Father's Day....

My love,

Our girls are so very blessed to have you for their daddy. And they know it! 

How do you know when to tickle and tease, or when to be quiet and listen? I marvel at it. 

Our daughters instinctively turn to you already when they are sad, or confused, or overwhelmed. You are such a safe place for them, and the way that they trust you is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

Thank you for making them try the monkey bars at the park, and catching them when they fall, and making it all so much fun that they keep trying. Thank you for coming home from a long day at work or a long week of travel, and being so excited to play games and hang out with them that they don't even know how tired you are. Thank you for sitting through their dance recitals with every bit as much enthusiasm as you bring to their t-ball games, and for making them feel like the most beautiful princesses who ever took the stage. Thank you for teaching them to vacuum and making it fun by turning it into a cleaning party while I am out. Thank you for making the most delicious Saturday breakfasts in the world, and for not crowing about it when they tell you very emphatically that you make better breakfasts than I do. ;) Thank you for the barbecues, and the bike rides, and the books read before bedtime. Thank you for the love that fills our home.

I love that you love being a daddy. Happy Father's Day!

"Real baseball stuff!"

Last night, Lamont and I had our first taste of multiple children having multiple events at the same time. Ashley had to be at the dress rehearsal for her dance recital on Saturday (Hannah's rehearsal, for the Friday recital, landed the evening before), and the girls also had a t-ball game scheduled for the exact same time slot. So Lamont took Hannah to the game, I took Ashley to the dress rehearsal, and Bethany got to choose where she wanted to go...the t-ball game where she could sit in the sunshine and play catch with Daddy won easily. :)

It was so weird to be texting each other updates instead of actually being there with both girls at their events! Being blessed to get to stay home with our little ones, I have been able to experience pretty much everything with them so far in their little lives. And while it's not like t-ball is a very eventful sport, and I didn't miss Hannah hitting a home run or anything, it was really odd to just not be there. I'm not sure I want to get used to it! Anyway, here are a few, slightly blurry pictures from the game on Monday that I did get to see....

This is what one does in the outfield when one is four years old. :)

Or you can flip your hat backwards like all the cool little boys on the team....

And this is a good way to make sure that you don't miss the ball if it ever comes your way.

Hannah told me after the game that she was doing "real baseball stuff!" out there. :)

Ashley is all serious business about this game until she's safely on one of the bases, at which point she will always look for me and wave or give me a thumbs up. Always, without fail. :)

I've been a little bit surprised by how much fun t-ball is, not just for the girls, but for us to watch as well. Sure, it's not at all competitive (they don't even keep score), but the kids are so serious about it and yet having so much fun at the same time, and it's just so stinking cute! When they take their turns in the outfield they are inevitably picking grass, or doing little dances to the music in their heads, or something random and silly that has nothing to do with the game. And yet just as inevitably, when the batter gets a hit, the entire outfield converges inward in a delighted scramble for the ball, and whoever comes up from the ground triumphantly holding it above their head has the most contagious smile on their face...so fun!

And in the midst of all the cute silliness, they are learning about the sport, and gaining confidence in their throwing and catching abilities, and getting the concept of listening to their coach and paying attention to what he says. Such a neat opportunity for them!

And yes, Bethany is mightily offended that she is too young for t-ball as well as dance. ;) Wait until I have to break it to her that she can't go to VBS this summer either...thank goodness for swim lessons starting up soon for all three of the girls!

Sugar and spice? Yeah...no dice.

"You have three little girls?! Oh my goodness, your house must be just full of tea parties and dressing up like princesses!"

"Aww, little girls are the daintiest things, aren't they?!"

"It must be nice to have girls, so much more gentle than my boys!"

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These are all comments I've heard just this week from other moms, and over the last five years I've heard the same sentiment phrased different ways more times than I could possibly count...basically, little girls really are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and they mince around on their tiptoes treating each other like delicate princesses all the time.

Well, I'm calling it. Little girls are rowdy, and dirty, and wild, and loud, and completely insane! Especially when they come in threes. ;-)

The girls play this game called "dead on the dock". I have no idea how this game started or who came up with its very evocative name, but the rules are simple. One of the girls is the fisherman, and the other two are fish. The fish run in circles around the living room, flopping their arms in what apparently is an imitation of swimming fins. The fisherman tries to catch them one at a time and wrestle them onto one of the couches, and once a fish is successfully forced onto a couch, they are "dead on the dock"!

And then...the fisherman eats the fish.

Yep.

Slightly blurry action shot of the fisherman at work, one fish dead on the dock behind her...

Standing proudly over her catch, who have their tongues out in a very convincing "dead fish" look....

Nom nom nom!

Charmingly dainty and delicate, right? Just oozing sugar and spice and everything nice? Yes, this is what we do before bedtime in our 80% feminine household. Now you know the truth. ;-)

On sometimes succeeding!

There are these days, occasionally, when I feel like supermom. Times like this morning, when the girls and I showed up to an 8 am dentist appointment ten minutes early -- nothing like that other time that will haunt me forever. And they all actually had their teeth brushed, after their nutritious breakfast of hot multigrain cereal and applesauce, and I got their hair done before we left, and all three of them were wearing matching socks. (Plus they all had on underwear. I'm not the only mom whose kiddos have snuck out of the house commando once or twice, am I?!)

After the dentist, we headed to the grocery store, where the girls squealed with delight when I put blackberries and corn on the cob into the cart, but were busy talking and giggling as we passed the ice cream and didn't start up the chorus of please-we-need-to-have-ice-cream-because-it's-summer-and-it's-our-right-or-we-might-die that has happened several times lately. And when the sweet old man who passed us told Hannah that she has beautiful curly hair, she smiled politely and answered, "Thank you, and you have a very nice hat!"

Then we were home by 10 am and spent the rest of the morning doing school work together, while simultaneously baking six dozen cookies for a bridal shower tomorrow. (Ok, four dozen are for the bridal shower...I promised Lamont we would make enough to keep some!) Having the girls "help" me while I'm baking is not something I am good about doing at all, and multi-tasking that with doing their school? Yeah. I impressed myself.

Now I know that tomorrow might go completely differently from today. For that matter, there are still plenty of hours left in this day for total meltdown to occur! Ashley and Hannah have their first t-ball practice tonight (assuming the predicted thunderstorms can hold off until later this evening), and so dinner has to be ready precisely on time in order for us to be ready to leave for that. And there are a couple loads of laundry left to do today, too. And, you know, there are five people in this family, each with our own failings, each capable of causing all kinds of issues for each other. (No, there are six of us! Our baby girl has been trying to poke her way out through my right side lately in the most creatively uncomfortable ways, so she gets included in that list!) I am intimately acquainted with some of the endless ways and reasons that a day can fall apart, and I seem to be good at discovering new ones all the time.

But for right now, in this moment, I feel like supermom. And that is rare and precious and worth celebrating!

It's ok, it's so nice!

This morning at 8:30, I was running through sprinklers in the backyard with my three favorite girls. What bliss! I love spring, really I do, but the constant hormonal weather changes get to me. When the thermometer reaches 80 degrees like it has been this week, and the skies are clear and I know that it won't be raining or hailing or just plain freezing cold five minutes from now, something inside me starts a happy dance that lasts all summer! 

Must shriek and run from the water!

Everybody...........dance!

There are no pictures of me, because a sprinkler soaked, 5 months pregnant lady doesn't make for a pretty picture. ;) Later, though, when we were all dry (fyi, blowing approximately 7,853 bubbles while your daughters race around in the sunshine to pop them all seems to dry out soggy sundresses effectively!), Ashley asked for a picture of all four of us, and we got a cute one:

I just trimmed Bethany's bangs two days ago and I PROMISE they are not actually jagged and uneven the way they look here! Honestly!

Afternoon popsicles on the front porch, chalk flowers and balloons drawn all over the driveway. Watering the flowers that we planted yesterday, and catching my little Hannah whispering words of encouragement to them..."Look at the sunshine, pretty flowers! It likes to see your faces, and it will help you grow!" Fresh pink toenail polish on little toes that wiggle a tiny bit even when they're trying so hard to hold still, and princesses in pajamas dancing with each other before bed. Beautiful moments, beautiful life!

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"It's ok, it's so nice! Just another day in paradise

There's no place that I'd rather be!

It's two hearts, and one dream

I wouldn't trade it for anything

And I ask the Lord, every night,

for just another day in paradise!"

~Phil Vassar

Of being strong enough.

I am sleeping upstairs on the couch tonight so that I can hear my little ones better, because last night was rough. Lots of up and down trips to cuddle sad little girls with tummy aches, to help them back to bed after they threw up, or to clean up for them when they didn't make it out of bed in time in the first place. So tonight I will not even start the night downstairs in my own bed, I just tuck my pregnant self under a blanket on the couch and remind myself of all the nights that my mother did the same for me. 

And it is another restless night. And I wish my husband was home this week, instead of on the opposite side of the country. If he were here, even if he slept through all the girls' troubles, he would pull me close every time I lay back down, and I would feel stronger in his arms. But he isn't here, and I don't feel strong, and when the cries wake me up again at 4 am, there is a moment of despair, a moment of complete exhaustion.

Then the tiny one inside me moves, as restless as we all are tonight, and my soul remembers that I am a mother. That I don't have to be strong to be the mother my children need tonight, I just have to love them.

So I go to her, the hurting daughter whose cries have woken me again, and I love her. I hold her, and whisper to her, and she clings to me and whispers back to me. Broken whispers that tell of pain and trust and love, as her tears wet my shoulder and I stroke her hair.

Through the years I feel myself the child again, crying into my mother's shoulder in the night and knowing that as long as she was holding me, I would be okay. And I realize this -- that no matter how tired, how broken, how weak I feel, love makes me strong enough to be the mother my daughter needs right now.

I scared a teenage boy today....

I chuckled as I drove away from Starbucks today, the stricken look on that nice young man's face etched into my memory to share with you all later....

All he had done was ask, "So what are you up to today?" And when I told him that my girls and I had just come from their dance studio, where today was picture day for both their classes, this pleasant, maybe 17 year old boy followed up innocently with, "Oh, so was that fun?" As I laughed and began to describe the sparkly, multilayered outfits, the hours with the curling iron, the makeup, the ruffles, the feathers, the giggles, and SO MUCH GLITTER...his eyes got wider and wider, and this slightly panicked look began to creep over his face.

Valiantly trying to maintain the friendly Starbucks barista persona, he fumbled over how to continue the conversation and finally blurted out, "So, uh...how long does that take, with all the prep and then the pictures themselves?"

As I reflected on how early we'd started that morning, with showers and curling irons, I answered, "About four hours," and he audibly gulped. He handed over my drink and stared at me speechlessly. Taking pity on him, I added, "You know, you'll probably never have to do that!" He nodded, still wide eyed, and stammered, "Have a...nice...day...."

Poor guy! It really was a long morning, though. Ashley's beautiful thick hair alone took over an hour to curl in the hairstyle her class is wearing -- literally, over an hour! All three girls were fantastic little sports about it, Ashley and Hannah in being treated like rag dolls as I dressed, curled, and sparkled them, and Bethany in patiently watching and waiting.

It'll be a few weeks before we get the professional pictures back from the studio, but I do have a cute picture to post anyway; here are my silly girls blowing off steam once we got home from our full morning! :)