His voice drifted from one room to the next, clear and sweet, piercing my heart with one of those melty motherhood warm-fuzzies.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…”
The sound was sweet, indeed. Annika got shots yesterday, which threw everything off. Naps were later, meals were sporadic, and there was a lot of crying. It was finally bedtime, and I was exhausted, having dragged myself from bed yesterday morning just before 5:00.
“I’ll try to calm her down if you want, Mom,” he said. I agreed. I didn’t think it would work, honestly. I figured she’d just keep fussing until he had to hand her off to me, but I was grateful for his willingness to try.
Within 15 minutes, he had her sound asleep as he crooned in her ear.
“Was blind, but now I see.”
He walked into the kitchen and threw his arms in the air, triumphant. “She fell asleep on my chest!” he exclaimed. “It was so cute!”
She slept threw the night last night for the first time in months. Coincidence? Maybe. But I informed Sloan this morning that he officially has the job of Bedtime Master for his baby sister. He thought I was joking.
I’m totally not joking.
Yesterday I did a lot of things. Lots of mom-things, and writer things, and a few lazy things, and most of them were good things.
There was one thing, though, that I didn’t do enough of. Today I want to do more of this thing, because today is my only chance. Today I want to hug my big boy – the first one to call me mom. Today is the last day he will be eleven.
Tomorrow we’ll wake up to a twelve year old. A dozen years ago, I held him for the first time. It feels like a blur. I have one more year until I become the mother of a teenager.
A TEENAGER!
I don’t even know how to feel about that. On the one hand NO! NONONONONONONONO! NO! I’m too young to be the mother of an almost teenager.
On the other hand, “YES PLEASE!”
Sloan has become a lot of fun to parent in the last year. The thing about that big loving first born of mine is he’s always kept us on our toes. He’s gregarious and precocious, and loves arguing like I love eating Nutella.
But the past six months have brought a new change. He’s maturing, calming down a little, gaining the perspective of a bigger kid, and his patience is slowly lengthening. It’s really delightful watching him mature into a young man. I genuinely love watching him get older.
As much as the idea of being the mother of a teenager freaks me out, I also cannot wait for these teen years. People always make it seem like they’re something to be feared, but I think they’re to be celebrated.
With each passing year, this boy of mine becomes more independent. Now, instead of just telling him what to do, we get to have deeper conversations about why he should do the right thing. And he gets it.
He’s smart and kind, a huge servant, and he loves his baby sister in such a unique and special way. A few weeks ago he asked me if she could come live with him when he’s all grown up and out of the house. The idea of leaving her brings him some fear, and I’m fine with that.
Photo by Avodah Images
Maybe he’ll stay close to home after graduation.
Or maybe he won’t. I don’t know, really. All I know is that today, I still have an eleven year old. And I’m truly delighted to be that kid’s mom.
This picture was taken three years ago…when he was still shorter than me.
I’m also delighted that he’s so good at putting his sister to bed.
I haven’t been able to blog, to work on the book, or to make edits on another project. We’ve been on vacation, and I purposed this year to be fully engaged in that vacation. In the past, I’ve always pulled away to blog, feeling as though I had to keep the ball rolling so as not to lose momentum.
This year, I had to stop.
Babies change things. Having another baby makes it harder to pull away and work. I’m obviously okay with this, because have you seen how desperately cute that baby is?!
But I needed to make it a plan in my head that I wouldn’t steal time from my family to write words that may or may not be read. I needed to be present, fully, and I was. And it was awesome.
But today it’s time to get back in the swing of things.
Photo Courtesy of Tammy Labuda. TammyLabudaPhotography.com
Tonight, two of my creative besties will land in Florida. They’ll make their way across the country from California, and land on the hot tarmac here in Tampa. Tomorrow, the other three will join them, and the six of us will spend the rest of the week cheering one another on as we press toward our individual goals.
We’ll work on books, on photography, on lesson plans for the coming year. And we will do what we’ve always done best. Encourage one another.
Photo Courtesy of Tammy Labuda. TammyLabudaPhotography.com
This will be our 5th Annual Creative Retreat, and it will be different this year. We’re on a different coast, and we’re all in different places in our lives. Time will be spent less on creating the perfect meal, and more on the projects that beg for our time.
Tammy doing her thang at our 3rd Annual Retreat.
There’s been a lot of stress leading up to this year’s retreat. Coming in from vacation the day before you’re hosting such an event is not something that I would generally recommend. And it’s the first year my mom hasn’t been around to help with the kids, so a sitter is coming to the rescue.
We work at these retreats, yes. But we also rest, and rest is imperative for the creative soul.
All these things beg for my attention, threatening to steal the joy I feel when I surround myself with these talented friends of mine, but just as I had to purpose not to work during vacation, this week I will purpose not to worry while away from my family.
[Tweet “Sometimes moms pull away from the art to focus on family. And sometimes it’s the other way around.”]
Photo courtesy of Tammy Labuda. TammyLabudaPhotography.com
The kids will survive a few days without me, and Lee assures me he’s got this handled. Despite the stresses inside his own job, he’s given me a wide blessing to chase after this dream I have of writing books.
So this morning, I’ll get the baby settled for a nap, and pray she takes a long one. Then I’ll head out to pick up groceries, and I’ll prepare myself to leave for a few days. To step away into my craft.
It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we’re willing to pull away for a few days. Even for a few hours. I pulled away from blogging for almost the entirety of our twelve day vacation, and I found that the quiet spaces actually provided me time to think.
Imagine that.
All the words I need to write began to simmer in those pulled back days, and they’re ready to tumble out. At least, I hope they are. I really hope they are.
And pulling away from my family for just a few days will offer a similar peace of mind so that when I return I’ll have less of the book hanging over my head, and I can focus more fully on them as we continue to enjoy our Summertime Agenda of Awesome.
[Tweet “Pulling away from life for a time leads to soul refreshing that cannot be duplicated.”]
I’m looking forward to the refreshment of simply diving into the work this week. And next week?
Fourteen years ago, the phone rang, piercing the silence inside my tiny apartment. Lee was at work, and I was preparing dinner, because we were newlyweds, and making food was still exciting to me back then.
I answered the phone, and her voice came across the line all buttery and warm.
“I hear you like to take tea,” she said, and I could hear the smile behind her words.
That was the beginning of one of my most cherished friendships. For the next year, Wendy was my confidant, my cheerleader, my prayer partner, and my sweetest friend. Our love for tea and scones wasn’t our only commonality, either.
Photo by Tammy Labuda: TammyLabudaPhotography.com
We both shared a passion for encouraging other women through our creative pursuits. I was a writer and a singer, she an actress who penned poetic prose in her spare time.
In those early years, before children rounded out our families, Wendy and I dreamed of all the different ways we wanted to work together in some creative capacity. But as time marched on, babies entered the picture, and our husband’s jobs moved us to different coasts, the dream of working together felt a bit lofty and ambitious.
Until last summer
At our 4th Annual Creative Retreat, Wendy and I began to speak earnestly of our dreams to work together creatively. We spoke in depth of our heart for creative women, and for mothers living this creative life with little ones in their midst, and the time felt like now.
We put together a book proposal, and we met at the Allume conference in October where we found an audience with an agent who caught our vision and agreed to represent us in our writing pursuits.
So we started writing and praying for the right publisher, and the right timing, and the right audience, and…
This week Wendy and I signed our first publishing contract with Kregel Publishing, with a release date set for September of 2016.
A book.
A real book!
A real book written for women…
Written for creative women like us…
Creative women who are wondering if their creativity has a place in this intense season of motherhood.
Our book (which is tentatively titled at this point) is coming together beautifully. It’s been as much of a journey this past year writing this book as the past fourteen years of dreaming and living it have been.
Our goal is to encourage other creative moms to use their gifts and talents to make an impact in the world.
We’re writing this message as we live it ourselves, seven children between the two of us, while our husbands travel, and the intensity of living creative passions next to the hustle of growing families sometimes overwhelms us.
Next week, Wendy and I will be together again for our 5th Annual Creative Retreat, exactly one year after this long-held dream took root. Our goal is to finish the rough draft of our manuscript, and after our week together is over, our husbands and children will join us, and we’ll all celebrate as one unit.
Because they are friends who have become family.
I’m not going to lie, my friends – this has been such a journey, and it’s not over yet! This is only the beginning of the exciting things to come. Because not so long ago, I surrendered this longing I held in my heart – a longing to see the words that flowed from my fingertips in print – and I committed to write simply for the joy of it.
But still I hoped. I longed for the day when I could sign my name on the line that validated my gift of words. And I realized that it’s okay to want it.
[Tweet “It’s okay to toil toward a dream, because there’s beauty in the journey, and victory in the labor.”]
Today I placed the signed contract in the mail, and a long held dream finally grew wings.
There is a lot of work still to be done, and so much to learn, but isn’t it exciting? This life of living and dreaming all wrapped up tight with friends and family is a privilege, and I’m thrilled to share this journey with so many of you as well!
Creative Moms, don’t miss the release in fall 2016, sign up for email updates here at kellistuart.com, or over at wendyspeake.com, and we promise to joyfully prime the pump in the next 15 long months with posts purposed to bless your creative hearts. We are really excited about the community of creative moms that God is going to knit together in the coming days!
Summertime is ripe for creativity. When I think of summer, I think of adventure and exploration, of trying new things, lazy mornings, books by the pool, and popsicles at all hours of the day.
Summer is for creating. It’s for stepping away from the every day mundane that dictated your life, and stepping into something new and exciting – even if only for a time.
I try to offer my children a long creative rope in the summer. If I’m honest, there are times when I wish we lived at the edge of the Wisconsin woods, but those times are only in the summer months when the Florida sun is merciless, and the flat terrain leaves little to the imagination. But then we have evenings like the one we had Friday night, where we swim as a family in the great, big ocean, and I decide Florida’s not so bad after all.
But I do long to see my kids explore. I wish I could send them into the trees with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, a roll of toilet paper, and firm instructions to stay outside and enjoy this beautiful day.
I may not be able to shoo them outside for an entire day, but I can offer them plenty of places to escape. Exploration isn’t limited to the forest. It can happen right here inside the walls of our home. Here are a few tips for widening your children’s creative scope this summer.
1.) Build Forts
Basically, when summertime rolls around, I take a deep breath and remind myself that it’s okay for the house to be messy. I like order. I really, REALLY like order.
But I have four children, so order is a laughable concept. Instead of sweating out the ever chaotic house, I choose to embrace it in the summer. And there is nothing more chaotic to me than a bedroom transformed into a fort – blankets strewn this way and that, kitchen chairs pulled into the room to hold up the “walls” of the fort.
It’s enough to give me an eye twitch.
But they love it. Reading books is boring…unless it’s done so lying back on a pile of pillows under the canopy of a bedroom fort.
If I’m willing to embrace the chaos, a bedroom fort is a heckuva way to celebrate summer.
2.) Keep Painting Materials Handy
Like fort building, watercolor painting makes my heart race, and not in a good way. The paint brushes that need to be cleaned. The drips of paint that find their way to my countertops and floor, the gigantic “masterpieces” that I must find a way to display – it’s all stressful to this orderly Mama.
But…
The other day, my concrete, typically unimaginative second born pulled out the paints and tore off a giant piece of art paper, and she began to create. With her tongue stuck between her lips in quiet concentration, she dove into her painting, and when she was finished she held up her paper proudly.
It was gorgeous.
There’s something very calming and magical about putting a brush against the page. When the kids are arguing, painting is one of the first activities I suggest because is requires a deep breath…and minimal talking.
Win-Win.
3.) Read Good Books
I don’t have readers. I wish that I did, but I simply do not. My children don’t like to read books. So I do what any good mother would do.
I bribe them.
Yes, I pay my children to read in the summer, but really I like to think I’m training them to enjoy the gift of words. There is nothing I love more than seeing my kids light up over a good story. And so we spend time in the library during the summer where they’re given the freedom to choose their own adventure.
This discipline of reading is two-fold, as I must also make myself slow down and read with them. I want to show them the beauty of getting lost in story, so I read as much as I can in the summer.
As much as I love reading, slowing down myself to do so is harder than it seems it should be, because usually when they’re still and quiet, my first response is to start cleaning up some of the messes.
LET THE MESSES GO!
That is my summertime mantra.
Summertime can be stressful with everyone home at once, all the live-long day. This is where our Summertime Agenda of Awesome comes in handy, as well as a willingness to let go of my need for order and control.
A little bit of chaos has the potential to produce some magical days. I’m looking for the magic this year.
We say goodbye to elementary school today. It’s bittersweet. As Sloan prepares to head to Middle School, and I plan to homeschool Tia and Landon, I find myself nostalgic a bit. I have loved their school. I leave with no hard feelings. In fact, loving the school is what made the decision to homeschool so difficult.
A lot has happened since the kids started this school year.
Where once there were only three of them:
Now there are four!
Where once Sloan had no braces:
Now he’s a metal mouth!
Tia’s has gone from this (those shorts don’t even come close to fitting her now!):
To this:
And Landon had teeth when he started school!
It’s been a heckuva a year. I’m looking forward to the next year. It will be challenging, yes. But I have a feeling it’s going to be full of so much fun.
