A song in my heart

Parents, have you ever heard the "howl that never ends?" You know what I'm talking about--some catastrophe has occurred in the life of your three-year-old, and he gets so worked up with whining that he forgets what he's howling about or how you can fix it.

My day started with one of those yesterday.

Whining, crying, howling, all-out weeping, all day long.

Brothers and sisters irritating each other, picking on each other, purposely inciting the howl that never ends.

It was not fun.

I told the kids to pile in the van because we were going to the playground. This was not for their good, mind you, but for mine. I fully intended to pop in my earbuds and enjoy a full 30-minute walk, uninterrupted, around the walking track while they played on the nearby playground. For the first time that day, I heard rejoicing. Finally.

So I turned the keys to crank the car and be on our way.

Nothing.

I sighed. Really, God? Really? Do you think this is funny??

I dragged my husband out of his office to help me jump off the battery. (It was, after all, his fault--he left the lights on in the van last night.) I knew from sad experience that I needed to drive for 10 minutes or so to give the battery adequate time to charge before I cut the engine, which meant I had to take the long way--the really long way--to the neighborhood playground.

The howl that never ends is even less pleasant in the car. I rolled down the window and let the wind deafen me. "Mama! Mama! Mama!" I could hear in the background. I sighed and rolled up the window, ready to respond.

What I heard delighted me. My three-year-old son, Tobias, sat, buckled in (a miracle in and of itself), singing at the top of his lungs, a song he learned at Bible school, "Where is Jesus, Where is Jesus?" His twin brother, Tyler, answered in tune, "In my heart! In my heart!"

I smiled a genuine, refreshing smile. In the middle of the howl that never ends, God had sent a song to my heart.

Don't be misled, the howl didn't end. (That's why it's called the howl that never ends!) But that one shining moment strengthened me and renewed my patience, reminding me that God expects me to teach, train, and love these children of mine in patience and joy.

Grandma's Traditions

Grandma likes special traditions. When our kids find out that we're going to Grandma's, they always ask if we can make s'mores. (Grandma's actual tradition is roasting hotdogs and eating s'mores, but the kids always seem much more excited about the s'mores than the hot dogs!) Grandma has a fire pit on her patio, so we never have to worry about it being too muddy or too wet to build a fire. She also enjoys the enthusiasm with which they pick up the sticks in her yard for the fire.

Because of Daylight Savings Time, it's never dark enough these days to build a nighttime fire before the kids' bedtime. We have allowed them to stay up late every night during our visit to Grandma's, but the fatigue has caught up with us and made them very cranky. Since we have a nine-hour drive tomorrow with six children, we decided that we must have them in bed on time today. Crankiness is much more difficult to withstand when you're trapped in the car with it. (“Car,” of course, is loosely defined when you have six kids! It's really a huge, black limo van advertising charter service to Las Vegas. We got it on Ebay.)

So we let them make s'mores at 3 p.m. in a chiminea. Grandma had told the kids that she would give them a penny for every sweetgum ball they retrieved from the yard, and they came back with 704 sweetgum balls. They also collected, of their own volition, 294 pine cones. The sweetgum balls became fodder for a new throwing game, and the pine cones ended up in Grandma's chiminea. She thought roasting marshmallows over a pine cone fire would be a great idea. I thought they might taste like a Christmas tree—not that I've ever tasted a Christmas tree, but I did warm up a green bean casserole in the same oven that I had pine potpourri in, and the green bean casserole came out tasting very much like what I suspected a Christmas tree would taste like.

The thick pine cone smoke enveloped my children, stinging their eyes and stealing their breath. Grandma warned us that the pine cones would turn to ashes pretty quickly, and we had a whole package of marshmallows to roast, so we pushed through the inconvenience and roasted away. I prepared the crackers in pairs with a bit of chocolate perched right on top, waiting for the ooey gooey marshmallow to melt it down into the cracker. The sun did a fine job of that, too. It also melted the chocolate I had yet to unwrap and made my job much stickier. A small price to pay, if it meant an early bedtime.

The kids roasted two marshmallows at a time on old, contorted, metal hangers. They skipped back to me to scoop their cooked marshmallows onto the s'more as usual. I sent back Tyler and Tobias, my three-year-old twins, as usual, to cook theirs some more—one side black and crunchy, the other cold and raw! They dropped some on the ground, as usual, and scooped them into the fire with their hands. And when they finally returned, marshmallows bubbling and expanding, and I placed a graham cracker sandwich around them to cleanly scrape it off, I discovered one moderate drawback of daytime marshmallow-roasting.

You can't always see the fire burning.

I suppose the fact that the marshmallows were still bubbling and cooking should have clued me in. Perhaps the very hot sensation on my hands as I closed in on the gooey goodness. At some point, I realized my s'more was on fire, and thinking quickly, I blew it out. I couldn't even see the fire, and I saved the whole neighborhood from a raging inferno. Yes, I am wonder woman. Someone get me a skimpy superhero outfit. Well, not too skimpy. I did just have a baby.

After the kids had enjoyed enough s'mores to make them sufficiently hyper and sticky, I set about cleaning up. The pine cones had indeed turned to ashes, although a few sticks remained with sad little flames struggling to survive. I could still see the heat rising off the ashes, causing visual distortion of the house in the distance, so I stuck the metal hangers in the heat to disintegrate the leftover sticky white marshmallow, most of which was covered in ashes or dirt by this time.

After holding those stupid sticks in the heat for ten minutes, I realized something. That stuff was not going to burn off with just heat. It needed fire. I dug around in the ashes to find those lonely little flames and did my best to burn off the goop.

The Bible talks of the purifying fire in relation to our lives. God cleans our lives with suffering. Of course, the Bible uses gold and silver in its analogy—not marshmallows and metal coat hangers. It's a good thing, too, because when the trials end, I don't want to just be an old bent-up coat hanger. I want to be like gold. I want to be an imitator of God!

Grandma's s'mores tradition will always make the kids smile. They will reminisce about it together for the rest of their lives. I just hope they remember that I'm the one who saved the neighborhood from certain destruction. Even without the costume.

Packing

I'm procrastinating.

I've told my husband's grandmother that I will bring my twin 3-year-old boys and my baby girl to her house tomorrow. The wisdom of extending a 9-hour trip with rambunctious boys for the sake of a nursing infant is certainly the subject of debate for another day.

Today's issue is packing.

I have a note on my iPhone listing various items I need to remember to include. The iPhone lists are so handy, because I can jot it down any time a new item comes to mind, excluding, of course, those times when I'm driving. (I hope to God you exclude those times, too!)

So far, over the last four days, I've accumulated quite a list. It includes things like:
portable crib (very important and very forgettable!)
ibuprofen (equally important but easily accessible at any convenience store, should I forget it!)
diapers, pullups, burp cloths, bottles, formula, blankies, and infant gas drops (self-explanatory, I think!)
AND, of course, the vague but necessary, "stuff to do."

Stuff to do? How do you entertain two toddlers strapped in a car seat for hours on end? How do you keep them occupied for a four-day stint in Great-Grandma's "inside-voice-only" home while you, as the grown-up, try to visit in a grown-up way with the other grown-ups? Coloring books, crayons, TAG readers and books, snacks, songs, movies, stickers, balls, cars, costumes, sidewalk chalk, bubbles and perhaps glue and scissors, although that sounds like a really terrible, awful, no-good idea.

Wow, I feel like I'm running a preschool. Good thing I drive a huge, black storage cabinet with seats!

I just realized I forgot to put clothes and toiletries on the list.

Well, at least we'll have stuff to do.