The Un-Western Ballerina

Caiden makes crazy outfits.  We all know that, right?  If you aren't familiar with my previous discussions on this topic, look at the old posts here:

Sartorial Inclinations
Wacky Wednesday
Parenting Crossroads
I Let My Kids Dress Themselves
The Red Tutu and the Garden
Caiden's Crazy Outfits

As I rolled out of bed this morning, I found a little 5 year old girl, curled up in a ball with her hair splayed out all over my pillow, wearing nothing but bright green underwear.  I got up, brushed my teeth, and decided to make the kids' lunches in peace before waking them up.  As I came back to drag Caiden out of bed, she was so cozy and warm that I curled up next to her, cooing to her to wake up as I gave her little kisses and nudges.  She refused, so I scooped up my scantily clad Kindergartener and carried her into her room where I tried to deposit her onto the floor in a standing position, but she kept trying to climb back into her bed.

"Do you have clothes picked out?" I questioned, trying to wake her up more when suddenly she came to life and ran over to a fluffy pink pile of clothing.  I guess she was really excited about this outfit, because it snapped her out of her fake grogginess (she's a morning person, but she tries to hide it).

Off came the bright green undies.  On went some clean ones.  She ran to the potty.  She came back and I helped her wriggle into some white tights with silver dots.  Next, I assisted her in stepping into a very fluffy, soft, pink skirt with about 5 layers of "floof." (I just made up a word...)  To my horror, the next thing we put on was a bright green, no, fluorescent green t-shirt.  We then rounded out the outfit with a pair of pink, authentic ballet "shoes."

The inner turmoil regarding those ballet shoes waged inside me for a good few minutes as the scenarios of her prancing around the playground in ballet shoes, sitting on the floor in the classroom cross-legged with ballet shoes, and dangling her ballet shoe-clad toes at the cafeteria lunch table played out in my mind... As well as walking in the cafeteria over food, running around outside for P.E., doing various activities in the classroom, her teachers reaction to her feet???  I had to make a decision!

And then the other side of the battle was waged in my head as I considered the alternative shoes for this already wild outfit with the remaining options being fake patent leather purple flats, black and yellow Nike high tops, Roxy flip flops, or white Chuck Taylor Converse.

None of those options appealed to me, so I went ahead and condoned the use of the leather ballet slippers.  But not without quite a bit of hesitation.

Now the only remaining obstacle was to hope against hope that papa bear wouldn't object to this outrageous getup before we left the house.  We happened to be in luck, however, since oddly enough, the only thing Dave commented on was how bright her shirt was.  "Hhhmmm..." I thought.  "Really???  Could I actually be this lucky?!  He must be getting slowly desensitized if he didn't notice anything else strange about this outfit..."  But I sure wasn't going to bring it up at that point in the game.  No one was crying and we still had a few minutes left for breakfast.  That's a win, win, win right there.

Caiden must have felt lucky this morning, too, because after all of that passed inspection, she pulled out a velvet, forest green sash and a fire-engine red bandana to "complement" the outfit.  That's when I put my very generous foot down.  "No way, Caiden.  I'm already letting you wear all of that. [pointing and gesturing] You take off that green belt right now--And the red bandana off your neck.  I've been generous, but that is too much!"

"But, Mom, this belt says I'm a ballet master!"

"That's not how it works in ballet..." I countered (echoed by Elliott).

"What about this bandana.  It makes me look pretty." she tried.

"No way.  You're dressing like a ballerina, not a cowboy."

And that's the story of how Caiden went to school dressed like a very colorful ballerina with ballet shoes and everything on the day I had forgotten was supposed to be "Western Day."  Oops.

"See, Mom, you should have let me wear that bandana.  Maybe you could go back home and get it..."

(Re-enacted outfit, missing one shoe and her glasses due to breaking them...)

My Grandparents' House

My grandparents called last week to tell me they're selling their home.

Not just their house, but their home of 45+ years.  The structure in which they raised their kids and housed their grandkids.  A place housing many, many memories, like the flagpole my dad shot a bb gun pellet into unbeknownst to his dad and has felt guilty about ever since;  the stone patio out back that my parents built;

the closet my dad told me he walked into as a kid, promising himself that he would never forget that moment; the stairs I used to hurry down in the morning--when I spent the night at Grandma's and Grandpa's house--excited to be the first one up, watching Grandma make blueberry pancakes; my grandmother's room where I would stand with my sister, getting our hair done up in barrettes for the ballet my grandparents would take us to; the site for many family gatherings and meals;

the ever mysterious basement where grandma would do her laundry and we would call down to her through the laundry shoots located on each floor; the floor of the grandkids room where grandma would read us bedtime stories while we propped ourselves up on floor cushions and looked around at the little toy soldiers sitting on their wooden train and Raggedy Anne and Raggedy Andy sitting neatly on their little rocking chairs, watching us;

the wall that my father told me he had once colored on and blamed it on his little brother who then go in trouble for it;  the breakfast nook that Aunt Marcia has been fabled to have stormed out of every day as a teenager and stomped up the stairs before slamming her door, and where Uncle Jim would spill his milk every Sunday at supper and my grandfather would cry, "For crying out loud!!!"; the same breakfast nook that I would sit in as a child and bring my children to visit when I was grown and look out at the bird feeder as Grandma and Grandpa would exclaim over each different visiting fowl;

the yard out back where I made many a penny by helping Grandpa with yard work; the flower beds Grandma always meticulously maintained and where flowers were always to be found; the garage where Grandpa parked his car that was always being used for some traveling job or another and smelled of cigars that he would smoke when Grandmother wasn't around; my grandfather's den with the built in bookshelves that my grandfather built; the den where he could always be found watching some sport or another and in which he housed everything he was proud of like the deer head of a deer my mother took down and the little toy Jeep my brother Ross gave him;  the den where Grandma kept the coloring books and crayons in the metal Crayola box on the bottom shelf of the bookshelf;  the den where my sisters and I watched Romeo and Juliet, the ballet, over and over again;

the pond and park at the end of the block where Grandma would take her walks while we played on the playground; the same pond my father fished in as a kid and threw a live practice grenade into as an unruly teenager.

All of these memories and many, many more have been cherished in and around the old white house that my grandparents purchased all those years ago.  So when they told me that the end was near, I burst into tears.  And then I bought a plane ticket to Kansas to see them.

Goodbye, little white house with the black shutters, with the way you smell and feel--the memories you housed.  You have always been my ideal home--a safe haven of love and peace, a constant unchanging in my life of transient journey. Its not so much the house I'm saying farewell to, but more so a farewell to the end of an excruciatingly precious era.  And time keeps marching on.

Dave's playing instrumental music while I write this... I think I might go cry.  The end of an era.  Farewell to the house, farewell to the holder of memories.

Children as Worshipers

A few months ago at church we looked at Mark 14 where Mary performs a costly act of worship toward Jesus when she breaks a flask of expensive perfume over his head.

Later that week, we discussed the passage again and dissected it at our "community group" on Friday night.  Since then, I have been mulling over the fact that we were created to be worshipers and when we are worshiping God we are doing exactly what we were created to do.  How much pressure this alleviates! Knowing what "the point" is.  The reason for life.  As this mindset has been affecting me, I have been praying over it for my kids.  Praying that God would show them who He is and that they would be worshipers of Him.  Since then, I've seen the Lord answer my prayers in a couple of obvious ways:

February 4, 2013  ||  The most beautiful thing happened the other night.  After we put Caiden to bed, we could hear her contentedly singing her little heart out.  She was "ramble singing"--just rambling on about all sorts of things that were true about God and I realized: "She is worshiping right now."  Just by speaking aloud the true things about God for no other reason than that they are true and good and beautiful.

March 10, 2013 ||  Elliott was so overcome while thinking about the Lord that He teared up telling me, "I just love Him (God) so much!  I don't know why... I just.... I just love him so much!"  That was worship, too.

This causes me to worship as I realize that all of these actions and confessions are a work of the Holy Spirit in my children's lives.  It is not something that I can coerce them into or will it into being.  It is the direct grace of God upon them to reveal Himself and His character and His love to the kids I love most in my life.  I hold none of it in my hands--I cannot grasp it--all I can do is lift up my hands in surrender and worship to the One who holds it all in His hands.

My First Job (Again)

My mom had a rough childhood and started "bringing home the bacon" from a very young age.  I think before she could drive a car, she was riding her bike to and from work.  At least that's how I always pictured it when she told me stories about it.  Now I can't separate which parts I imagined and which parts were direct information.

My mom has worked hard her entire life.  I always wanted to be just like her, but she never wanted that for me.  She wanted me to enjoy my childhood, be able to embrace my femininity, and be cared for.  To that end, she discouraged me from having a job all throughout high school.  She never pressured me to to be "responsible" in that way.  She taught me responsibility in other ways.  I never had a job until after high school, but by the age of 7 or 8 I managed our household laundry (for 8 people), vacuumed, did dishes, changed (cloth) diapers for my baby brothers, and knew how to cook a few things like eggs and quesadillas.  I was always expected to be responsible for my own actions and to care for all my siblings, to be respectful, and cultivate a relationship with God.  I even had to keep a budget when I made $2/week in allowance.  Still, I never worked a "real" job.

"You'll have your whole life to work," my mom would say.  And I'm really thankful that she did that.  I never had the temptation to find my identity in work or career.  My mom helped me to be pretty confident in who God had made me to be.

But... eventually, I graduated from high school and didn't really want to stick around the still-foreign-to-me east coast.  I packed my bags and drove an old, decrepit Thunderbird across the U.S. until I landed safely back in California (where I felt I belonged!).  Thus starting my illustrious career in the working world which lasted all of 2 or 3 years and included assembly line work (completely operated and instructed by Spanish speakers and I don't speak Spanish), office work, nonprofit caregiving, and telephone sales.

I never really found my niche, I guess, and happily surrendered my place in the rat race for the job of raising my children.  I remember Dave saying--as an answer to someone shortly after our kids were born--that eventually I would most likely work again when the kids were older.  At the time, I couldn't even fathom that stage ever arriving.  It seemed like a far distant world.  And yet, here I am--8 years later--a "stay-at-home mom" with no kids at home for 5 hours each day.  There's plenty to do during that time, but I started putting my feelers out there into that old cantankerous world of work and felt a feeling of dread and anxiety wash over me.  I never liked that world, never quite got comfortable.  Would it be the same now?  Would it best me yet again?

I began to pray.  And think.  And pray.  I talked to my grandmother who suggested looking into asking around at my kids' school to see what I could do there.  That planted a seed.

And now, here I am, 7 months later, the proud new owner of a user name and password for the Berkeley School Districts "substitute-finder" program.  I got a call the same day I finished registering and went to work a few hours later.  Its only been 2 days, so we'll see how it goes, but I really enjoyed going home after a few hours not carrying the weight of the job on my shoulders.  I can go in and do a good job and not worry about it after that.  I'm happy to have something that I can do according to my own schedule where I'm actually helping people that need it--filling a hole (something that I love to do)--and still be free to be concerned with the things of my family and not be distracted from them by the stresses of a job.

I tell you, God has been so gracious to me with this job that I didn't even have to fight to get.  I did have to follow through and be a little bit fearless, though.  I am always afraid of the unknown, so I'm thankful the Lord helped me to not let that stop me from looking into this.  He has been so gracious to me even after getting the job, too, because thats when the worry and fear started creeping in.  "What if I don't get any jobs?"  "What if my time constraints don't work with the hours for the substitute positions they need filled?" "What if? What if? What if?"  I kept having to surrender my thoughts, my time, and my life to His care.  Let Him worry it. And He supplied a job that first day to alleviate my fears.

And still after that!  I started fearing again: "What if that was the only one I get?" "What if? What if? What if?"  And He graciously gave me two more that were perfect.  He is so kind and gentle with me, with my fearful and wavering heart.  I keep having to remember:  I can trust Him.  He holds me in His hands.  His very capable hands.  And He loves me.  He showed me that when He sent His Son to die for me.  What more proof do I need?  None, but still He gives it to me each day in many different ways.  I will praise the Lord.

Caiden's Crazy Outfits Update

I just thought I would stop in and reassure you that Caiden is making just as crazy outfits as ever, so don't worry!  Everything is fine over here.  She's also a really good climber and is so good at reading that I'm considering pulling out my old physics textbooks for her just so she can have a challenge...

Carry on.

See more of Caiden's wacky outfits here and here.