the honey home

eleven months

Elvie Kathryn turned eleven months old on the 3rd.

She is busy, busy, busy, ever so busy, only stopping to sleep, really. If she’s up she’s moving, whether it’s standing up and rocking or dragging herself along in her galumphing sort of way, or pausing to turn a toy over and over in her hands while she sings to it, da-da-da-da-da-DA! Even while sitting in her high chair to eat, her feet kick and her little right hand rolls around and around.

Pictures are difficult with a such a busy little bee. Combine that with the fact that she doesn’t care for any of the toys that I choose for her to look at…well, that’s why she doesn’t get many pictures taken these days.  [Read more…]

words upon words for 2017

As the new year has begun, I’ve found myself spending equal amount of time looking forward and looking back. I’ve re-read my bullet journals for the year, the hopes and the challenges I wrote for myself, and using that as a guide for my goals for this year.

I didn’t really have resolutions last year. I knew I was having my fourth baby and I knew we were moving from Georgia to Kentucky, and I figured that would be enough to worry about. And didn’t know the kids and I would be living in a different state than Jeremy for half of the year while we waited for our old house to sell. It was a good year but a long one!

It’s the en vogue thing, at the start of the year, to choose a word for the coming year, to guide and steer decisions and hearts. I have thought long and hard over it, and I couldn’t really settle on just one word. My hope for 2017 is an ideal that I can’t find just one word to summarize. So here are a few words–my hopes for the new year.

[Read more…]

bicycles

We slept late, this morning, the baby and ourselves. We awoke to a room full of grey light; the misty day after Christmas.

“It’s over,” Jeremy said, “Christmas is done.”

“No it’s not, we still have eleven more days!” I prefer to stick to the old idea of twelve days of Christmas even though our culture does not. Before those twelve days are out Jeremy will be back to work, back to school. We have this week, though.

The clouds broke mid-morning and the sun shone on the field, brown and gold and pale, pale green. When we went outside the wind whipped at us like it always does, but it was a warm wind. Our Christmas Day had been unseasonably warm, a fact which I relished, since it meant the boys could ride their Christmas gifts: a new bicycle for each of them.

We went outside, Jeremy and Pam and myself, as part of a meeting of the Janderhil Committee for Community Improvement and Development. We had spent breakfast discussing chickens and rabbits and bees and the garden, making mental lists and gathering ideas and ideals, long-term goals and goals for the year. Then when Elvie Kay went down for a nap, we stepped outside to ponder the location and size of the garden. We have a lot of preparations to make.

The boys followed us out to ride their bicycles.

[Read more…]

ephraim and the sun and perfection and me

In hindsight I may have reacted too harshly, but this was his eyesight we were dealing with, and I knew that any damage done would be permanent. And he is more and more thinking himself The Wisest, probably because he is the oldest and, compared to his brothers and baby sister, he is the The Wisest, though he has yet to learn that that sampling of four children that he dominates is hardly a cross-section of the entire world’s population.

[Read more…]

the lure of slow living: on rest

 

This past year has given space to much thinking and evaluation–much contemplation on busyness vs. diligence, on valuing people and making a home, on routine (oh, how I have evaluated and re-evaluated our routine!) on birth and the eternal perspective, and on so many other things that haven’t made any appearance here because they haven’t matured into coherent thoughts, able to be shared.

The concept of rest is something I have been thinking on for several years. Oh, I know that thinking on is such a tame word for the process–I use it for the same reason as that nebulous word interesting, which we use because we can’t think of any other phrase to express so many things. My husband constantly stops me after I’ve called something “interesting”: What do you really mean when you use that word? Strange, repulsive, curious, funny, fascinating? When I say “thinking on” I mean obsessing over, evaluating, wrestling with, trying to make clear.

[Read more…]

angry elvie

Before you’re a parent, a crying kid is just a crying kid.

Then you have your own, and suddenly you become a true connoisseur of crying. You know the way they cry when they’re hungry. That peculiar coughing cry when they’re overtired. The way they sound when they’ve woken early from a nap and won’t be going back to sleep, and the way they sound when they probably will. The scared cry, the hurt cry, the angry cry. That last one is the one I’m thinking about tonight.

pleasant-elvie-3

she doesn’t look like a high-strung baby, does she?

[Read more…]

seven months (elvie kathryn)

Elvie Kathryn turned seven months on the third of October.

october-11-6

She is one busy-busy wiggly worm. Just before she turned six months she learned that she could busy-busy wiggle herself places, and she abruptly stopped rocking on hands and knees (as she had been wont to do) and started just doing an uneven army-crawl-toe-kick hybrid to get from place to place. [Read more…]

The King of Pickles

“Mama…” Ephraim says quietly as he bends towards me.

We’re eating lunch: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, goldfish crackers, cherry tomatoes picked from our hanging baskets, and sweet pickles.

Ephraim’s just brought three or four of the latter from their bowl to his plate when he leans in the direction of my chair and whispers solemnly, seriously. “Mama,” he begins again. “Would you call me…The King of Pickles?”

It’s the strangest thing I’ve been asked all day.

clive cover-31

[Read more…]

the grove

the grove-4

I made this little map of Janderhil a few weeks ago. If you’ll notice the crinkle in the lower right corner, you’ll see where Clive left his mark while perusing the map. It’s not too big of a deal, since things have changed on the property and I have to make a new map, anyway. I have to add Fairweather Pond (or the place where Fairweather Pond appears after rainstorms), I have to move the blueberry bushes (they’re not in that trough anymore), and I have to add the trees we’ve planted.

[Read more…]

Privacy Policy