I'm Blessed

Today is a special day in our house.  It's Knut's birthday.

Knut's not really into birthdays.  He likes them and all, but they've never really been a big deal.  In his mind, birthdays are business as usual, except for a cheesecake.  I've spent a few years trying to make birthdays really special for him, and have finally realized that yes...he just wants his cheesecake.

So today we make cheesecake.  I don't really like cheesecake.  I don't hate it, but I'm not really into it.  I can tolerate it when it's slathered in blueberries.  I've gotten fairly good at making it though.

I want to take time today, and not just dwell on Knut, but dwell on my Lord.  You see, Knut is such a huge part of the blessings God has given me.

Not only does he work insanely hard, and provide me with the cutest farm house ever, and this yard and atmosphere for our children to grow up in, and

not only did I get these 5 beautiful children with him, and someone who encourages my dreams.

God gave me Knut, and Knut pushes me to God, and I'd like to think that I push him in the same direction.  We've talked before that neither one of us would be where we are financially, emotionally, or spiritually if it weren't for the other person's support, prayer, and bold-faced honesty.  No one calls me out faster, or considers even my crazy ideas, or prays with me like Knut.  One of my favorite things about him is that he rarely sugar coats anything for me.  I know I can trust him.

Recently we talked about how easily we could have never met.  Well, our circles of friends were so overlapped that I'm actually surprised we didn't meet years earlier.  But in all reality, I almost didn't go to the school where we met.  He only decided to go there at the very last second as well.  Both of us made some unusual choices for us, and ended up in the same place, at the same time, and ended up being close friends almost immediately, months before we started dating.

Happy birthday, Knut.  I'm glad you were born.  I hope you enjoy your cheesecake today.
Thank you Jesus for giving him to me.

Yarn Along

Things are crazy busy on the knitting front.  Everyone is back in good health over here at our house, and that means I got my knitting time back.  The Tsu Sweater shown on the left is so near finished.  Ideally it will be blocking tonight.  I'm so excited about this one!!  A new sweater is being swatched in the upper right hand corner there.  (It's Quince's new Owl line.  Quince + alpalca = perfection.  Seriously.  It was really futile for me to resist.)

I had this pair of fingerless mittens going on behind the scenes a few weeks ago, as I thought the idea was fun and it was a super-quick knit.  I was planning on submitting it somewhere, but I missed the deadline.  Unfortunately, knitting is not often the priority, which I have no regrets about.  I'm on the fence on whether or not they need more tweaking before they are publish-worthy.  I call the pattern "gluten."  I had Knut do a photo shoot with me for them, and the pictures turned out...well terrible.  That's part of the reason I'm on the fence.  If I could get some better pictures, than maybe.

So for reading, I'm still working through One Thousand Gifts.  Such a good book.

Linking up with Ginny again.

Mother, Daughter

Silje is turning 9 years old this month.  I have no idea where the time went.  Not a clue.


Everything is new for this girl.  I'm so very, very proud of her, but in the same sense, I'm feeling a lot of her growing pains right now.  I've had these thoughts going through my mind quite a bit lately, and I hesitate sharing because I want everything I write on here to be non-tramatizing for my kids someday.  I want them to see what I struggle with, and yet never feel like they were a burden to me.  It's a fine line to walk.

I has been hard lately with Silje.  I'm finally feeling free to write about it, because I'm realizing my struggle is not in fact with her.  It's with me, and my sin issues.  It's about me and my lacking.  I struggle knowing how to be her mom.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

I want so badly for her to be her own person, and know her own thoughts.  I see some of her struggles, and I just can't take them from her.  I can't do it for her.  I can't think for her.  I have to sit back and watch her find her way.  It's hard.  I don't know when to step in, and when to step back.  Either way, it feels wrong.

She's so different from me.  She's a first born, and I'm a baby.  Everything for her is precision, and orderly.  Everything with me is make-do, and make-it-work.  We clash a lot on this.  It drives me nuts sometimes.  Like, when I dropped her off at her 30 minute long piano lessons the other day.  I dropped her off 10 minutes early.  I told her before she went it, "Now Silje, she's in the middle of her lesson with the kid before you, so be quiet when you enter and just read a book until it's your turn."

"Actually Mommy, the middle of the lesson was exactly 5 minutes ago.  That is wrong.  It is now near the end of the lesson before me.  But yes, I brought a book."

It drives. me. nuts.  The constant correction, the need to be exact.

I like things natural, peaceful, and vintage looking.  She likes things florescent and sparkly.  Do you know how much it kills me that I have this beautiful girl who I want to design clothes for, and she absolutely hates my style and won't wear it?  Well, I've made her wear some things, but she does it in tears or extensive bribery.  I've made her things in her style, but I feel like I can't put even a drop of "me" into it.  If it even has a hint of my style, she will point out that it would have been perfect if it weren't for that.

The other kids, I can just make them a birthday cake.  Throw some candles on and call it good.  For Silje, she feels the need to pick out the exact recipe, and tell me how to decorate it, and plan the whole thing herself.  She will spend days agonizing over which flavor to have as the filling of the cake.  I keep telling her, it's not her decision.  I'm actually the one making the cake.  I'm the mom.  She lives to plan things.  She loves to plan things.  It's her gifting for sure.

Honestly, it hurts my feelings.  I'll admit I'm petty.  It's like she wants none of "me" in any of her birthday, or her crafting or her style.  If it's my idea, it's no good.  I get that she wants to be her own person.  I want her to be her own person.  I struggle knowing where to push myself in, and where to step back and let her be.

For now, I'm choosing the battles of confronting eye rolls, and dealing with this brand new attitude that seems to have creeped up these last few months.  The style and interests don't bother me.  She can have those, even though they are not mine.  Respect and kindness are non-negotables for standards in this house.

We've really made some progress there.  There's a flip side to this over-thinking, too.  She's an amazing kid.  She thinks about everything.  Do you know we were at Target the other day, picking out a new swimsuit for her this year?  We looked at all of them, and she didn't like one.  I had her try a few on, and then we even went to a different store too.  Finally I asked her what she wanted and she said, "Mommy, it's just, I don't feel comfortable in any of these styles.  If it were up to me, I'd just get one of those swimsuits where it's a shirt on top and shorts on bottom.  It just feels more, I don't know, modest I guess.  I just feel too exposed in these ones."

So I spent the money, and bought her a modest suit set online that she picked out.  I'll spend the extra money if her desire is to be modest.  How awesome is that?  That idea came from her, not me.  I'm really proud of that.  Really, she's an awesome kid.

I just wish she would let me pull her hair out of her face more, and I wish she would smile for pictures instead of glaring, and I wish she would remember that it drives me nuts when she hums at the table, and I wish she wouldn't treat her brother who is 15 months younger than her like he's a baby.

I know I'm crazy lucky to be her mom.  I'm in awe of this little woman that God is growing.  I just wish she would let me in more.  I wish she would be more like me, and in other ways, less like me.

I wish I had more control.

I wish I could let go easier.

I wish it didn't hurt so bad to do that.

I wish I weren't so scared all the time that I'm really screwing her up.

I wish she couldn't manipulate me as well as she can.

What can I do but just continually ask God for guidance, and pray for her?  What can I do but just take one step at a time, day in and day out?  I just keep talking with her, keep disciplining her, keep explaining things to her, and keep encouraging her to seek the Lord in all things, and embrace all that he has made her to be and gifted her to do.

I am so lucky that I get to be her mom, and I'm so very glad that she's ultimately in God's hands, not mine.  I see the normal, but deep struggles ahead of her, and ones that are already beginning.  I want so badly to shield her from that journey of the growing pains of life, but I just can't.  Pray for us folks.

There's only one way in this life: forward.

I'm Blessed

I have to admit, I almost feel like putting prayer requests on this post today instead of blessings.  I'd ask for prayer that I'd somehow catch up after this bout of sickness my family has had.  Our garden is way behind.  My house is way behind.  Really everything is way behind.

That's not the point, though.  In all circumstances, there is reason for thanks.  I totally agree with the main message in the book I'm reading "One Thousand Gifts" that thankfulness, grace, and joy are intimately tied together.  Joy does not come without gratitude.  As I'm overwhelmed by the stuff I think I need to get done before I can be happy and content, I want to shift my focus this morning to what I have and am grateful for.  I want to give thanks.  That's really the only sanity-saving way to go.

I'm not going to talk about our sickness much today.  That's boring and gross.  Some amazing things came from it this last week, though.  I usually sort of quarantine the family when we get sick, and don't go anywhere.  By Saturday, I really, really needed to get some grocery shopping done and I just needed to get out.  I had at least 5 stops to make in town, and I didn't feel comfortable bringing sick kids along.

Knut had to work, and I didn't think I'd find a babysitter willing to come out when Solveig at least, still had a fever.  Silje was at the tail end of it.  She felt fine, and just had a scratchy voice left.  Well, it turned out that one of my favorite babysitters was free the whole day.  She's never free because she babysits for so many families because she's just so awesome.  I got her.  Last minute, with 15 minutes notice.  I was shocked.  I'm so blessed.

One thing I've learned as a mother: never ever take an amazing babysitter for granted.  Treat them like gold.

So I got the day off.  It was wonderful in so many ways!  Even when I got home with groceries, I asked if she could stick around so I could just get some stuff done at home.  She had no problem with that.  So she stuck around for another hour and a half.  Isn't that awesome?

I'm blessed that Knut has been taking such great care of the chickens while I handle everything here at home.  There's a lot on my plate right now, and I'm grateful he's taken over out there for awhile.  I'm back on laying chick duty today, I guess.  I can't wait to see the girls.  My layers are in the coop now, and I haven't even visited them there yet.

I'm grateful to realize that my kids actually do help.  I was surprised how much extra work I had to do when they were sick.  It made my heart glad to see so severely that all the training I'm doing is actually doing something.  My house is a little messy right now.  I'm hoping that will change today as everyone is feeling better.

I'm blessed that my sister is done with teaching this school year, and has the time to chat with me on the phone again.  I've missed my friend deeply these last months that she's gone back to work.  I feel like a new person having her back again.

I'm grateful for moments like supper last night.  Silje asked me if she could open up and listen to the CDs sitting on the school shelf.  I explained to her that those were for school next year.  It was music from the composers we are going to study.

"Studying music is school?" She asked.
"Yes.  We've done it before." I said.
After pausing to think, she said "So do you mean, those CDs with the geography songs are school?"
"Ha!  Yes.  Those are most definitely school." I said.
"Oh.  I just thought they were fun."

It was a good moment for me.  I needed that.

Knut chimed in, "And you know all of those geography puzzles you like to do?  Those are school too."
Silje's jaw dropped.  "I thought those were just presents!"

"Learning is a gift."  I said.  "So yes, they were gifts for you kids."

I'm also blessed with an abundance of yarn right now, even though it is sort of overwhelming me.  I'm blessed with this house that I love that gets messy so easily.  I'm blessed with snuggly kids and a very open-minded husband.  I'm blessed by cell phones and the ability to talk to family thousands of miles away.  I'm blessed by my church family who minister to me in such amazing ways every Sunday morning.

I got to see Knut's grandparents at church yesterday.  They don't normally go to our church, but they were there yesterday.  This month they are having an anniversary.  This will be their 70th.  70th wedding anniversary!  Have you ever heard of such a thing?  Man, I'm so blessed by both of them.  Knut's grandma especially, who knows how to do so many things, never makes me feel stupid for not knowing how to do any of them.  I'll have to do a post sometime about some of our conversations about knitting.  It'll be too long for today.

My friends, I'm blessed.

Out of the Barn

It's moving day down at the barn.  The chicks are moving on out.  They could not be happier.

Gone is their bedding of wood shavings and straw.  Now they have...

grass.

Lovely, green, full of ticks and grubs, and tons of chlorophyll, grass.  The ground is moist enough to have the bugs up out of the ground, and these birds were giddy with delight.

Knut and his cousin moved their experimental structure out into the yard, to see how it would do.

2 of the chickens weren't quick enough on their feet and one lost a toe, and the other got a bit scratched.  They're resting in the sick unit.  The kids brought them raspberries to cheer them up.  I think as the guys get better at moving it, and the chickens get more familiar with it moving, these injuries should hopefully be avoided in the future.

So, those are the meat birds.  (They're Red Rangers, not Cornish Cross.  We wanted some excellent forgers for this project.)  They're looking good.  They're looking BIG.  My goodness, they got huge.  They're ready to spend their days outside over grass now.  They'll probably be moved every few days to get a fresh crop of bugs.  The ticks are bad this year.  Chickens love to eat ticks.  Therefore I love chickens.

And you're probably wondering about my girls?  Where are the laying hens?

They got moved over to the sunshine (the netting on top was put back on after the picture.  They can almost hop out now), and still in the old horse's watering trough.  They'll be moved to the coop today.  These girls will be free range over the yard in a little while.  They're still too small.  They're much smaller than the meat chickens, and still too prone to predators.  The coop will provide them more room, though, as they are fast outgrowing this brooder.  It will be good to get them all settled into what will be their home.  They won't be allowed outside the coop until they're just a bit bigger.  So there'll be some coop cleaning and set up today.  Fresh bedding laid, fresh food set out, and perhaps some bug filled greens to whet their appetite.

My goodness, this is fun.

(Linking up with the Barn Hop.)

Yarn Along

Well I finally buckled down in the knitting department, and got one sleeve of the Tsu Sweater done.  I was honesty expecting to have to do it a few times before it was right, but I tried it on with 1 sleeve done and it was just...perfect.  It's like when you're learning to draw and the picture in your brain finally starts matching the picture your hand can do.  I can't draw, so I don't exactly know that feeling, but if we're talking about knitting, I think I'm almost there.

After the sleeve was done, I made myself finish up the pink sweater.  One of the sleeves needed a bit of reworking, and all the ends needed to be woven in, etc.  I love the sweater.  I hate finishing work.  I finished that all up in one day, and now it's blocking in the living room.  Now all I need to do is find buttons that are right for it.  I've been on the lookout for just the right buttons for a month or two, with no perfect ones yet.  I think I might need to head to the city soon.

The pink sweater has gone by a few names.  It was inspired to be a summer version of the Clarity Cardigan.  So I called it "Summer Clarity."  That morphed into "Minnesota Summer."  I wasn't content with that name, so when I was working on jelly last week, it hit me:

"Rhubarb"

So the "Rhubarb Sweater" it is.  It's just so perfect.  A pink summery sweater?  How could I think otherwise.  I'm about 10% of the way through writing up the Rhubarb pattern.  Each time it's getting a little bit more streamlined for me, and for that I am glad.

As far as reading, I should first explain that a month or two ago, I went yarn shopping at the yarn shop in the city.  I rarely get there, and they had 2 different yarns that I absolutely loved for a sweater design.  I debated for awhile in there, and then finally brought them both home.  I love that ability as a designer. If I didn't design patterns, I would have had to pick.  I felt a little guilty that I had splurged in such a way, but to make it worse, my local yarn store in our small town announced it's closing a few days later.  Everything in the store must go.

Seriously, right?  Already blown my yarn budget, here were some amazing yarns for 40% off.  In bulk.

To ease the blow, I went in 3 different times to spread out the blow that it did to my yarn budget.  Instead of saying I blew the budget, I like to think of it as just using my yarn budget for the next 6 months to buy yarn for the next 12 months.  (Who am I joking?  It will take me at least 18 months to get through this yarn.)  I have so much glorious yarn in the house right now it's coming out my ears.  So I have my sketching notebook out, and some stitch dictionaries, and I've been spending some time when I'm holding Ingrid in my lap (she's old enough to grab knitting projects now) to instead go through various stitch projects and plan out options for each yarn I got.  It's been my way of organizing it all.  I'm hoping to start swatching a few projects this next week.  

My imagination is just reeling with ideas and I just love it!  What a great way to boost moral around here.  I need to stop now with the whole yarn buying thing.  This time I'm serious.  Sort of.

I'm Blessed

I had the most wonderful weekend.

In order to tell you the good parts, though, I have to admit some bad.  I have been struggling.  I don't think I've been keeping that a secret, as I try to be honest.  There's a line, though, of being honest, and crying out for help and I try to keep my cries for help directed in the right places.  Being the messy-brained person I am, it would be difficult to pinpoint exactly what I've been struggling with because I would open up my spaghetti brain, and I would tell you how this relates to that and then this happened, and that impacted this, and then it all came crashing down there, and then...

I'll just say it's complicated.  Like every other person I've ever known, I'm broken.  I'm not strong, except when it comes to being stubborn.  I'm needy.  I have baggage.  What else can I say that is making me uncomfortable?  I overreact.  There's a good one.  I could add to the list, but I'll stop there.

Anyway, Knut and I already decided on Saturday that I would stay home with Solveig and Ingrid from church on Sunday, since all 3 of us have recently (or) currently have this pink eye.  I was bummed to miss church, because I need it so much.  It effects my week so intensely.  I couldn't see any other way around it, though, and I didn't want either of them near a nursery.

Like many Sunday mornings, there is snapping and arguing, and the kids are pretty bad too.  I got upset at Knut for not doing something I had asked him to do the exact way I had asked him to do it.  It turned out my way was right, and his way was wrong, and if he would have just listened...

We've all been there.

Then with me upset, and him running out of time, he took the older 3 to church, leaving me with the younger 2 at home.  We said we were sorry before he left, but I was honestly still annoyed.

The morning was actually pretty peaceful with only 2 kids in the house.  I got some time to myself even as Ingrid napped and Solveig was playing nicely.  That was a big blessing.

Knut came home from church with a small bunch of flowers for me.  Normally I love flowers, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to not be annoyed with him anymore.  It was a super sweet gesture, but I was just so...mad at the world.  Since he's the only grown up I see between many days, when I'm mad at the world, it is often directed at him.  He knew, though, that I've been dealing with deeper stuff than just this morning.  He knew how deep it went and how much I've been hurting.  He was trying to cheer me up.  Sometimes I just hate how much baggage I came into this marriage with.

I was just mad that I was the only one who does stuff (which isn't true, by the way) and I was mad that no one ever listened to me (which also isn't true) and if everyone would just do as they are told, when they are told, the way they are told to do it, than the whole household would just run better. (I'm still on the fence on whether or not this is true.)

Can any mom out there relate?  Sigh.

Anyway, this next part is really personal, but I want to write about it because I want so badly to remember it.  As I started putting the flowers in a vase, Knut was bringing stuff in from the van.  He mentioned as he worked, "We had communion today."

I sighed.  My eyes closed briefly with the added hurt and I took a deep breath.  Our church serves communion once a month.  Last month I missed it because I had taken out an unruly child about 10 minutes before it was served.  Now this was my second month, and my heart ached.  "Now I'm bummed I missed it."

"I thought you might, so I brought communion home for you," he said as he brought in a few other things picked up in town.

What?  How does one bring communion home, exactly?  I had never heard of such a thing.

Well, a little while ago, Knut was elected as elder-designate at our church.  That means that he will be doing the duties of an elder for a year, as a trial, after which time he can decide to get his ordination, or if he thinks the role is too much, he can step back.  One of the duties he has been doing has been to be one of the servers during communion.  After he had served communion, he packed a wafer and some grape juice up, and brought it home for me.  Just like that.

When we had a quiet moment after all the kids were in bed that evening, he read some text from the Bible, and gave me the elements, and then we prayed together.

Can I even begin to express what that meant to me?  Would it even scratch the surface?  Someone had remembered me.  Someone anticipated my needs before I had even expressed them.  Knut's actions reminded me acutely of an even greater man, the Son of God who remembered me...and anticipated my needs before I even knew them.  The gospel was there before me, in the form of communion, and I was reminded, "Do this in remembrance of me."

In remembrance of Christ.  My focus left myself for some especially beautiful, and much needed moments, and they turned to Christ.  That's when we lose the white-knuckled grip we have on those burdens on our hearts.  We get distracted in such a supernatural way...

"And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace."

My friends, I'm blessed.