children

Faithfully Thinking: He will lift it soon

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 17 Comments

My daughter was drawing with sidewalk chalk outside the house. She drew a heart. I doodled some hearts and an angel near her heart.

She’s 5.

Sometimes 5 going on adult.

The song “Trust and Obey” had been going through my head much of the day, though I didn’t know why.

I wrote the word Trust in orange chalk on a step.

“What are you writing?”

“Just a word.”

“What’s it say?”

“Trust.”

“Oh”

She steps down off the step and looks at it. She can’t read yet.

“That should say Jesus after it.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Trust Jesus and believe in God and He will lift it.”

Watching her.

“He will lift what?”

“He will lift the corona. He will lift it soon. Just believe in God. Write that.”

“Well, that’s a lot to write, but I’ll write, ‘Trust Jesus. He will lift it soon.'”

“Okay.”

And she skipped away.

What’s weird is she rarely says stuff like this.

Sometimes when I say “let’s pray,” she rolls her eyes. She wasn’t brought up in Sunday School like my son was and sometimes I feel like I’m letting her down that way but then she comes out with something like this and I think “oh…apparently she’s listening to the sermons and me more than I think.”

And we weren’t talking about corona before she said this either, but I could tell it had been on her mind and she had reached a point where she just knew — it’s going to be okay.

 

How adults wake up versus how almost 5-year olds wake up

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments

Adults waking up: “Ack. Man. Why are the lights on?”

Almost 5-year old: eyes open immediately, she looks at her parent and says, “When I’m older I’m going to be an animal rescuer. I’m going to rescue pandas and crocodiles.”

Adult: “Wha- Okay? I need coffee before I can even talk…”

Almost 5-year old: “I’m going to rescue crocodiles from flash floods. Crocodiles can get stuck in floodwaters and then their eggs can’t survive in a flood so I’d have to rescue their eggs.”

Adult: “Where’s the coffee pot?”

Almost 5-year old: “Last night I had a dream that I was hugging a panda. I hugged it, like this, and it hugged me back. It was sooooo cute. Have you ever hugged a panda? I think it would be so cool to hug a panda.”

Adult: “But … you just woke up. How are you already speaking so much, so fast … ”

Almost 5-year old: “I’m going to get breakfast! I am going to have French Toast sticks for breakfast! And maple syrup and then I’m going to play with my playdough and my unicorn and my lions and . . . ” voice fading down the stairs.

Adult: ……….

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Next to the girl and her dog

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 3 Comments

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I posted this photo of my daughter and our dog on Facebook recently and my dad commented the following under it:

Next to the girl collecting Easter eggs with her dog stands a pair of sawhorses that belonged to her great great grandfather. Just to the left of them is a gnarly maple with different bark than the other maples. Behind her is a beautiful tall always liked ash. It is yellowed pale and almost dead now from the ash tree bores that have destroyed most all of Pennsylvania’s ash. To the right just out of focus is a large stone over the grave of one of her mother’s cats.

There is also a small dogwood tree planted by her grandfather nearby. Beyond that are some rotted boards of the dog house he built when nine years of age or so he claims.  A shag-bark hickory stood near there and fifty yards above that spot stood a balsa tree, the largest tree in the lot. Seventy-five feet behind the girl is a hand dug well that is now covered with heavy steel plates. This well gravity fed the house and chicken coops. Another well hidden just over the stone wall property line has a large stone covering it.

Just beyond the fence once stood one chicken coop. Water would be hand carried to that one as it was not downhill enough for gravity feed. Hid in the brush 100 feet to the left of the sawhorse is the foundation remains of the spring-cooled milk house. Also, the corn crib was near there. The granary still remains in that spot. A week later as this is being written the buds are opening to vivid green leaves, the forsythia flowers are bright yellow and life goes on.

Why I have gray hair – reason no. 30

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

I heard it before I saw it and knew at that moment I’d made a mistake letting my 4-year old jump from the couch to the metal barstool we’d never actually used at a bar since we didn’t have one. I saw her hanging over the bottom rungs of the chair, now on its’ side, like a limp rag doll, and yelled for my son to help because I figured that in his youth he could move faster. He wasn’t there, though, and by the time I got to her she had lifted herself up and was standing with her hair in her face and her mouth open while she tried to scream, but no sound would come out.

A bright red river of blood was streaming a path from her nose to her mouth and I wasn’t sure if she had ripped her nose or her lip open.

Always cool under pressure, I started to scream “Help me! Help me!” over and over, yelling for my son to call his dad at work. He, having been upstairs for what he’d hoped to be a relaxing visit to the bathroom, was a frazzled mess and stumbled to find one of our phones.

“Grace. Face bleeding.” He shouted into the phone and hung up.

Somehow I had mentally slapped myself out of my hysteria and asked for a box of tissues, snatched one and held it against my daughter’s nose, noting I had smeared blood above her eyebrow as I’d pulled her close for a hug and examination.

I knew that in order for her to calm down that I had to calm down and suddenly I went into robot mode. Wipe face. Hold nose, ask what hurt and what she had hit. She said her nose and her ear so I examined both appendages and saw blood caked along the edge of the nose and the tip of it swelled some, but otherwise it seemed fine. The ear didn’t have the gash I worried I would see. 

My husband burst through the door a few minutes later and we checked her out together while she cried. A popsicle and a cartoon helped her calm down.

A half an hour later she was in the kitchen twirling in circles next to the counter, an inch from smashing her face in again.

“Excuse me. We’ve already had one bloody nose. Are you trying to get another one?” I asked.

And that’s when I felt it – another gray hair pop up on top of my head.

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The flowers are sad

/ Lisa R. Howeler

 

I love how my 2-year olds’ brain works.

Sunday at my parents, we were walking to the house from the pool and she saw the flowers along the wall and said “oh those flowers are sad.”

They were purple flowers drooping down, closing up as the sun set.

 

I said “oh do they look sad? They’re really just closing up for the night.”

She looked at some green flowers that aren’t blooming fully yet and said “those flowers are angry.”

And she was right. They did look angry with their spiked petals and centers, dark green towering above the rock wall. With the shadows cast from the trees the petals almost looked like teeth ready to bite down on us.

It wasn’t something I’d ever really thought about – flowers looking happy or sad or angry.

When you look through the eyes of a child you see so much more than you did before.

And children see, feel and understand much more than we realize.

Denial is the first step to not admitting we’re in the toddler years

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 1 Comment

I wasn’t ready for it, I’m not going to lie.

The attitude. The firm shakes of the head and the cry of “no!”

The folded arms. The tantrums. 

The deep scowls and body flops to the floor.

She’s not even two. 

Yet these are the reactions I have had as I stare in horror at the Terrible Twos rushing at us like an out of control train. I am being pulled into these years that some moms cutely call “ the testing years”, kicking and screaming. 

Seriously, what is with her hitting the stubborn stage before she’s even 2? All the books say two is when it all goes to hell in a hand basket. She is not two so she is not allowed to refuse to let me help her wash her hands and do it herself.

She is not allowed to try to jump into the deep end of the pool without adult supervision because she lacks fear. She is not allowed to sit in the floor and cry because mommy put on her shoes and she wanted to do it on her own.

She is not allowed to squish her face up in indignant annoyance when I try to hold a cup for her to drink from or slap my hand away in apparent insistence that she be allowed to do it ON HER OWN!

It’s not fair! 

I was supposed to have more time to prepare!

But, she’s been developmentally early in so many other areas, I should have expected this. 

I really should have been preparing for the worst. 

The worst being that my little princess really is a smaller version of me. 

Oh, Lord, give me strength, she has my independent attitude, my stubborn streak and, I can barely manage to write this, my temper. 

This is it.

This is the payback I was warned about. 

And yes, the saying is true. The saying I won’t repeat because I am a good Christian mama blogger. The saying that essentially says, “you are feeling the pain you caused so many others. Enjoy the ride, sucker.”