Bringing new life into a broken world

I anticipated that some part of the birthing/newborn process was going to be emotionally hard for me, I just didn't know when it would hit. The last time I had a baby, my father was still alive. The last time I talked to him was on the phone at the hospital. The moment I woke up from my first night being at home with my newborn, everything changed. 

This is where I am now. The first night home with my newborn. And this is where I am facing grief head on. This is a whole new "first" for me. The first time I have brought life into world where my father doesn't exist. And I hate it. 

I hate living in a world where he doesn't exist. 

I tried to think of a different word to use besides hate, but I believe it's appropriate. Death is something to be hated. Brokenness is something to be hated. And I am more aware of that brokenness when I hold my newborn daughter and mourn the absence of my father in her life. 

It's all very surreal and weird. Even after three years, it's still hard to believe he's not here. In my mind, memories and dreams, he's very much alive and active. Because I knew him so well, I can picture exactly what he would do, what he would say, and how he would interact with our kids. I can see him now with my son, giving him music lessons or sitting at a table intricately building Legos together. I can see him with with my daughter (I guess I'm gonna have to start specifying which one) sneakily eating some kind of treat because she would have him wrapped around her finger. I see him with my nephew, laying on the floor playing with his trains. I see him with my niece, holding her and making embarrassingly goofy faces just to make her laugh. Because I can imagine these things, it makes the loss that more difficult. He would have been the best grandfather.  

It sucks and I hate it. I wish I could just sit here and stare at by daughters beauty without all these thoughts in the front of my mind. Without anticipating the next terrible thing to happen. I am so acutely aware of how fragile life is and how quickly everything can change, that I feel like I'm just waiting for the next bad news to happen. This is not where I want to be.  I want to be hopeful for the future and have joyful anticipation of what's to come instead of fear. 

My prayers these days seem to echo the words of my favorite Christmas hymns

"Come thou long expected Jesus

Born to set thy people free

From our fears and sins release us

Let us find our rest in thee."

"O come thou dayspring come and cheer

Our spirits by thine advent here

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night

And death's dark shadows put to flight"

Praying for a more hope-filled tomorrow. 

*DISCLAIMER: I am sleep deprived so if anything doesn't make sense, I apologize, just go with it. 

Grace Family Advent Celebration

I'm literally due with baby number three any day now, so I've been spending any free time I have trying to get things done for Christmas. Things like making Christmas gifts, decorations, ordering Christmas gifts online, and most importantly, finishing up an Advent booklet. I've wanted to do this for a couple of years but always ran out of time. This year, since I'm having the baby soon, I wanted to get a plan down for how we would celebrate the season of Advent.

Now I didn't grow up observing Advent, so this is all fairly new to me. I think once we experienced great loss, Christmas became a sweeter, more longing-after holiday. I've experienced Christmas in a new way and I wanted my kids to know what Christmas was really about. I'm all about the fun and excitement of Santa Claus, Christmas cookies, decorations and what not, but they aren't so important to me anymore.

There are many Advent reading plans out there but honestly, they were too intense for me. I can't commit to a reading everyday for a month. So I created a simple weekly plan. Every Sunday you get your family or friends together to read the passage, light the candle, say a prayer and sing a song. This could be done after dinner or right before bedtime. It's totally up to you. The point is for it to be simple but also keeping the hope of Christmas the main focus.

How to Celebrate 

Print out the attached booklet. You can print it by printing all the even pages first and then the flipping the pages and print the odd ones. Or if your printer is smart it might have the option to print double-sided and then staple the papers down the middle. There are more instructions in the booklet as to what other supplies you need. If you have any problems let me know. It took me forever to figure out how to make this booklet.

The first Sunday of Advent starts this coming Sunday, November 30th. I hope you will be filled with great joy as you celebrate.

DOWNLOAD BOOKLET

I'm Still Here and I'm a Terrible Blogger

Yes, I'm still around. It's been a couple weeks since I've written anything but that hasn't been from a lack of business. This is precisely why I have a love/hate relationship with blogging. I love that it gives me a platform and space to share my ideas and creativity but I hate how I often feel enslaved by it and feel like a failure when days or weeks go by without me writing anything. I don't really know how other people have time to document their life, edit photos, upload those photos and then write a cleverly written post about it. I told myself when I started that I would try to do everything from my phone because I knew that it would never happen if I had to transfer everything to my computer first.

So maybe you are awesome at blogging and post something every other day. Or maybe you're like me, who started a blog once and then life got busy and you didn't have time to update it. Good for you. I've learned that I need to be OK with being a lazy blogger. Sure I might not keep people's interest or might not generate a following, but that's not the point. I just want to share my thoughts and maybe encourage someone else to do the same.

Pumpkins

Last year we got super busy with our move, Halloween and Birthdays so we ended up merging the Pumpkin and Halloween lessons. Hopefully this year we can do everything. There are a lot of things on Pinterest about pumpkins and you might find other activities, recipes, and books that suit your family better. Please share what your family enjoys.

Books: Five Little Pumpkins (a bunch of different people have written their own versions), Pumpkins - Jacqueline Farmer, The Pumpkin Book - Gail Gibbons

Film: It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. This is technically a Halloween movie, but it has pumpkin in the title so just go with it.

Activity/Art Pumpkin patch and pumpkin carving. I'm sure if you live somewhere cooler than Florida, going to a pumpkin patch is more of an event.

Music: Five Little Pumpkins. My son learned this at school last year and taught it to us. I searched all over YouTube to find the version that he was singing.

Food: Pumpkin Rice Krispie treats are ridiculously easy and always a win. They could be a good gift for the kid's friends wrapped in some cellophane. Roasted Pumpkin Seeds I have yet to find a recipe that works for me but I plan on trying this one. I will let you know how it goes.

Leaves

Books: Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf - Lois Ehlert; Why do Leaves Change Color? - Betsy Maestro
Music: Leaves are Falling and for the adults Autumn Leaves
Activity: Collect Leaves. That is if you live somewhere where the leaves change, otherwise just look at a book.
Art: Watercolor leaves. This lesson says to use liquid watercolor in droppers. I've done a similar project with coffee filters and washable markers and then you spray the filter with water to get the colors to spread. Markers seem less of a hazard than liquid watercolors. But she has a template already made so we'll go with that for now. Maybe I will make my own later.
Food: Maple Leaf cookies from Trader Joe's or if you are feeling really ambitious and have lots of time on your hands you can try these Martha Stewart ones Homemade

Apples

There really are endless amounts of things you can learn, create, and eat that involve apples. I had to limit myself here so I didn't go overboard.   


 Books: Apples - Gail Gibbons; Johnny Appleseed - Steven Kellogg; How do Apples Grow? - Betsy Maestro. I don't have any of these books and had to reserve them at the library so you might need to do that as well.
Music: A.P.P.L.E. and Applesauce
Activity: Identify Parts of an Apple 
I found this easy diagram online to use.
Art: Tissue Paper Apple 
This is super easy. All you need to do is print this apple shape out on cardstock and then glue red, green, or yellow scraps of tissue paper.
Food: Homemade Applesauce. You might have your own recipe or like to tweak it a bit like I do. But you can never go wrong with Martha.
Film: Apple Dumpling Gang

Primary Colors

I'm very excited about this week and hope that I get around to finishing all the projects.

Books: Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh
Songs: Primary Colors - OK Go I saw this on Sesame Street and thought it was so great.
Activity: Mixing Colors. All you need is plastic cups and food coloring. We have done this before but I found a color wheel online that you can print out and they can color in as they learn. (courtesy of Art Factory)
Art: Mondrian inspired. I have been very excited to do this art project with the kids for a while. I created a little sheet that you can print out to get started. You can choose to either have the kids color the page using the primary colors or cut out squares and rectangles out of construction paper and allow them to glue wherever they would like. Try not to fill every square and to leave some white spaces.
Food: I figured we could do something easy and make jello.

Numbers

Book: Ten Black Dots - Donald Crews
Activity: Number sorting with beads. You need 10 paper or styrofoam bowls, and large beads
Art: Imagination play with black dots. Cut out 10 black circles and let them create something with them (like a scene from the book).
Food: Domino Snack. I'm thinking a graham cracker covered with marshmallow fluff and chocolate chips for dots. You could do a healthier version with nut butter and raisins.
Music: 10 Little Numbers. I grew up singing a non-PC version of this song. 1, 2, 3, 4 by the Plain White T's. This is just a fun song to sing.

Learning about Rain

I was going to do a number theme this week since last week we learned about letters, but the wet Miami summers changed my plans. What better way to learn about rain than when its raining outside. Hopefully the weather will cooperate with me. Here is my plan for this week and we'll see what happens.

Music: Singing in the Rain. My kids are obsessed with this clip. We also sang "If all the Raindrops Were Lemon drops and Gumdrops"
Film: Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood - A Stormy Night (available on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime).
Activity: Rain science experiment. Like this one from Pinterest Requires water, shaving cream, and food coloring
Book: Rain! - Linda Ashman; Come On, Rain! - Karen Hesse
Art: Watercolors and rain. The rain didn't cooperate with us so we will have to go back and finish this. You have the kids paint with watercolors and then put the paper out in the rain to see what the rain will do.

Letters - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

My son started PreK-4 last week and they began a lesson on Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Since we were hearing about it non-stop, I decided to make it our theme this week. Now everyone in our family knows the song and the kids have to read the book at least twice a day. Needless to say, I will be very excited when we move on from this one.

Book: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault
Music: Chicka Chicka Boom Boom song. This will be forever stuck in your head
Art: Make a Coconut Tree. We used construction paper but feel free to use whatever supplies you have. Pinterest is full of ideas.
Activity: Uppercase and Lowercase Letter Matching. I made a simple sheet that you can print on cardstock and cut out. You can find that here.
Food: Coconut Smoothies. Cococnut Milk, Pineapple, Banana, and Honey.

Creative Learning Intro

After a long hiatus, I've been encouraged by friends to blog again. And of course the day I decide to do this, my daughter has a crazy night of crying and tantrums that has left me with about 3 hours of uninterrupted sleep (with some cat naps). So, if what I'm writing doesn't make sense, just go with it.

I was in the process of putting together a music and art class for toddlers starting this fall, but the logistics of that got complicated and I realized that I was putting a lot of thought and energy into that while neglecting my family. I decided to put that project on hold and actually use my organizational and creative skills to be intentional with my children. What has resulted is a curriculum of weekly themes using music, art, books, activities, food, and movies. I'm trying to make it easy and not too structured because, let's face it, sometimes you have terrible nights and all you need to do is lay on the couch. It might turn out to be like three days a week where you have a planned activity. Here is a list of themes we will cover and I will add links to their separate pages as we complete them.

1. Letters - Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
2. Rain
3. Numbers
4. Shapes
5. Colors
6. Fall
7. Apples
8. Leaves
 9. Jazz
10. Pumpkins
11. Halloween
12. Tree
13. Harvest
14. Corn
15. Thanksgiving