Gratitude

During the month of November, my kids and I focused a lot on gratitude. 

Cliche, maybe, but powerful. 

November brought with it the anticipation of all sorts of significant holidays that we would be celebrating without Jason for the first time in our family history: Julia's birthday, Thanksgiving, Rudy's birthday, my wedding anniversary, and Christmas. It was scary and heartbreaking and overwhelming to consider going through the holidays as a newly divorced single mom.

Luckily, 2 years I had started a tradition of doing a Thanksgiving Tree through the whole month of December. (Thank you, Nancy, for the idea.) It's always been a fun thing to do, but this year, I think it really made a difference in helping me to stay focused on the joy and beauty of each holiday instead of the loss and grief I feel at the divorce.

We start the month off with a bare tree 'skeleton', and add leaves each day with things we are grateful for written on them. This year, we talked about how life can seem really empty and dead if we don't have gratitude, but if we start to look for things we have been blessed with and that we cherish in our lives, gradually the very same life can seem vibrant and full of color. Spending some time each day discussing what we are happy to have in our lives was such a cooling balm on my aching heart and those of my children's too. It helped us find the beauty, joy, and fullness that is still in our lives, despite the tragedy of loss we all experienced this year.

Happy Birthday Julia

Dear Julia,
You bring so much joy and light into my life. Almost everyday, I find myself struck for at least a moment or two, and often for whole sections of the day with the beautiful miracle that is you. I love your scrunchy-face smile, your quiet ponderous face, your gleeful imaginative play. I love to hear you sing to your babies. I treasure those times when I see you running and even walking with your whole body twisting and your arms pumping like mad with pure joy and self-satisfaction. I love the quiet moments when you tell me you love me or I hear you tell Rudy you love him. I love to hear you pray to your Father in Heaven with a purity and trust I hope to someday accomplish. Julia, you are a treasure to my soul. I am SOOO happy to have your caring, sunshine filled spirit as part of my eternal family.
Hugs and Kisses forever and ever.
love,
Mommy

Rudy is Four Years...

51 weeks, and 3 days old. I figure I should document his 4th birthday party before he turns 5. Here's a quick one, mostly pictures, for the sake of family history. :)

Rudy's fourth year was full of dragon play, so that's what I went with for his birthday party. It was great fun! Each of the kids were dragons, except one friend of his who firmly declared that girls are NOT supposed to be dragons. She was a princess. That worked great because soon enough, one of the other girls had shed her dragon persona, popped on a knight costume, and valiantly went about protecting the princess from all the other dragons. It made for some great play time. :)

Rudy is not a big cake fan, so I made sure to put some of his favorite candies/treats on the cake for him to pick off. It worked out great.  

It was fun looking at pictures of last year's party and thinking about the one he'll have a week from tomorrow. 

Last year, his whole preschool class was four kids big, Rudy included. We invited each classmate/friend and still had space for a few more neighborhood friends. And all Rudy's close friends were girls. 

This year his preschool class is 23 kids big. We had to whittle his guest list down to just 'special' school friends, which felt terrible, but I just couldn't handle the idea of more than 2 dozen kids at a 5 year old's birthday party. 

Even after MAJOR whittling, we ended up with 9 kids on the guest list. Mostly boys this time around. We'll see how it goes. That's a bigger party than I have ever thrown before, but hopefully, with my parents helping out, we can pull off a great time, and get to know some of Rudy's new friends and their parents a bit better. Wish us luck!

We are the Drummonds, and we can do HARD THINGS!

Soon after moving to Midway, Rudy, Julia and I began getting outside as much as possible. Into places big enough to absorb all of our big feelings. On one of our early hikes, I had taken the single jogger up Memorial Hill in Midway, with Rudy responsible for propelling himself up and down the hill on just his own two feet. It's maybe 1/2 mile each way, but it's a pretty decent incline.

The way up was exhilarating. We were seeing our new home town from a new perspective, enjoying the beautiful new spring growth, smelling the fresh mountain air, laughing, singing, enjoying ourselves. The way down, however was a whole different story.

By then, it was a bit past our normal dinner time. I was out of snacks, out of time, and out of patience. So was Rudy. We were at a bit of a face off, both of us mustering our best poor attitudes to fling at each  other through body language, huffing, and grunting.

And then Rudy decided to full-on rebel. He left the road, scrambled straight down the hill through cactus, scrub brush and rocks, and firmly planted himself outside of reach. I did what any sane mother would do in such a moment. I began the "This INSTANT" routine. ;)

I told Rudy in no uncertain terms that he was to meet me at the road below (the road swirls around Memorial hill like a giant spiral) and then ran my guts out to the lower road, freaking out inside while I was on the other side of the hill and out of view of my little man. Two minutes later, I was huffing, a bit light headed, Julia was giggling and asking for "more fast-fast Mommy" and Rudy was still defiantly staring at me from his perch between roads. I escalated my demands into threats until FINALLY, true sanity returned and I remembered that I was speaking to a little boy whom I love dearly and who was hurting just as much as me.

By that time, Rudy had stormed down to us and was ready to explode with anger. I softened my tone, tearfully apologized for my rough and demanding demeanor  and asked if we could start over. In the pure spirit forgiveness that children are so skilled in, Rudy readily agreed. We both "put on" better faces and softer hearts, and restarted our hike, fresh friends.

We were about 3/4 of the way down when Rudy was struggling again. This time, I was able to respond with love and support, and we talked about how our family can do hard things, even when we're tired, even when we feel like giving up. we began chanting, "We are the Drummonds, and we can to HARD THINGS!" , as we 'marched' down the last of the hill and back to our car.

It was so healing for me to embrace my 'married' name and make it my own. It was a powerful moment for each of us. A moment to reaffirm that our family will stick together. We will love and support each other. We will cheer for each other. And that as we do that, no matter how hard the path ahead, we'll journey through it, with God and family at our side.

Now anytime Rudy or Julia or I face a flustering moment, we remind each other  that "We are the Drummonds, and we can do HARD THINGS!" It's like our family mantra or something. I love it.

And I believe it.