I'm Being Swallowed By a Boa Constrictor...

Oh no, oh no, he swallowed my toe! He swallowed my toe!

With two little ones under the age of five and a second (very loveable but sometimes somewhat demanding) spouse named "the Church," life involves a lot of squeezing right now. Squeezing in the things that have to happen like laundry and dinner and vestry meetings and working to fill them with love as best we can rather than stress. My little helper monkeys folding laundry help to fill that task with love (and wrinkles) and the combination of working ahead, a freezer, and a crock pot sure does fill our dinners with less stress and more love. And pizza and a movie as the standing vestry night activity around here will forever be what my children think "vestry" means. Someday they'll be active adults in a parish, run for vestry, and be disappointed to discover that the meeting doesn't mean hitting up the redbox (or future equivalent), tossing on pajamas, and spreading "the pizza blanket" across the living room.

I don't have time for squeezing in Facebook or watching tv or movies. But I do have time for crafting with my kids. And baking a freezer full of baked goods for the school fall fair. And squeezing in the library, and decorating for Halloween (it's an on-going creative process around here), and more baking for the school fair. I've squeezed in time for reading for fun falling asleep snuggled with my book (Into the Wild at the moment) and am exactly one week ahead in my work on the Gospel of Mark... which isn't as good as it sounds because I really need to squeeze in the end of that and get to work on Luke! Yikes!

We've squeezed in ballet lessons, and pumpkin patches, and plenty of spontaneous family dance parties... most of which are initiated by Nils hearing a song he likes on Pandora and yelling "come on! come on!" dancing around the den. He loves my "Proud Mary" station. We're also squeezing in more than enough time for preschool humor knock-knock jokes. Nils loves those as well and has already added his own to the mix... spoiler alert: boy humor evidently begins before the age of two. You don't want to answer the door if he says "knock knock!"

I'm squeezing in my early morning workouts. We're squeezing in special family time being sure to mark it off in advance on the calendar... because we're taking the wisdom of older, wiser clergy families and refusing to let our family get squeezed out. And in the midst of all of the squeezing we find rejoicing and prayer and thanksgiving. Constant thanksgiving.

I'm being swallowed by a boa constrictor... but I'm a Syltherin so it's just fine. We're doing alright. We'll just toss the boa a party hat and invite it to the next Proud Mary living room dance party.