I’m back at my studio after two weeks of travel, early school dismissals, and sinus infections. Inspite of the goodness that is family mangement/motherhood. it never ceases to amaze me how that gig can consume every last drop of time for creative pursuits.

It’s bittersweet to be here these days, knowing that I’ll have to pack it all up soon. I got a lot done here, in this room of my own. I grew as an artist and writer. I tried brave new things. But, all in all, all of my bigger goals have gone unmet. I’m still not making money as a writer, or as a minister. After much initial interest, my first book proposal is still drifting around, nearly dead in the water. People ask me to teach, then back down when they hear I charge a standard professional fee (that’s life with non-profits I suppose.) I haven’t figured out the freelancing thing. (I can’t seem to write fast enough to get out the critical mass necessary to land a few articles.) And my Etsy shop was just starting to turn a profit, but now I have to shut it down in January because of the overseas move.

I’m glad, so glad, that I’ve rented this room of my own…but sad too, that I’m still so stuck in my journey to the land of professional writers. I’m trying to embrace the small is beautiful concept that even a small start is enough, but sometimes it’s hard.

What do you do when your goals seem unachievable?

Lukie grills his millionth s’more over the backyard fire pit last summer.

I’m in Texas for a few days visiting my sister’s family before we make the big move to Denmark. This is one of her middle children, Lukie of the Four Years. I got to say, he’s got a little piece of my heart.

For a long time Becky had all boys, which resulted in one of my favorite mothering lines ever:

“Boys! Stop spitting on the carpet! (pause) I just had it cleaned!”

It was the pause that did me in–as though if it hadn’t just been cleaned, well, she just would have let it slide.

Another motherhood quip I love came while I was talking to Jen on the phone:

“Mada! Stop hanging shovels in the neighbor’s tree!”

This was during the ‘we live dangerously era’ when Jen’s kids would regularly build towers taller than their heads out of any available sharp or heavy object.

Or how about this one, coined just this past weekend at the cousin-fest:

“Boys! Give Catie and Gillian a weapon…everyone gets a weapon.”

I don’t know…kids, they do things to ya.

What’s your favorite parenting one liner?

Me and my Lukie.

After spending TWO HOURS in the piano teacher’s waiting room helping two second graders spell EVERY SINGLE WORD of their report on bumblebee bats (which are so rare, no one even knows what the eat), my fourth-grade daughter hit me with this one:

“I can’t believe you and Dad think things like making dinner and doing dishes are more important than helping me with my logic homework. I guess you two are just willing to jeopardize my educational future!!!!”

The children are playing at opposite ends of the cove, each alone unto themselves. Eden surfs endlessly, riding the waves on her boogie board. She is brazen in her surfer-girl two-piece, whilst everyone around her is clad in neoprene to endure the cold water. Cate, on the other hand, is more cautious, standing only mid-calf in the surf, half-wrapped in a cover up skirt, her toes never leaving the protective shield of her water-sneakers. Cate throws fistfuls of sand in the air, her mouth forming songs and fairytales for only the surf to hear.

I marvel that they are so good at this – being alone, living within the present wave, drifting on the ebb and flow of the tide.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving:
Thank you for these, your gifts,
which we receive from your bounty.
Amen.

A sample from the small-is-beautiful book of our rockaway memories.

Last weekend in the tiny world of the Pacific Northwest, two like-minded spiritual mamma’s met. Shari MacDonald Strong and I first fell in love during Paul’s PAF days where we both got all up in arms over unjust crap that was going on in our region. Since then we’ve been nurturing a soul sister romance over the internet, stalking each other’s blogs, and longing to meet each other IRL. After several aborted attempts to hook up — one which included a raging round of the stomach flu on a northwest island — we finally gathered our clans together and took all five kids out to eat at Portland’s family-friendly Old Wives’ Tale restaurant. Over two spilled glasses of water (the twins) and fifteen trips to the salad bar (our girls), Shari and her husband Craig told us about all their small but beautiful projects.

Craig has done one of those miraculous things and launched a successful small business, LensBaby, which makes specialized camera lenses for print photographers. Shari is nurturing spiritual-seeking parents over at Literary Mamawith her regular column Zen and the Art of Child Maintenance. She also has a great little self-titled blog where she writes wonderfully about editing, parenting, and recovering from evangelical Christianity (all favorite topics of my very own.) Stop by one of their sites this week and tell them thanks for believing that small is beautiful!

And now for a Small is Beautiful Update: Jen and I are still working on the art for the SIB button. We’re also continuing to collect web addresses for small sites that would like to be featured in a Small is Beautiful Saturday write up. You can put your name in the hat by emailing your website address to moi at magpie dash girl dot com. In upcoming weeks we’ll also be featuring pdf downloads of small but beautiful gifties, micro give aways, and fun collaborative projects to inspire and delight. Keep watching this site on Saturdays!

Much love,

Rachelle

The girls spent the bulk of their Saturday at the PDX Zineposium dodging the numerous line drawings of phalluses and severed heads in order to find all that is kid friendly in Zine culture. They gathered plenty of swags–tiny buttons, handmade stickers, and this Volume 4, Issue 5 of a zine consisting entirely of identical bunnies. On the 20 minuted drive back across the Oregon/Washington border (the girls rolled down the windows to kiss the Washington air) Cate wrote a story to accompany the pictoral zine.  It basically went “Bunnies, bunnies bunnies. More bunnies and …. Bunnies!!”  After a while it did acquire a semblance of a plot. Here’s how she retold the story later in the hotel room, illustrated with the entire zine. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s some of what I did today…and this doesn’t include the exercise, and the meals, and the reading of Harry Potter aloud, and the email…and, and, and…

Yes, that would be the basement play space…clean!

In The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris quotes a friend of hers as saying that she wants this carved on her gravestone: “Finally Her Laundry is Done.”

Weeds gone, lettuce thinned.

Finds for Magpie Girl Vintage (isn’t that shirt great?)

Sammy’s version of the ‘b’ word.

Usually when I see a list like this, I think “for this I got a master’s degree.” Today it all felt very good and purposeful. And at least I didn’t have to deal with this…!

Catie in her downy woodpecker mask she made at science camp.

Every Summer — in addition to camping trips and swimming lessons — I send the kids to at least two summer camps. Lest you think I am the kind of mom who doesn’t want to spend time with her kids…. Well, actually, sometimes I am the kind of Mom who doesn’t want to spend time with her kids. In fact yesterday I just about collapsed after the post-vacation foray to the grocery store. It was all I could do not to throw the ice cream in the freezer and leave the rest of the stuff on the counter while I collapsed on the couch with a martini. But I digress…

As I was saying, the kids go to two summer day camps. Last year they went to a couple of very different types of church camps, which I wrote about here. This year we made it to the first gung-ho “Jesus Freakin’ Loves You!” camp (also known as indoctrination camp). Then we opted for a science camp at one of our big urban parks. The girl’s favorite thing about camp — any camp — is the music. After a day at church camp they come back singing songs with lyrics like this:

I’m gonna clap my hands, I’m gonna stomp my feet
I’m gonna raise my hands, I’m gonna bow my knee,
From my head to my toes and all that’s in between
I’m giving you all of me…

But when they go to science camp they come home with songs like this:

It starts with an “S” and ends with a “T”
It comes out of you and it comes out of me
I know what your thinking but don’t call it that…
Lets be scientific and call it scat!

Yes, we have mastered The Scat Song. Our scientific education is now complete!

Oh, it’s raining again! Usually it’s sunny by July, even in our grey Seattle. But this Summer brings only extremes — 90+ degrees one week and then more rain in one day then we usually get all Summer. Both the girls woke up weepy and out of sorts today — Cate complaining of a headache and Eden saying she felt “too sad” and had to go back to bed. It’s hard on days like this to always look on the bright side of life. So here’s my list of things to revel in this Summer….maybe we’ll use this rainy day to get that day glo nailpolish on our toes!

Cheers!

Dear Eden,

You hung around our heals this morning as Dad and I rubbed our eyes and blustered through our morning routine until you finally had to joyfully burst, “It’s my BIRTHDAY!”

And now you are nine.

This has been a hard-won year for you little girl. No wonder you are so proud of achieving the next digit on the number line! Childhood experts say that there are stages of equilibrium and disequilibrium, and this last year for you as has been the latter. You lost your best friend to the school bully; got mired in yucky schoolyard dynamics; developed a queasy tummy to go with your upset heart; and pulled into yourself for awhile like a tiny turtle twice startled.

Your sensitive tummy didn’t indicate your really strength though, and like an unexpected heroine in a story book, you showed yourself to be deeply insightful, full of integrity and very, very strong. I was so proud of you when you ignored Mean Maddie and – in spite of her Rasputin-like control over your best friend Rosie – wisely declined her invitation to put you “on the wait list” for the Mean Girl’s Club. I was inspired by you when you faced bravely into an internal emotional storm front and struggled through to learn how to live within your broad emotional range. (A lot of people – grown ups even—don’t learn how to take care of their emotions and they just stuff them into a hiding places instead. You did real grown-up work this year, and I am so proud!) I was relieved to see you use “Team Eden” to help you find your way back to your healthy, happy self. (Not everyone can learn how to “find containers for big emotions” like you can!) Now, at the end of this hard-won year I often find myself gazing at your clear-eyed beauty as you read in the corner in your new wire-rimmed eyeglasses, or wander through the house and yard touching this and that and making up stories. You are such a self-knowing and winsome creature!

This year when Rosie and you hit a tough patch, you got over your fear that you didn’t know how to make friends and found a whole slew of new companions. This was the first year you’ve had boys-for-friends and you teamed up Noah, Sergio and Grant to be “The Four Amigos.” (Noah says that you are his best friend because you “have a kind heart.”) You also discovered a new friend in Ella, and helped Perrine find a place to belong when she transferred from her school in France mid-year. Not to mention all the kids who are clamoring to get invited to your birthday party! Your kindness has won out over all kinds of icky playground power struggles, and shown you to be a true friend to lots of different types of people. Good job Eden!

In addition to figuring out friendship challenges, you learned a lot of other things at school too this year. You listened to your emotions and your body and figured out that while you like to be active, you don’t like competition. So, you became the referee at four square, the cheering fan at kick ball, and opted for recreational swims over swim team races. Your teacher said you were “systematically making your way through the entire library” at school and you really excelled at writing. Your report about Anne Franks was sensitive and fluid, you showed a real writers “voice” in your lion report, and you wrote volume after volume of cleverly told true family stories in writer’s workshop. You excelled at speaking in public and did a couple of very nice oral presentations in class. You even overcame your nervousness of timed tests and became the only student to complete the entire multiplication sheet in two minutes!

One thing that really surprised and pleased you this year was when you were honored for your leadership skills and were chosen to be the CEO of your class store for Village Days. How exciting to be in charge of Toytropolis! You certainly took those business- building skills to heart when you landed your first Summer jobs — walking Merlin while the neighbors were away, and watering gardens-for-hire. And of course, I’m very proud of you for being so clever and generous as to hold a yard sale with a bunch of your toys to earn money for you sister’s birthday present – the American Girl doll bed she’d longed for but never managed to save enough allowance to buy. I’m so proud of you for being so generous and kind!

One of my favorite things to discover about you this year is how much you love water. You even sigh, “Oh…..water!” when you see someone hosing down a hot sidewalk in front of the local grocery store. You’re the first person in the lake and the last one out, and while other kids are just splashing around in water fights you are out there practicing your strokes and swimming in an underwater world of mermaids that is all your own. I’ll never forget the image of you out in the water at Golden Gardens raising your outstretched hands to the sky and shouting, “I’m up to my waist in the Puget Sound!”

Many times this year I’ve found myself staring at you in one of your many moments of enjoyable solitude, and I admire your extreme beauty. I love watching you unaware so I can drink in the clarity of your eyes, the perky scatter of freckles across your cheeks and the smooth strength building in your body. I love every complicated, insightful, joyful, intense, creative, powerful part of you. I’m so glad you made me a Momma. Happy birthday, baby mine.

Love,

Momma