Eden, age nine, while playing with these toys from her Kinderegg:

“I’m just an ordinary girl with ordinary dreams. I just want to win this nascar race and bring home a bag of gold to my man.”

Hmm. Is that an improvement from this conversation at age six?

What’s the funniest gender role conversation you’ve had with your kiddos?

Give Me Grace: A Child’s Daybook of Prayers
Cynthia Rylant

Last Fall we went on the Goodbye Cousin’s Tour of Ought-Eight. While we were at my sister’s visiting this adorable nephew (and all the other cute bébés) Cate ordained herself ‘official reader to anyone under six.” Even though she has long outgrown board books, Cate was totally charmed by this pretty one and read it over and over to her two year old cousin. Then, she unabashedly pled with her Auntie Becky to get it for her for Christmas, and low and behold, Give Me Grace arrived via the UPS man. (Who, according to my kids, “is better than Santa!”)

Author-illustrator Cynthia Rylant has beautifully illustrated this sweet book in a style that is not child-ish, but certainly child friendly. When I read it with Cate during morning cuddle time, I enjoy the artwork as much as much as she does. We often flip though the pages find our favorite colorful pages. Cate reads Give Me Grace every night and every morning, though truthfully she no longer needs to book as she memorized the whole thing within a week. There’s a lilting prayer for each day and I can get behind the sentiment in each one – which is rare for me to experience in religious books, especially those written for children! My favorite prayer is for Wednesday:

Wednesday make me full of light
Guide my heart both day and night
Give me gladness, give me grace,
Shine your love upon my face.

Who wouldn’t embrace that as an intentional for the day? Thanks, Cynthia. Today’s Flavor: Colorful and Hopeful.

P.s. another one of my kid’s favorite books by Rylant is the sweet, reminiscent When I Was Young in the Mountains

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Eden’s reaction when I told her they have to switch schools again because we couldn’t find a permanent apartment in our current neighborhood:

“I HATE God! Why God, why? Why would you make things work like this?!?!?!” (continued sobbing) “I would LITERALLY rather cut off my hands…cut off my ARMS than have to switch schools again.” (This went on for 20 minutes while we walked home from school.)

And here’s the email I sent Paul yesterday:

“It’s 6:35am and I am already prepared to beat the children.”

I love single parenting.

Some people are natural parents. The children arrive, by blood or by adoption, and some deep seated knowledge kicks in.

I am not one of those people.

When my daughter final arrived, after a string of pregnancy disasters and difficulties, I found myself to be completely out of my depth. In infancy, I couldn’t tell whether a cry was for hunger or for tiredness. The hormones stew of pregnancy, delivery, and nursing left be adrift in depression. And when my next daughter unexpectedly arrived, leaving me home with two children aged two-and-under, I realized I disliked nearly all of the everyday tasks of parent (cooking, cleaning, dealing with toddler temper tantrums, endless hours of make believe…) In short, I felt like a TOTAL LOSER.

Thank God for these authors, who gave me companionship, laughter, and not a small amount of good advice for the journey. Give this collection as shower gifts, and your friends will love you forever. Or, stock your own shelves if you’re preparing for the onslaught of parenthood.

The Three-Martini Playdate: A practical guide to happy parenting
Christie Mellior

Already, you love the title, yes? Mellior’s basic premise that you were here first, and children should be seen only if they can be ever-so-helpful as to help Mommy pass out the cocktail napkins and crudities. Here’s an excerpt from the opening chapter:

Gone are the days when a small person of tender age would do as he or she was asked, good naturedly and obediently, and the rest of the time would sit quietly reading or practicing a simple cross stitch…One wasn’t required to transport the little children hither and tither, here to T-ball practice, there to a “playdate,” may the chipper mommy who coined that particular term forever rot in a hell of eternally colicky babies….
Let us be perfectly frank. You were here first. You are sharing your house with them, your food, your time, your books. Somewhere, in fairly recent memory, we have lost sight of that fact.

Oh, I hope you are ever so much in love! No one helped me take my parenting gig less seriously–something I was in deep need of after too many months of reading up on what to expect. So click here, and in a few days you could be sipping your favorite thing-made-with-gin with my soulsister and me. Cheers! Today’s Flavor: Pass the vodka.

The Girlfriends’ Guide to Surviving The First Year of Motherhood
Vicki Iovine

I like taking advice from former playboy models who have four children in six years (no, none of them are twins.) For instance, in regards to the many children, Iovine suggests not mixing red wine and your husband’s birthday. (Good point!)

Anyone with a sense of humor will enjoy this no-nonsense, practical, “we’ve been there” advice – including how to detect being postpartumish, a terrific term to help your friend identify when you need help with the post-delivery hormone stew. All of Iovine’s parenting books are helpful, but the first two: Pregnancy and First Year are are top notch. Today’s Flavor: Helps you out without stressing you out.

Operating Instructions
Anne Lamott

If you are a regularly reader of Magpie Girl, you already know that Anne is my priestess. My dear friend Wendy–mother of the adorable Rees, who we fully plan on marrying off to Eden–gave me this book shortly after the birth of my second child. More poetic than my other recommendations, but still deeply funny, Lamott’s story of adjusting to being the single mother to a baby boy is told with refreshing, and sometimes shockingly honesty. Once again, consumate story teller Lamott becomes an essential traveling companion, this time for those of us on the parenting road. Today’s Flavor: Real, with a touch of funny.

Order a book by clicking on one of the links above, and support this website! Find more books, music, and things I enjoy at Magpie Suggests. Tak!

Catie’s final chalk message on our front porch.

A month ago, Lynette accused us of “slipping away under the cover of night.” She was right, that was what we were planning on—in part because we don’t like big to-do’s, and a goodbye party where all our various worlds collide seemd overwhelming. And frankly, I just don’t like goodbyes. Lynette, however, is ridiculously rich in practical wisdom, so instead of moving in the cover of darkness, we planned a series of small goodbyes–dinners, coffees, and cocktails (especially cocktails.)—and these allowed us to say our thank yous and farewells.

All of this has left me quite tear-sodden. At one point, Katie K, my favorite neighbor, found me crying in the driveway. Why? Because I had to say goodbye to Sean—the cashier at my local grocery store. I know. It seems silly, but this is how we live. I seek out Sean’s line at the grocery store every week. Over time we’ve bemoaned the agony of first-time home buying (a condo purchased with his partner); made plans for a language learning CD (“Chinese the Gay Way”); and celebrated his one year sobriety anniversary. This is how we’ve built our life here in Seattle—by bonding with the grocery clerk, making friends with the neighbor, taking in stray boys and stray dogs. So when it comes to leaving, there is reall stuff, real people to leave—and that is far more difficult than selling a car or packing up a living room.

So I cry–because I won’t be able to sip chai with Jen, or have knit-and-tonic nights with Katie. I cry because I’ll no longer share a big old house with a gaggle of roommates. I cry because I’m ill at ease leaving our newly-legally-adult/quasi-grownup, ( I know Josh and Tonya will have his back, but come on–how’s a boy supposed to survive without unlimited internet and a fridge full of dairy products? ) I cry because I’m ripping my children out of their darling local elementary school, and prying them out of the arms of their sibling best-friends, Noah and Claire, and schlepping them a world away from Rosie, who Eden met the day before kindergarten and they are friends still yet. Not to mention what I’m doing my parents, who retired a year ago planning on full-time grandparent duty and are now wondering what they will do with all that time on their hands.

Then again, children adapt, and friendships survive long distance, and teenagers, well, they get “left” all the time at colleges and boarding schools and…I don’t know, boot camp? (Oh lord, don’t let him sign up for boot camp!) These are not reasons not to go. Ahead of us lies a wonderful adventure. If only I could stop blowing my nose and live into it!

In the midst of all the goodbye’s came many lovely gifts. The Uber-Family took photos of the four kids one day and presented us with an album the next. Rosie’s family threw a goodbye party for all the schoolyard chums. My folks dedicated many hours of grandchild tending while we sorted and packed. And Lynette helped her sweet Pascal make us bookmarks that say, “I will hold your place for you!” (This being exactly the kind of sentiment you would expect from a family who’s liscense plates read YOU MATTER and CONNECT.)
All of these gift are so tender and meaningful. They made us realize that, people like us—and that as much as we are connected to them, they are bonded to us. I really can’t explain how meaningful that is. Everytime I think about it, I’m back to the cry.

Just before we left, Katie read me a poem. It is one her father knows by heart, and she says the last stanza reminds her of our home. I think her reading this to me, after our storytelling-hours, is one of the nicest thing anyone has ever offered me. In reading me this poem, Katie proclaimed that the life Paul and I had hoped for had actually come true. So, when I cry a little too much, I read this poem. It gives me hope that we can again find our way to that magic place.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all’s accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony’s a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

A Prayer for My Daughter
William Butler Yeats

Want to read more about the beginning of our immigrant journey? Start here, then move on to this and this
.

“Here there be monsters.”

There is fierceness to your love as a parent, a primordial viciousness that cannot quite be captured by pen or by page. The heat of it feeds you, moves you to the force of living that must be done to rear a child, to create a life.

But it tears at you too, this animal of passion, and the thing that tears deepest is that the one you love so fiercely–this child of womb or of heart–cannot understand this beast, cannot capture it in their reality, or even in their imagination. And you know, in spite of this longing to make sure they know, that they aren’t meant to, aren’t intended to. This kind of knowing is not expected of them.

So this tears then too, this absolute inability to communicate the sheer volume of heartache held for them, the rawness of the love which bears them into existence.

And when the child is not your own and you must live into a place that is not-parent, but rather mentor, or friend, or some indefinable something else–where then does this animal go to dwell? And where does the fierce protectionism burn when the child grows older, finds wings on which to lift away? Where does that energy live, when the cage you’ve built in your heart is no longer large enough to contain its nervous pacing, when there is not enough flesh to keep it fed?

Should there not be a guide book for this wild adventure? A star chart or a river guide? Should there not be an ancient map, a gilt compass, moss on the north of the tree? How do you find your footing when you dwell on the edge of love’s fierce map?

Did you give some child-at-heart one of the fantastic books from last week’s recs? Go on, there’s still time. And while you’re shopping, keep these lovely tomes in mind:

How Many Miles To Bethlehem?
Kevin Crossly-Holland, author
Peter Malone, illustrator

“I am Mary. Tight as a drum. Round as the lady moon calling out to me.”

When a story starts like that, well, what a wonder! This simple telling of the nativity story progresses across the page like a holy journey. No character is left un-noticed–even the ox and the donkey get a chance to say their piece. Yet the reader is not bogged down in the telling, but rather carried along like the wind-born feather on the opening leaves of this glorious picture book. In our house we have many, many picture books about the birth of Jesus, but How Many Miles To Bethlehem?is one the girls turn to again and again. Even younger children seem to enjoy the rhythmic text and sumptuous illustrations. I myself was profoundly moved by this book, and regularly recite its closing lines at Christmas time:

“We are the angles. We are your secret voices.
Listen!
‘
This baby!’
‘This hope!’
‘This peace!’”

What more is there to say but, “Amen?” Today’s Flavor: Rich and meaningful. Order here.

The Nativity
Julie Vivas, Illustrator

Paul and I fell in love with the artwork of Julie Vivas after her book Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge was read at our seminary graduation. Since then we’ve been snatching up her books like Welcome With Love and Possum Magic. But our favorite by far is Vivas’ cleverly illustrated Nativity. This version of the story pairs the classic tone of the King James text with quirky, imaginative illustrations. The angels wear combat boots! They drink bowls of chai with Mary! And Mary looks really, REALLY enormously pregnant — plus, she kinda has dreads. The just-right knack here is the way vivas pairs old fashioned languaged with updated images to giving us a fresh look at this unchanging tale. And just wait until you see the clever way she illustrates the crowing birth of baby Jesus! We’ve given this book to godsons and aunties, illustrator pals and grandparents. We think you’ll love it too. Flavor: Earthy and transcendent. Order here.

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