::: being seven :::

Turning seven is a pretty big deal. When you're seven, you're over halfway to teenagerness. When you're seven, you're not a baby anymore. When you're seven, you can read and do math and go to pottery class. Seven-year-olds can choose to act like a kid, or choose to be very grown up.

Seven means Barbie cakes and pink guitars and ruby slippers and scooters with frillies on the handles. Seven means missing teeth and new teeth and loose teeth.

Seven can't be six anymore, but can still read Now We Are Six anyway, and can especially like the Buttercup Days and Forgiven poems.

Seven means that you've finished your math primer and you know how to count by 2's, 3's, 5's, 10's and 100's. Seven means that you know that Lake Superior looks like a wolf's head, and that Benjamin Franklin had an almanac. Seven means that you know all about gravity and Sir Isaac Newton and prisms. Seven thinks King Arthur is boring, until Mama starts to read, and then she has a lot of questions and some very strong opinions about Sir Kay and Morgan la Fay and Vivian.

Seven can tie her own shoes and slice her own strawberries. Seven can rollerblade and practice her voice lessons. Seven can do a pas de chat and a grand plié and a tendu.

Seven has a bed of her own with a pretty pink, yellow and white quilt, but can still sleep with her big sister, if she wants to (and if big sister allows), especially when the heat goes out on a cold, snowy night. Seven loves Polly Pockets, lip gloss, stripey leggings and yummy-smelling lotions.

When you're seven, everything is very big, and everything is very possible, and everything is very important.

If you want it to be.

::: still winter :::

I've been hearing a lot of people murmuring wistfully that they wish this snow would melt. They're ready for SPRING, they declare, wrapping their arms around their sweatered torsos while affecting a theatrical shiver. And while I will concede that this winter has given us a pounding of precipitation, I have to give it credit; it's a winter, I tell ya, a genuine, bona fide winter. None of those half-hearted "dustings" or anemic "flurries" for us here in the midwest. We've had one serious snowstorm and blustery blizzard after another, transforming major metropolitan areas into thick blanketed ghost towns, making our rural roads impassable and turning my country lane into a snowbank lined luge track. It stops people in their tracks, slows us all down, shows us we're simply not in control.

And I like it.

My fourteen-year-old son isn't the one who checks the school closings hour-by-hour, beginning the night before. I am. My children aren't the ones standing at the patio door with their noses pressed against the cold, frosty glass, watching the giant flakes float from a bright blue sky. That would be me. And while you would say, "Well, it's pretty, but I don't like to drive in it," neither do I, which is why I don't. It's those snow days that get me off the hook, give me permission to stay at home, rent an iTunes movie or three, plant myself on the couch with a few good books, spend a day in the kitchen making bread or pizza or soup or some new recipe that happens to call for things that I already have in my pantry. On snow days, I get a reprieve. On snow days, all bets are off.

I'm not really sure why this is, because, as a stay-at-home mom, I generally get to determine what does and doesn't get done on any given day. Still, the days usually find me not staying home but trotting from store to store and place to place collecting chipped coconut or tamarind or sheep grain or three ring binders or Dad's blood pressure medicine or someone's forgotten coat/hat/shoes/iPod. I go to meetings and concerts and plays and programs. Even when I'm home, I open the door to repairmen, salesmen, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Amish guys selling assembly-line, fundraiser pizzas.

When the snowstorms comes, though, I know that no one's going to brave my luge track to hand me a Watchtower or peddle a pie. I'm safe to leave my hair uncombed, wear my comfortable elastic-waist pants with the hole in the butt and leave my face bare. I don't have to make the bed, if I don't wanna, and I don't have to shovel the walkway. But I CAN if I WANT to, see. I've got all the time in the world.

Winter allows layers of clothing. I can wear my sweater leggings and laced black boots under a corduroy skirt, a cotton shirt, an earthy sweater and a jacket, my toasty leather mittens with the fingered liners inside, and a thick, fluffy scarf. The perfect ensemble to hide all of my wobbly bits.

And, besides, what happens when this gorgeous blanket of white succumbs to a warm March rain or an unexpected February sun? Do midwesterners really believe that melting snow in January is a harbinger of Spring? Do they not remember their many, many years of living here, in a place where snow continues to fall and snowstorms stack up, sometimes into early May?

When the snow melts in the first quarter of the year, my friends, what we are left with is mud. Puddles and pockets and pits of mud. When the white stuff relents, we are left with a mess, the detritus of winter's litterers unveiled. Now, instead of a harmless puddle of melted snow beside my kitchen door, I'm faced with a heap of mud-encrusted shoes, clothes and children. The dogs no longer leave little wet footprints when they bound in from an outdoor romp, but sploshy smears of sludge. The passel of piles of poo that sunk, steaming, beneath the snow upon first deposit and lay preserved through the months of December, January, February, are now exposed and thawed, sodden and bloated, waiting for an unsuspecting child's, repairman's or Jehovah's Witness's shoe to carry them through the door, onto the white carpet or the wood floor where I find the remains later after feeling a slight wetness on the bottom of my last pair of clean socks.

Yes, Spring will come. When mid-April arrives, her spikes of green crocus leaves breaking up the monochrome, immutable landscape, Spring will come. It will not arrive sooner, no matter how we wish and whine and swear and shiver. It will not arrive in late February or mid-March or early April. For some of us, it will not arrive in early May. So, let's have Winter, shall we? A real, bona fide winter! With the countrysides cloaked in quilts of blue and white, stitched in sticks of black, bejeweled with icicles and spangled with glistening powder, canopied by skies of blue and hazy snowblink, occasionally leaving a gift of fleeting, photogenic air and surface hoar, begging to be admired, gone by the first glance of the sun.

As I look out the window, I'm thrilled to find a fresh batch of flurries gliding to the ground. I'll shove my toes into my comfy slippers and make a cup of hot tea.

It is still winter, after all.

::: creating a place for repentance :::

Have you read anything by Ann Voskamp? Have you read her beautiful blog, seen her beautiful pictures? If you haven't, you really must. If you have, be sure to read today's entry, When a Family Needs a Fresh Start. Ann's words are art. Her photographs, likewise.

Our family definitely needs a place for repentence and forgiveness these days. Thank you, Ann, for the tactile approach.

::: twenty :::

Happy birthday, Bard. I've known you for half my life, and you've made it an amazing second half. 

::: snowflakes :::

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
this is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
now whispered and revealed
to wood and field.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

::: winter cats :::

::: alas! how changed from the fair scene :::

When winter winds are piercing chill,

And through the hawthorn blows the gale,

With solemn feet I tread the hill,

That overbrows the lonely vale.

O'er the bare upland, and away

Through the long reach of desert woods,

The embracing sunbeams chastely play,

And gladden these deep solitudes.

Where, twisted round the barren oak,

The summer vine in beauty clung,

And summer winds the stillness broke,

The crystal icicle is hung.

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs

Pour out the river's gradual tide,

Shrilly the skater's iron rings,

And voices fill the woodland side.

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,

When birds sang out their mellow lay,

And winds were soft, and woods were green,

And the song ceased not with the day!

But still wild music is abroad,

Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;

And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,

Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear

Has grown familiar with your song;

I hear it in the opening year,

I listen, and it cheers me long.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

::: and the winner is... :::

Congratulations to the winner of the Coal Train Railroad CD! Debbie was chosen at random from those who responded to the review of Coal Train Railroad's jazz for kids album. I hope you and your little ones enjoy it, Debbie! Let me know whether you'd prefer a digital or a hard copy of the CD. If you'd like a hard copy, send me your mailing address.

Thanks to all who entered. Now, go pick up a copy of Coal Train Railroad for yourself!

::: paul called it :::

Last week, while I was a nap widow, I found myself avoiding life by plowing through StumbleUpon sites. Sometimes the things I find while I'm stumbling amuse me. Occasionally they inspire me. But last week, while I was avoiding life, the things I stumbled upon depressed me.

I guess my first mistake was pausing on a page that boasted 99 things that you absolutely must see on the internet. Well, I thought, if I have the internet, and these are things I should have seen unless I'm a loser or old or something, I suppose I'd better use my time wisely and investigate every single one of them.

The very first link I clicked on was a video of a news person very unexpectedly falling and injuring herself badly. The sounds she made involuntarily upon impact with the ground made me gasp aloud. "My goodness!" I thought. "She must have hurt herself terribly!" My immediate reaction was to wonder what injuries she sustained.

But when I did a search for this woman to find out what had happened, all I found was the image of this video repeated over and over and over again, and each time I clicked to see if I could find further information, the comments I saw instead were heartless and atrocious. Insulting comments about her physical appearance, derogatory comments regarding her gender, mocking laughter about her audible reaction, profanity, vulgarity. Rarely, if ever, was there a comment about the woman's pain or wellbeing.

I found myself empathizing. Truly empathizing. I could see myself easily being that woman, and then, in a flash, I was her. I was hated for my mock cleverness, my excessively wobbly bits, and for being stupid enough to gasp when hurt, cry out when panicked. I actually felt hated by all of those people who left such terribly insenstive comments.

In an effort to cauterize myself from the discomfort I was feeling, I foolishly turned back to the top 99 things one absolutely must see on the internet. With a very few exceptions, one link after another led me to a moment of another human being's downfall, often literal, and the subsequent derogatory comments made by those who gleefully ridiculed the victim.

Only a handful of the 99 internet must-sees were uplifting. The majority of the 99 centered around some type of profanity or vulgarity. Only a couple of the 99 featured any kind of actual talent. This bothered me.

But I think what bothered me more was the ubiquitousness of nasty, prejudice, heartless comments. Are there really that many mean and insensitive people in the world?

I don't know why I'm surprised. After all, someone wiser than I once said:

"Don't be naive. There are difficult times ahead. As the end approaches, people are going to be self-absorbed, money-hungry, self-promoting, stuck-up, profane, contemptuous of parents, crude, coarse, dog-eat-dog, unbending, slanderers, impulsively wild, savage, cynical, treacherous, ruthless, bloated windbags, addicted to lust, and allergic to God."

Still, to see it in action breaks my heart.

Today, I will try to counteract the profane, the contemptuous, the crude and coarse with as much warmth and kindness and goodness as God will trust me with and as my human heart will put forth.

Will you?

::: coal train railroad: a giveaway :::

(See the end of the review for your chance to win a copy of Coal Train Railroad!) 

I didn't really mean to do it. It was just that I'd been listening to this interview with Wynton Marsalis and I was pretty much smitten with him. During the interview, he offered some suggestions for jazz to play for kids to get them all, well, all jazzed about jazz. A little bit of Louis. A tad of Thelonius. A dab of Duke. A dollop of Dizzy. It sounded so easy, so hip, so sophisticated. I could do it. I could easily introduce my children to jazz.

So I picked up a couple of albums and slapped 'em onto my girls' iTunes playlist. The next time we were sailing down the highway, I shuffled the list and couldn't wait to hear their reactions to what was sure to be their new love. Jazz.

I was especially excited about how Baby, then five years old, would receive the music. She's the most discriminating and has very sophisticated taste in music. She loves to play with her voice and can keep up with the likes of Karin Bergquist, Abigail Washburn and Leigh Nash. So when Satchmo's  Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah burst onto the speakers, I thought she would just love it.

"Skip it!" she called from her perch on the back bench seat.

"'Skip it?'" I cried. "What do you mean 'skip it?' This is the great Satchmo! This is fine American music! My darling daughter, this is JAZZ!"

"Skip it," she repeated, unaffected.

But I persisted. I told her we had to listen to it, we had to get to know it a bit. We couldn't be quick to judge, now, could we?

And so she begrudgingly endured Louis, Thelonious, Duke and Dizzy, calling out an irate and impatient "SKIP IT!" if the jamming went on even a bar too long.

One afternoon, while we were motoring along, "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)" hammered the final nail in the coffin. As soon as the first notes swelled from the speakers and filled the minivan, Baby hollered out disdainfully, "What is this? JAZZ?!?"

So I gave up. No more jazz.

When my friend Katy Bowser announced that she had just finished a kids' album, a kids' JAZZ album, I read the press release, shaking my head sadly. I love Katie's stuff, but my kids would simply not stomach the jazz. It looked like Coal Train Railroad would not grace our iTunes playlist.

But Katy persisted. Her tweets and her status updates and the glowing reviews changed my mind. I decided I had to listen to it, I had to get to know it a bit. I couldn't be quick to judge, now, could I?

I listened to the album all alone first, making sure that I wouldn't be more deeply embedding my children's disdain. And I fell in love. Katy's fun and easy style, her sweet and playful lines, the endearing way she addresses such important subjects as mouth noises, belly buttons and fruit juice had me really hoping Baby would like what she heard.

So I loaded up the iPod and one day, as I was taking the kiddoes, both young and older, out to lunch, I played Coal Train Railroad. And I held my breath.

And...

She liked it!

Not only did Baby like it, but 19-year-old Bard liked it, and ten-year-old Sweetheart liked it and 14-year-old Monet liked it. They giggled over "My Mouth and Me," nodded empathetically to "It's Hard to Listen" and car-danced to "Just the Juice, Jack." Katy had done it. She'd redeemed the reputation of jazz in our family.

And it's no surprise! In addition to Katy's sweet voice, the record is kissed by the talent of producer Chris Donohue, who has recorded and performed internationally with a broad variety of artists including Emmylou Harris, Ben Folds, Lyle Lovett, Gillian Welch, Sam Bush, Phil Keaggy, Over the Rhine, Vigilantes of Love and Sixpence. Baby didn't have a choice! She had to love it, and love it she did.

Now the songs are in our regular rotation, and the lyrics have entered our family's lexicon.

And Baby has added Katy Bowser's to the lineup of voices she loves to emulate. Just last night, while playing on the My Little Pony website, Baby vocalized in a bluesy little vibrato:

"Snuggling suits me just fine!

A cozy blanket and a friend of mine.
Can I borrow your toes?
Mine are nearly froze!
Snuggling suits me just fine!"


Thanks, Katy and Coal Train Railroad for sharing the love. Thanks to you, our family's finally all jazzed up.

For your chance to win a copy of Coal Train Railroad for your family, leave a comment. For a second chance to win, tweet a link to this review and leave a comment letting me know. For a third chance to win, blog a link to it and leave another comment. The winner will be chosen at random on Friday at midnight.

Good luck!

::: a craft that even *i* can do :::

Let's get one thing straight. I am not crafty or handy. The idea of making anything using popsicle sticks and Elmer's glu makes me feel a bit queasy. Building something out of wood? Nope. Not gonna happen. I get nervous about hanging pictures on the wall.

But every once in a while, I see a do-it-yourself project that makes me go "Ooooooh!" This little beauty from Heather Bullard's website is one of them. I can certainly take this on, and I have a TON of mason jars that I would just love to use! I can see a whole host of jars containing everything from soap to shampoo to lotion to...well, what do YOU see?