What a difference a year makes! One year ago we announced to the world that we were expecting our fifth baby!
Now our littlest lady is here and we are all the better for Opal Marie's arrival. It's amazing how for all five of my pregnancies I experienced the worst of my morning sickness in the month of August. Five out of the past eleven Augusts the smell of tomatoes and peaches ripening on my counter makes my stomach turn. And now, even though I am not pregnant, the smells of August still make my stomach queasy. There is something in the air that just triggers a feeling of sickness and I can't quite explain it except to say that the heat and humidity where we live hits a peak in August (combined with the one time each year that ants grow wings and fly - ugh!) that it really does make me look forward to the start of fall and the end of summer.
As if the humidity, heat and flying ants weren't enough to ruin August, wasps hit their peak as well in August. Will ended up helping a friend of ours rescue his lawn mower after he was attacked by ground dwelling wasps. The white stuff on our friends arms and legs pictured below is him following my advice (he is a really good sport) and put a baking soda paste on all of the stings to reduce the swelling.
We enjoyed time with family this past month - in clockwise order from top left below: enjoying a pizza dinner with cousins, my mom with the girls, and Will's parents enjoying a backyard baseball game with the girls.
We had lunch with a long time family friend who got to meet Opal for the first time...
...and played Legos with friends. We also went to a summer party at a friends house and Will ran into one of his best friends from high school and college days at a Smashing Pumpkins concert at the end of this past month. Will went to a Smashing Pumpkins concert with this same friend about twenty years ago and the smiles on both of their faces when they saw each other was priceless and made my heart so happy.
We enjoyed summer evenings in the backyard with neighbors and I also came out of "maternity leave" and participated in a bee show at the local nature center. Imagine my happiness when my brother and sister in law and their four kids came to the event!
Our peach tree was raided by squirrels but I did manage to get enough peaches for one peach cobbler. We made refrigerator pickles with the cucumbers that I swear my neighbor dropped off by the half dozen for us each time he took his dog for a walk, and I made mini blueberry pies for the freezer from the blueberries we picked at my mom's house, as well as enjoyed the wildflower garden that we have been perfecting over the last few years. In the bottom, left hand picture below I realized our breakfast table showcased everything from our yard and kitchen - a homegrown sunflower, eggs from our chickens, strawberry jam that we made back in June and one of the kids' favorite breakfast food that I make - homemade waffles in the shapes of farm animals.
Out tomatoes and green beans did not disappoint this year...
...and although our garden may be past the season for little green peas, Lucy was inspired by the children's book Little Green Peas to make little green peas to represent our family out of polymer clay. Violet was inspired by a stringing game we have to make a "party mix" and we played lots of games this past month too.
This past month our friend generously gave us her Legos that she had outgrown, which inspired Will and the girls to build a bigger Lego table to play on and feature all of their creations.
Legos still seem to be the favorite pastime at our house for both the girls and Will. Legos were my favorite as a kid too, but for now, I am content to see the girls (and sometimes Will) play with them.
The girls played outside in the rain, picked flowers, put on shows in the garage for us, and played on their slip and slide.
We borrowed a DVD from our library on how to paint with watercolors, and all of us were inspired to create the lessons. We painted flowers, fish, a desert scene and even a dragon so far, and it was amazing to see how each painter followed the same directions but created something entirely unique and beautiful.
It's no secret how much I love our library, and so imagine my excitement when we won a one year zoo membership from our participation in the summer reading program!
One of my favorite things about being a parent is sharing with my kids a love of reading, and not only rereading favorite books from my childhood with them but discovering new books and favorites alongside them. And finally, I've enjoyed coming to the realization that my kids each have their own preferences in books and helping them discover titles for themselves.
Here we are below in clockwise order from top left: Violet at the dentist, Violet standing in as the O.A.T. (oldest available Timmerman - an acronym taken from one of our favorite book series, The Penderwicks) as her two older sisters were getting their teeth cleaned at the dentist and I needed someone to keep Opal happy while I finished filling out paperwork, a photo that either Lucy or Emma took of Will, myself and Violet at a follow up appointment at the local Children's Hospital genetics department, Lucy and Emma in dance camp this past month, and all of us riding the shuttle at a festival nearby and realizing that the free tractor-pulled wagon shuttle was the best part of the entire festival and so we decided to ride it around and around, back and forth from the parking lot to the festival without getting off until we all were content, and finally, Lucy, Emma and Violet spending their money on little charms at the dance apparel store.
We spent the last part of our summer with Hand Foot and Mouth Disease. It was brutal. Every single one of us got it, but in such a slow fashion, that it was literally three solid weeks of us with someone down and out. I suppose looking back on it that although it would have been nice to have it go through our house much faster, it also would have been much more difficult for me to care for multiple people sick at once. Will and I seemed to have been hit the hardest with it, and fortunately, again, we were not sick at the same time as we needed the other functioning adult to manage the rest of the household! During our sickness, a friend of ours had a popsicle stand to benefit her girl scout troop. Not wanting to pass our germs on to them, but also wanting to support her popsicle stand, we agreed on a drive through and a hilarious and fun time ensued which was a welcome relief to the house arrest we were feeling with our communicable disease. One morning, before I knew that Violet was coming down with a fever, she had thrown so many tantrums that I took her outside for a time out. As I was carrying her kicking and screaming out of the house my bachelor neighbor gave us one look and quickly ran into his house. A few hours later, as I was lecturing a reluctant Lucy on why she should just unpack the dishwasher nicely and not exhaust me with whining and complaints, the same neighbor knocked on my kitchen window. Embarrassed that he clearly had heard my "mom voice", I opened the window and he offered fancy chocolates and sidewalk chalk and told me to hang in there, he could tell I was having a rough day. I can't even tell you how this small gesture turned my day around. Not only did I have chocolate, but the chalk provided a diversion for the healthy kids who were going stir crazy and it filled me with a sense of being cared for, despite Will's late work schedule that day and my cranky and sick kids.
If you want to know what life with four girls looks like, the below collage is a pretty good picture - starting in the top left below in clockwise order: me, accidentally taking a selfie and realizing later that the look on my face must be the look I make when I'm attending to my crazy children, Violet showing me that her potato chips at lunch look like butt cheeks (at the same moment my heart was melting thinking she found hearts - nope!), pancakes for humans and baby dolls lined up on my griddle one morning, a poem we had up on the chalkboard over the summer that I love so much, Emma telling me, "don't you hate it when your hair gets stuck in your band aid mama?", and Will, trying to comfort a crying Violet while holding Opal who will cry if he sets her down.
For me, my first decade of motherhood has been both predictable and surprising. I expected there to be a lot of work and a lot of love with motherhood. I am surprised however by the way I get to live the best parts of my childhood over again through my kids eyes - from my favorite books that I get to share with them for the first time to the toys, games, food and places that I loved as a child and now as well. I am also surprised by the number of times I am asked to "watch this" or "how do you spell..." and how it is very hard to function when multiple voices are talking to you at the same time, each voice completely clueless that anyone else is also trying to talk to me. But mostly I have been taken by surprise on how healing motherhood would be to the parts of me that were broken or lost. My kids have been the catalyst for me to do the hard work of growing and I am forever grateful and evolving with starts and stops and tears and joy to be the best, most whole version of myself.
P.S. Feel free to send chocolate and sidewalk chalk for the stops and tears!
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