Cooper's Big Day

Everyone with children knows that there is nothing linear about child development. For whatever reason kids grow in fits and bursts. Today was one of those days for Coop.

Today Cooper:

• Zipped his coat all by himself
• Jumped off the high jumping board at school (he has been very scared to do this all year)
• Put his coat on all by himself at school
• Realized, while doing it, that he knows how to skip

The pride in my boys eyes, inspiring. Leaps and bounds. The boy is growing fast.

Painted Rocks

Cooper and I completed the wonderful Wishing Rocks activity in the Spring edition of Rhythm of the Home. What a fun activity!

We first carefully chose a number of rocks. Then I led Cooper in a conversation about what wishes we have. I don't think that Cooper completely understands what wishes are yet (is that weird since he's 4?). He kept talking about who he wanted to give his rocks to, which is sweet in its own right. I decided to just talk about all the things I want to do this spring and summer, which was a bit more concrete for Coop.

Cooper really enjoyed painting the rocks. We used my "good" acrylics to complete the project and I'm so glad we did. Cooper took his brush at one point and dragged it through all the colors. The effect was perfect, and gave us the swirly, almost marbled look on parts of the rocks. The best part of the entire project was Cooper singing to himself "I'm an artist! I'm an artist! I'm an artist!" This from my boy who used to avoid any sort of artsy activity. What a brilliant change!

A New Habit

Warning to my mother. This post may cause you serious shock. Please relax, and yes, it is true, most days.

I am always on the quest for things to improve my current state of being. Sometimes they are found in big places, and sometimes in small. For the past several months I've been doing a pretty small thing that has truly made a difference to me.

I've been making our bed.

I know, this seems like nothing big. There have been moments in my life when I actually argued the ridiculousness of bed making...you're just going to mess it up, right? I've become a bed making convert.

Karen Maezen Miller was part of my inspiration to make our bed in her post on Shambhala Sun. I wish I could say my own mother, a very dedicated bed maker, was my inspiration. But instead, I will say this was mostly my own inspiration, in a quest for a small way to feel some control over my life, to have a space, however small, that is clean and neat and beckoning rest. Our bed, made neatly or hurriedly, gives me that. And I'll take any little peace that I can.

The stack of books on my headboard? Here they are, if you are interested.

Choices

This post is a few days old. Sometimes they need to linger before hitting that "publish" button.

As I washed a big pile of dishes tonight, I thought about choices. We usually give the 'big' choices the credit as we move through life -- marriage, jobs, children, home. We have had a lot of those in the past year, and some still staring us down. They can be exhausting, overwhelming, consuming.

Tonight I was thinking, maybe it is actually the little choices that really set us on course, that set the tone for our life much more than those big ones. Today I think I made more right choices than wrong. Like...

• going for a walk with the kids this morning instead of sitting in the house.

• going to story time at Barnes and Noble and reading more books with Cooper, even though I said just one more.

• making a real dinner for just me and the kids, which is something I rarely do when Erik travels.

• calmly cleaning up the mess when Cooper spilled his milk all over his dinner instead of freaking out and yelling and huffing and puffing about it, like I do too often.

• letting the kids stay up late to go see some live music at the library.

Maybe, if we just pay close attention to the little choices, if we move through the day mindfully, those big choices will all fall into place naturally.

And now I'm off to my last good decision of the day:

• eating the rest of the apple pie.