Four Months!

Phoebe girl! You are four months old!  How blessed we are.  It is a delight to see your personality emerge. Right now your favorite thing in the world is faces, especially those of your big sisters. You light up when you see them and you babble and laugh. You are ticklish and very social. If we leave you alone for very long the chin trembles and the lip turns down. You love being with us!  At this point you're still not interested in too much sleeping, especially napping.  But you are so cheerful in the morning when you do get some good sleep.  You are working on a tooth and drooling, pulling at everything you can reach, especially a cat walking by! Phoebe Hope we love you.

November Thoughts

November is here and with it our first snow flurries. We move inward and settle in with tea and warmth, candlelight and piles of books, quilts and snuggles.  Our last few weeks have felt heavy and somehow the shift in season seems fitting.  How thankful we are for sweet baby smiles and big sisters dressed up, visits from friends and for the light of Christ in the dark world.  

These words by Sarah Clarkson seem ever so appropriate:

If I could choose a season to embody my soul, I would ever choose autumn. Each year, when the calendar and the wind shift toward chill and fire and shadow, I feel a kind of spiritual homecoming. I watch the turning trees, the fire in leaf, the sharp, cold air, and I feel I am watching a paradox that images my own pilgrim journey in this world. There, in the vivid colours the earth casts as laugher in the face of death, I glimpse that mystery Paul describes in us whose hearts are already radiant with eternity, but whose bodies are moored in time. In autumn, I understand his enigmatic description of the way we are ‘dying, yet we live’. .
I want to live with an autumn hued intensity. There is such passion in this season, it has a vim akin to that of youth when the world is still filled with ideals. The joy of it throbs through the earth, running gold through the veins of the leaves, crimsons the trees. Life is a gift, a revelation, a joy. And I believe that I am called to live with a passion as fiery as those leaves, as playful as that wind because I partake in the eternal youth of my Redeemer. I too must glow in the face of death with a vim and joy that sets feasts and laughter, friendship and song as my last word to the darkness.
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But I also want to live with an autumn shaped acceptance. For the leaves silver with age and decay. The fields grow sere. Death still reigns in the broken world, and the earth yields to winter with a quiet grace. So too, I know that there is a real sense in which all that I love here is transient and passing. We live amidst chill and difficulty. We are aware, like those brave leaves, that the husks of our bodies will wear out, that change and finitude are our lot. .
But there is a peace in autumn to equal the passion because the earth knows that winter will never have the final word. In the brown fields, the slim, bare-branched trees, the huddled bushes, springtime sleeps. They rest, because they know that the sap will one day rise again. As will the sap of Love in me. So, I like this season, can embody that gracious, fearless tension of death and change met with a crimson song of hope. Of quiet joy. This is my autumn life.

Emmeline turns Seven!

Our sweet girl turned seven this week and my heart skipped a beat to think that this one who made me a Mama is growing so! As hard as it is to watch your babies grow old, I marvel at the joy that comes when they grow old enough to share in things you love or have loved as a child.  Emmie is a book girl through and through and almost every day she goes to the shelves and asks me: did you read this one! Why yes, sweet thing- I did and here's what I loved about it.  It works this way with discovering all the things in the world.  She marvels at sunsets, at forests, at sounds on the piano and raindrops on the roof. She is gentle and tender with her sisters and animals, a true chicken whisperer! She is a diligent worker who loves to learn new things, and is doing great in second grade!  She's working hard at piano with her goal to start the cello soon and is exploring a love of cooking.  She is happiest with a book or playing out back in her mud kitchen and is loving being a big sister two times over.  Her favorite food just now seems to be salads and this year marks the loss of two teeth!! God bless you darling Emmeline. May you always seek the Lord and pursue truth, goodness and beauty through Him.

As the light shifts

 As the light shifts and we move into Autumn we cozy up inside with tea and books. Right now our read a loud is "The Long Winter"- L. May Alcott. The girls are loving it!!  Phoebe girl is twelve weeks old and we are smitten with her.  She is starting to smile and coo, is enraptured by ceiling fans and clocks and is growing ever so fast.  How we love her.  Lena is finding joy in reading after getting her glasses and Emmeline is reading so much we can't keep her away from books!  I begin to feel what it may have been like to be my Mama.  (Conversations go something like this: No reading under the covers, we really must get going!).  Life is full of busy times and hard moments but we are ever working on slowing each moment down so that we can savor the beauty that the Creator gives us, both in creation and in each other.

Summer is packing her bags

Summer is packing up and Autumn is making hints now and then.  The leaves are starting to turn, the evenings grow cold and the moon shimmers down! This brings the start up of school and ballet, continued nature walks to learn our trees and bugs, butterfly releases, and end of summer garden harvests.  Excitement mounts as the chickens start laying beautiful little pink/brown eggs!!  The girls sit in the coop cheering the chickens on!  Baby girl continues to grow and has started to coo and smile, to follow with her eyes and engage in the world around her.  We took some photos in smocked dresses because we wanted to capture beautiful sunlight and princesses running through gardens, aged 5 and 6. (I will say 6 as long as possible even though she will turn 7 soon). Now Phoebe is two months old and we continue to thank God for the gift of her life.

This year our school year is full of exciting subjects. Second Grade and Kindergarten with two readers is especially fun! We are doing A Year of Tales which studies Beatrix Potter's books, focusing on geography, nature, character building, narration, poetry and watercolor.  We've moved back in history to Ancient History and the girls are especially enraptured with pyramids and mummies.  Story of the World cds are always playing as we drive to ballet.   Math U See continues to build their concepts of parts and wholes and I love watching two little people love math  (I never did).  French is an exciting addition this year using Speaking French with Miss Mason and the girls are already laughing through french accents. Tea time Friday read a louds, Wind in the Willows, A Long Winter are our current line ups but Emmie has already fallen in love with our first poem of the year Kipling's The Glory of the Garden. Astronomy and plants, science experiments and botany are scheduled, along with Friday field trips and cursive! Here's to a wonderful and gentle learning year together.