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As a music-pushing mama, one wonders when the eye rolls and sighs will come with reminders about practising.
It wasn't today.
While tidying the play room, I found a beautiful re-creation of something that must bring joy. Because if it didn't make him happy, it would never be made of LEGO.
{Taken from the "MY KID IS AWESOME" files}
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It's much easier to read the words when you bring your BLING so says the little bookworm.
{Instagram photo with Brannan filter}
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I'm writing to congratulate you on winning the Readers' Choice award in our Tales of Bliss contest.
Like many of our online readers, we loved and identified with your honest tale here at the CF office. Parenthood holds so many challenges and surprises. Sometimes the most surprising thing, is we're good at it, even when we're too tired to see it for ourselves. That is bliss indeed, and you did a wonderful job of conveying that with your essay.
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When the above message, from the editorial team at Canadian Family, arrived in my inbox, I was standing in the plumbing aisle at Home Depot looking for a rubber thingamabob to stop my toilet from gurgling 24/7. I'd already made lunches, shipped kids off to school, sung and clapped at a toddler's play group, made more lunches, and put a baby down for a nap.
I wanted to run home and turn the "Readers' Choice" blog badge into a lawn ornament, but I still had snacks to pack, groceries to buy, and kids to pick up from the bus stop. Cartwheels and billboard designs would have to wait.
I've waited so long to start writing again: unsure I was worth that time or my words could ever mean something to anyone. The call to define bliss (and for me, accepting that I am deserving of it) is exactly what I needed to keep the blinking cursor moving across the screen.
Before finding myself in that room at Blissdom, I had no idea what a Schmutzie was or how compelling this world is for a writer. I wasn't a blog reader and had never considered being a blog writer. I went to the conference hoping to find a way back to my writing and because of the words and encouragement I found there, I find myself here.
But I stay because of all of you. Your words about: understanding, blurry eyes, wet cheeks, goosebumps, forgotten moments, familiar feelings? I wish I could write every one of them across the sky.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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There are a lot of links to music in this post, but then again, there is a lot of music to be heard
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My earliest concert memory is vivid: an itchy wool coat, Mary-Jane shoes, and the front row of an Irish Rovers concert. I sat between my parents and beside my sister and wildly swung my skinny 10-year-old legs to songs I'd been listening to for years.
The merriment, the crowd, the sound of music so close; I loved it, I was hooked.
Neither of my parents played a musical instrument and I've never really heard them sing. But music? That was everywhere and all the time. Chinese opera, Irish folk songs, Elvis, Dolly Parton, Anne Murray, and so many more.
On the kitchen radio, in the car, on TV variety shows.
By sitting through endless school concerts (recorders, trumpets, clarinets, organs and choirs) and outside in cars at concerts like New Kids on the Block, they encouraged and helped grow our love of music.
It's something my sister and I shared (think Air Supply power ballads and Dirty Dancing inspired dance routines) and still share (when both visibly pregnant with our sons at an Indigo Girls concert, our seat mate asked when the brothers were due).
I've sung my children lullabies from our first moments together. Our house is filled with music and instruments. They've been to several concerts and ballets. They see us supporting admired artists by attending live shows. They dance with my husband as he plays his guitar.
And now, as I take my turn in the audience at music recitals, I hold onto hope they'll continue to love music and the way it connects us: to memories, to people, to ourselves.
The proof is in this clip. Watch. It's magic.
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This post is for my parents. Thank you for every song.
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The first time I locked eyes with JB in a crowded student pub, we were standing on beer-soaked carpet. And for the next several years, it didn't get much fancier. We were students and we lived like students.
Most of our earliest years together were spent distracting each other in university libraries, sharing fries in campus food courts, and driving through fast food joints after a night spent cramming for exams. Add the fact smart phones weren't around and email was used sporadically and there was a lot of time to get to know each other.
Since then, we've had our fair share of great date nights. Time with friends, time in the big city, time at fancy restaurants and faraway hotels. But our ritual date-in-the-family-room-nights? The ones spent in PJs, splitting a bag of bbq bits n' bites? They're just as great.
The things is, going on an out-of-the-house date night is a bit of a production around here. And I don't want to say it isn't worth it, because time spent alone is worth its weight in prep time. But throw in logistics and the cost of care for four kids under the age of 10 and it's sort of impossible to be pulling off on a regular basis.
Just knowing there will be a night once a week that we'll ignore all the things we should be doing to spend time together (watching DVD box sets, powering through back-to-back episodes of My Strange Addiction, virtual house shopping on MLS, spending money on Apple TV, eating wings from our neighbourhood wingery, devouring DQ Blizzards and peanut buster parfaits) is more than enough to match a night out in fancy clothes.
We spend the day doing things all parents do: chasing/feeding/cajoling/loving our kids, before settling them for the night and reminding them that the time is now ours. They giggle and stand clustered outside the door of the family room, fascinated by our decision to spend time alone.
And in that time together, we forgive the annoyances that are behind us; tell stories we didn't have time to tell over the tops of kids' heads; share something we learned, read or heard; laugh ourselves silly and sometimes, when things are hard, cry.
These years together have shown us that underneath the rush of time, circumstances, and challenges, the person we first saw on that beer-soaked carpet still stands.
It's not that we've resigned ourselves to spending time together on a worn out couch, covered with unmatched socks and children's treasures, because we're parents. This time spent together is enough because it reminds us of the way we were and the way we hope to stay.
{This photo was snapped during a night spent comparing photo Apps, after inhaling a bag of bbq bits n' bites, of course}
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