Three Things My Pop-Pop Taught Me

1973 - First Grandchild (Me!)

2015 - 91st Birthday Party

Albert Henry Shanabrook

August 16, 1924 – October 20, 2016

Three things my Pop-Pop taught me:

1. Live up to your potential. He always wanted (and fully expected) the best out of his kids and grand kids. He urged us not to waste our God-given talents and to use all our abilities to make a good life for ourselves, just as he did. He worked hard as an engineer and made a wonderful life for his wife and three kids and traveled all over the world. 
2. How to read a map. When I was a kid, he would take me in his little silver Honda hatchback (which I loved because I could see out the windows better than any other car), hand me a map and point to where we were and where we were going. Then he’d say, “Okay, tell me how to get there.” It was always local places, not far, but I sure did learn how to figure out directions!
3. To love, appreciate and want to play music. Every time I hear Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, I think of Pop-Pop. He would play the record for me all the time and tell me what all the instruments were (each instrument represented a character in the story). It was my first experience getting chills while listening to good music. He also got me started playing the clarinet, which I continued through college. Honestly, if it weren’t for playing an instrument, I never would have met Erik – and now look at the musical talent our daughters have. It all began with Pop-Pop!

I was so incredibly lucky to have known all four of my grandparents for such a large part of my life. To think that I didn’t lose any of them until I was in my 20s and now to have lost the last two of them in my 40s – what a lucky girl I am!

Five Minute Friday - Surprise

Linking up with Five Minute Friday today, writing for five minutes, unedited on a one-word prompt...

This week's prompt is:

Surprise...

I shouldn’t be surprised that I had a child who is just like me…after all, my mother (and probably my father, though I can’t bring to mind a memory of hearing him say that to me, while my mother’s voice rings loud and clear in my head) wished it on me many years ago.

We are both strong-willed (stubborn, if you prefer the more negative sounding adjective), driven and have perfectionist tendencies (okay, maybe more like streaks than tendencies if I have to be honest, at least about myself). What is most surprising to me, however, and hardest to deal with as far as my attempts to figure out how to connect with her and make our relationship less combative, is that we are strong-willed, driven and perfectionist with regard to very different areas of our lives.

I have to remind myself that the things that are important to me at this time in my life, as the full-time work-outside-the-home mother of three are not even on the radar of my accomplished, talented and brilliant high school junior trying to figure out what her future holds.

This is the surprise of parenting – even though I’ve been where she is, it’s so far in my rear-view mirror that watching her go through it is like experiencing it all over again, but with jaded eyes and to-do lists running amok in my mind. Here’s hoping we can surprise each other with a little more grace, compassion and empathy offered back and forth during this transition that is happening at warp speed to our whole family.

Lost...and Found

More than 50 years ago, my great-great Uncle Charlie built a beautiful set of wooden doll bunk beds as a gift for my aunt. They stacked perfectly, one on top of the other, sturdy yet delicate at the same time, little spindles on each side, to be able to peek at the baby dolls sleeping inside.

My grandmother made linens for the bed – vinyl mattresses and pillows with fitted sheets and pillowcases, all tied together by matching quilts, little white rosebuds gracing the clean white background.

Once my aunt outgrew them, I imagine they must have been lovingly stored in a safe place, because all of my earliest memories of playing in my room include those very same doll beds. I tucked my babies in under the hand-made bedding and watched as they were moved up to my parents attic when I thought I was too old to play with dolls any longer.

They made their way out of that attic and into my living room many years later, as I watched my firstborn daughter and her younger sister play with them. Then, when we were preparing to stage our little starter house to sell and move to a larger house, we moved them again. Our “bonus baby”, born quite a few years after her big sisters, was still too little to play with them (and would have, in fact, tried to climb IN them, I’m sure).

Fast forward to Christmas 2015. I thought they would make the perfect gift for our four year old and headed to the basement, filled to the brim with all of the boxes and old furniture that had been in our storage unit while we sold our old house. They were nowhere to be found. I had my parents look in their attic, thinking I may have asked them to store them so they wouldn’t get banged up during two moves, once to the storage unit and then again to the new house. I was disappointed when we discovered they weren’t there either. And I was nearly devastated when they weren’t in the only other place I could imagine I would have sent them – to my brother’s house for his girls to enjoy.

Many times over the past few months, when I would think of them, I would get a sick feeling in my stomach, aching to know where they could be, knowing I would never have given them to anyone outside of the family. As our little girl’s fifth birthday approached, I so wished we could give them to her. I even went as far as researching new doll beds, but never actually bought one because they paled in comparison to the ones passed down through my family.

Last Saturday, my husband left to help his mom put some things into her attic. He had been home for several hours when he said he needed help getting something out of the van. I followed him out to the driveway, he opened the back of the van and I saw the doll beds. I burst into tears and looked at him in confusion. We had apparently stored them in his mother’s attic before we moved, but neither one of us remembered it.

I am so thrilled to be able to give this precious toy to our little girl for her fifth birthday. She won’t understand it now, but I hope that someday she appreciates the history and love behind these beds that hold more than baby dolls. They hold the memories of three generations of girls - hours of happiness, playtime and opportunities to develop a nurturing spirit. Here’s hoping the next generation will have a chance to be similarly blessed – as long as we remember which attic they are stored in next time!

Hope and Faith

This post was inspired by Kayla Aimee’s new book, Anchored: Finding Hope in the Unexpected. Order your copy of #AnchoredHope today and receive this printable as a free gift by clicking here!

Kayla Aimee’s new book Anchored, an honest, heart wrenching and sometimes humorous account of how she dealt with her daughter’s premature birth and medical journey, was written in a way that would encourage and inspire anyone who needs a message of finding hope in unexpected circumstances. Even though I haven’t experienced anything like the birth of a micro-preemie, Kayla’s words made me realize that all mothers, regardless of the trials we encounter through our parenthood journey, face the same daunting task – raising cute little people who we hope will grow up to become selfless, caring and God-fearing grown-up people. And in facing that responsibility, our hope and faith go hand-in-hand.

Many times since I became a mother, I’ve had to make decisions that would affect my girls in some way; for most of those decisions, my husband and I prayed, discussed and evaluated what we should do. 

Faced with the arrival of our “bonus baby” -- Do we add on to our small home in a decent school district or move to an even better area to make sure that all of our girls had the academic and extracurricular activities that would challenge and enrich them? After going through the process of hiring an architect and getting township permits to build an addition (not the easiest or quickest process!) we scrapped it all two years later in favor of moving. In a matter of four months, we were able to buy a new home, sell our old home (closing on both within a week of each other) and get our daughter involved in her new high school marching band, all before the new school year started. The way everything fell into place could only have been by the grace of God.

Faced with a new full time job after being a stay at home mom for more than 10 years –- Having to leave our youngest in daycare when I had never experienced that with our older two, my husband and I visited almost a dozen daycare facilities, most of which were perfectly fine and one of which had a pool! I couldn’t shake the feeling that we hadn’t found the right one for our daughter, so I continued searching even after he couldn’t take time off for the visits any longer. Ignoring the time crunch with a new job looming just days away, I knew as soon as I walked in to the right one that she would be loved, cared for and taught the way I wished I could do for her at home. 

When I start to get overwhelmed with the responsibilities of being a mother, these are the situations that I can point to in hindsight as proof that hope and faith are inextricably entwined. We had hope that we were doing the right thing and faith that God would let us know one way or another by either placing or removing obstacles in our path. God was always a part of the process, even if we doubted along the way. 

As mothers, we have a choice - to hope and have faith, in the everyday moments and in the life-changing moments. Sometimes that hope comes easy and our faith lights our path for miles ahead. But other times, our hope comes desperately and our faith is something that we have to blindly cling to when we can’t see where we’re going. Either way, God is always there, even when it’s hard to see Him. As Kayla writes, “This part of faith, this believing without seeing, it’s the part that makes it a choice and not always an easy one.”

Five Minute Friday - Mess

Linking up with the Five Minute Friday writers today (this was an EASY one!)...

Write for five minutes, no editing, on MESS...GO

I’m picking up the scattered droppings left by her when we walked in the door after daycare…her emptied backpack, the spring picture she did with green handprints serving as a background of grass for the construction paper flowers glued on in crooked lines…her discarded socks still holding the shape of her little feet.

I would normally be annoyed at the mess I have to pick up, but today I remind myself that without this mess…

I wouldn’t also have the precious kisses planted on my face…I would miss the giggles and cries of “more” when I tickle her belly or pretend to eat her clean piggy toes after her bath…I would never hear her mispronounced words that I secretly hope she never learns how to say.

If I didn’t have to clean up the mess, yes, I would have more time to do things I want to do for myself. But then, I would never have been lucky enough to be a mom to my bonus baby – the one who surprised me and turned my little ordered world upside down. 

STOP.

Surprised By Motherhood

I've read a lot of parenting books. More accurately, I've read a lot of them, but also only started reading more of them and then stopped because I just couldn't relate enough to make it worth continuing.

I just finished reading a free sneak peek of the first three chapters of Surprised by Motherhood, by Lisa Jo Baker. Now I have to wait until April 1st when it's released (I pre-ordered it the minute I finished the introduction!) and I really wish I didn't! 

This book is so very different from all the other books I've read or only partially read. She really gets it -- that feeling you have that all the other women who say they love every minute of being a mother and wouldn't trade it for anything are so much better than you are because you don't always feel that way.

My favorite quote so far (and one that made me feel like she had somehow gotten into my own head) - "Parenting is not for the faint of heart. And it's especially not for those type A personalities accustomed to having all their ducks in a row, all their check boxes checked, and their sofa cushions, cereal boxes, and entire lives neatly arranged." Yup - this type A personality has a HARD time with the disorder that is our lives right now, living with teen, pre-teen and toddler girls!

Multitudes on Mondays

My mom has suggested this more than once and I recently read Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts, so I am now purposefully looking for things to be grateful for every day. 

Some of my recent favorites from my list:

Cupping her ear with her tiny hand, she exclaims, “I hear da birdies!” After a long winter of eating breakfast while looking out dark windows, we are finally seeing light and hearing twitters of birds.

Hearing a quick and loud “Besh you, Mommy!” from the back seat right after I sneezed while driving home from daycare. 

Hugs and cuddles from my towering 13 year old who now has to BEND to put her head on my shoulder – both standing and sitting!

 Three year old wrapped in a ducky towel, asking “Hold me like a baby?” (I was struggling to find something to be grateful for in the midst of wrestling with said three year old who didn’t want to sit on the potty before bath, didn’t want to get her hair rinsed, didn’t want to get out when the water was drained…she gave it to me!)