thursday things

1. We are all suffering, to varying degrees, from our first bout of cold weather sickness. Greer has a horrible croupy cough which seems to have brought back the asthma we were hoping she had grown out of. Abigail has asthma too, and although not as bad as Greer did at that age there's been a fair bit of coughing over the last couple of nights. Greer is tired. She had a meltdown this morning because I asked her to brush her teeth so I put her in bed with a tray and some puzzles. It reminded me of how much I loved staying home sick as a child. This was not a privilege earned easily I should tell you. We had to either be throwing up or have a scientifically confirmed temperature to get a day off school. One day I remember I was feeling the need to prove my sickness so I could stay home. I was in bed with the thermometer, and Mum had kindly given me a cup of tea. I had a brainwave and immediately dunked the (mercury) thermometer into my cup of tea. Oh dear. The thermometer broke, of course. At a loss as to what to do, I lifted the cup to my lips and was about to sip. My sister, who though three years younger than me was always the more practical of the two of us, quickly piped up "stop!" and saved me from drinking mercury-laced tea!

2. Greer has her last day at kindy (pre-school) next week. She's not actually five until July, so she's finishing a term early. She's super keen to join Isobella and start homeschooling. She does enjoy kindy, and especially loves her teachers, but she also loves staying at home with her sisters. I'm looking forward to not having to go anywhere on two more mornings in the week. I've been thinking about our morning rhythms and how they still need a bit of tweaking. With kindy finished we'll have four mornings a week that we can just stay home.

3. Family rhythms are something I've been thinking about lately since I was recommended a new blog by a homeschooling friend. The Parenting Passageway is a lovely, thoughtful Waldorf homemaking and homeschooling blog. This was the first post I read - "An Ordered Outer World for a Peaceful Family." I found it very inspiring. Then after thinking about order and rhythms in the home for the last week or so, I only just remembered the other day that my word for this year is ORDER. I'd forgotten! And the funny thing is that the process of having the house on the  market, while being extremely consuming and exhausting, has resulted in a pared down, pleasantly ordered house. And I hadn't even thought of the word order once while we were doing it all. You don't need to know about the storage unit we've had to hire to shift half of our STUFF into to achieve this domestic nirvana though. Neither do our prospective buyers!

4. Speaking of the house, this Saturday is our auction. We have a hunch it won't sell at auction but we are expecting to have some negotiating going on next week. Once this house is sold we will let ourselves get very, very excited about the new one. I am so looking forward to having no more open homes. Two every weekend for the last month has been tiring.

5. And speaking of tired, I am. I'm really tired at the moment. Isn't it lucky I decided to go to bed early for Lent. Even though I haven't been perfect at it, I've been going to bed a lot earlier than I was. I hate to think how tired I would be now if it wasn't for Lent. As you know, I'm a novice when it comes to observing the church calendar. But it seems to be a natural and good thing to observe spiritual seasons as well as earthly ones. It makes sense to me to have a season where we consciously restrict activity. Restriction of activity does not have to be viewed negatively. If it's an unhealthy activity, such as a bad habit, then restriction of activity is going to actually bring freedom. If it's restriction of activity that makes room for rest, then ultimately it's life-giving. Looking at Lent in this way makes me think that observing a rest day or a sabbath in our week could be like having a mini-lent every week. Paddy has worked on Sunday nights for most of our married life, so Sunday as traditional rest day has never worked for us. But I've been longing to find our own rhythm for rest despite this. At the beginning of the year I decided to make Sundays a no-internet day for me. It's been amazing how this one small thing has really made Sundays feel different, and somehow restful. I look forward to it. The culture we live in would have us believe that restriction is bad and that more is always better. Most of us know too well how untrue this is.