it can get with four young children!  I am hoping that this will help me to truly appreciate all of the good that they do and not get so caught up in the misbehavior.

What are we looking for?  Playing nicely together, using their manners, helping each other out, and simple nice gestures are just a few examples of a way they can earn a pom for the jar.  Thus far our oldest has read to his sister and made her a get well picture, as they're both feeling under the weather.  My middles played a peaceful game of Memory together and have used polite table manners.  While I certainly can't catch everything, I am doing my best to notice the small, everyday moments that are wrapped in kindness.

We are also participating in the rice bowl campaign.  Our kids do simple chores around the house for a little allowance.  During Lent, when they receive their allowance we are asking them to decide how much they will keep and how much they will contribute to the rice bowl.  Thus far they've been quite generous!  We're just trying to keep it simple and teach a few lessons along the way.  We hope that they take something away some valuable lesson this year.

Standardized Test: These Words Disgust Me

Standardized test.  These two words paired together just get under my skin and I find them quite disgusting.  Creating an educational system where these two words are the focus of our children's learning is a crying shame.  While there is no doubt the educational system in our country is in need of an overhaul, putting more emphasis on testing, completely revamping the content that our children are taught, and creating new, ridiculously complicated ways to teach skills (simple subtraction, for example) is like driving the car the wrong way on a one-way street.  It's wrong, and quite frankly, should also be in violation of the law.

I firmly believe our schools began to suffer when No Child Left Behind was introduced.  It happened to be my first year teaching, and while I wasn't directly impacted because I was teaching early childhood special education, I heard the teachers in my building talking about tests...a lot.  Their instructional content seemed to become more restricted and, unfortunately, teachers felt pressured to "teach to the test."  Now it seems with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards Initiative the noose has been tightened even more.  Not only are we tightening the grip on the content being taught, but the strategies that are being implemented to teach skills, especially in math, are time-consuming, confusing, and, in my opinion, unnecessary.   

I fully understand that children need to be assessed and our teachers need to be accountable for student learning.  It is imperative to see the strengths and areas that need improvement, but why does the government not value utilizing additional ways to assess student learning other than requiring them to sit down at a specific time, several days in a row filling in the bubbles (or, from what I understand, clicking the mouse in the near-future) to give us a true, well-rounded picture of each child?  

The emphasis put on these results is absurd.  Our children are not robots and there are too many outside factors (anxiety, lack of sleep, hunger, special needs, socioeconomic status, primary language, disturbances at home, etc.) affecting test performance to solely rely on these results to demonstrate academic understanding.  The fact that this snippet of information is used to determine a teacher's proficiency, as well as funding for our schools, is equally absurd.  

As a parent, I don't want my children's "self-worth" to be determined by how they have performed on a standardized test.  I value creativity, thinking out of the box, and exploring personal interests to make learning more meaningful.  I don't find it necessary for my son to break down a problem into five steps to complete a simple subtraction problem he could compute in less than 5 seconds.  I know I am not the only parent who feels this way. 

In my eyes, however, there is one more missing piece to this puzzle that cannot be easily assessed:  parental involvement. These test scores are used to hold our teachers accountable, but we, as parents, need to be held accountable, too.  It is our job to make education the priority in our children's lives.  It seems we have wandered away from this way of thinking and it is our kids who are suffering.  There are so many distractions, from extracurricular activities to video games and everything in between, that we have forgotten what is truly important.  Our children need down time.  They need to have time for unstructured play, to sit at a table and eat as a family more often than not, to have the opportunity to speak and be heard, and to get their rest.  As parents we need to emphasize the importance of completing homework, reading, and providing opportunities for our kids to explore their personal interests.  It surely doesn't have to be boring.  Get creative at home and make learning fun!  As a community, we need to help those around us who may not have these opportunities.  Safe after school programs offering homework assistance, family math and literacy nights in our schools, and volunteer tutoring are great ways to reach kids who may need extra help.  Donating used books to shelters or schools who may need them can help get books in the hands of children in need.  Supporting programs that help children who are at-risk may make a difference in the lives of many as well .  Don't be afraid to get your family involved!  Raising empathetic, caring kids can make such a positive impact in our communities.

The government may feel the pressure to "compete successfully in the global economy," but I, as a parent, do not feel that the solution they have imposed upon our children is in their best interest.  I am not willing to idly sit by and do nothing, are you?  We each have a voice, and although it may not always be heard, we do have a voice.  Write your legislators or sign a state and national petition to eliminate the Common Core.  Take a stand for your children and the future of our educational system.  What have you got to lose?