#TBT Drama Camp

Kate enjoys singing and acting out scenes she's seen—quoting funny lines or imitating inflections she likes. So, we knew that classes at Nashville's children's theatre were an obvious choice. Her first experience was a Fall Break drama camp last month. At her age, the class involved lots of games and imagination exercises.

A few phone pics I snapped at the parents' open class...

 

She can't wait to do more drama classes, and who knows what's in her future?

I did shows all through high school, and did backstage work during college, but way back when, I was just a little deer in a summer drama class, wearing my Brownie uniform pants and a felt headband my mom made. (That's obviously a bunny to my right, an owl to my left, and I think maybe Class of 2001 there was a raccoon?)

And before that, I put on this one-girl-show of Cinderella on our family room hearth. Those teddy bears were my wicked stepsisters!

 

The grand finale, of course, had me in a crown and glass slippers (jellies!) dancing with my Prince Charming Bear!

Both of our recent birthday parties have ended with impromptu shows. We love Kate's dramatics, and whether she sticks to at-home skits, shines on the high school stage, or goes even further, it's great to nurture this interest of hers and grow her confidence and imagination even more!

#TBT: Hand-Me-Down Halloween

Our family is trick-or-treating this year as a Wizard of Oz ensemble. We got to try the costumes out at Claire's 3rd birthday party—a Halloween party!—on Sunday. (I can't wait to share it with you; it's been a very busy week!)

 

BGC's role in the ensemble was inspired by her spica cast. We'll cover it in tin foil tomorrow night to complete the look! (Oil can, please!) But the overall plan was prompted by the happenstance of a couple hand-me-down costumes.

 

 Kate was a witch three years ago (the night before Claire was born, in fact!) so Claire might have been a witch this year regardless of our family ensemble! (She was a monkey her first Halloween, like Kate, but was a ladybug last year, instead of a kittycat!) Both girls made darling little witches, don't you think?

And after seeing "Wizard of Oz" earlier this year, Kate got very excited about donning my mother-made Dorothy jumper from 1988! They didn't sell glitter-coated mary janes back then, so my mom had to spray-paint an old pair and attach crinkly red bows! I got Kate's ruby slippers on clearance at Target months ago, and had to hide them with the fall decor, lest she wear them out long before October!

Thriftiness and nostalgia make a great team when combined for some special hand-me-down costumes. Now which of my "pretties" wore it best?

Scrapbooking before Kids #TBT

I love to look through my scrapbooks—usually, the more recent ones of our family adventures in the last couple years, seeing how much the kids have grown and changed, etc. But recently I picked an older book off the shelf, and I just marveled at all the fun pages I made back before I had kids!

It's not just that most of our ordinary life and fun events involve the kids now (so of course they feature in most scrapbook pages) but I was also forced to get more creative to even find things to scrapbook. See, it's not just about the events getting documented, but the joy of the craft. When I got/get the urge to scrapbook, I'll find things to scrap about. And, of course, I had more free time to spend hours on a page, cutting out tiny embellishments, stamping out the lettering, etc.

2003: I did a whole two-page spread on the church I went to my last two years of college. (This was my stint in the Episcopal church, discovered through the guy I dated my junior year. I kept going and got even more involved after we broke up—and still went out to lunch with his mom sometimes!)

2007: I used a couple pics of Matt and I enjoying cocktails before a friend's wedding to make a page devoted to a "Friends" quote! (Chandler's boss says "There's no I in team," and Chandler quips, "but there are two in martini, so meet me at the bar!)

and like an elderly shut-in with only the weather to talk about, I did a page about the crazy heat that summer! (I tried to fry an egg on the blacktop. It didn't work.)

2008:  The author of the first book I edited was profiled in the paper (with a sidebar about the book) so i scrapped that, of course. The page protector is cut such that you can actually fold out and read the whole article. Opposite that, I did a page devoted to the beloved rabbit I had my senior year of college.

Actually, I did fancy pages about a lot of the special people and creatures in my life. Here's one all about Charlotte, our "first child," so to speak. She was a gift from Matt for Christmas 2004, so she's almost ten years old now. These pics were from around 2006-7, probably, and they were the most recent I could find when I had to make her "Lost Cat" posters in fall 2011. Sad!

 

I did a lovey-dovey page about Matt in 2007 too. Like the cat, Mommy and Daddy don't get a lot of photo love after kids, either. 

 

My dad got some scrapbook love in 2007 when I did a spread about his stint as Kentucky State Parks Commissioner. 

 Sometimes, scrapping was a way to preserve and highlight old photos I had sitting around. These on a page I titled "Pretty Mommy" were of my mom from 1970-71. Love it.

And I honored my grandmother, whose name was passed on from her mother (in center photo) and great-grandmother and is part of Kate's name as well.

I did pages all about our homes in our first years of marriage: the duplex where we first lived, complete with paint samples to show the color scheme of each room!

 

 And the parsonage we lived in from 2007-2011, including not only a sketch of the floor plan, but a flip book of the floor plans of the duplex and Matt's and my apartments in Nashville during our single days.

Finally, the scrapbook page that changed it all. . . yes, I surprised Matt with the news of our first pregnancy via a scrapbook page. The photos and journaling of Matt's reaction were added later, of course, but I actually did have the sticks there on the page when I opened the book and said, "Check out the scrapbook page I did while you were gone!"

Our lives—and my scrapbooks—would never be the same.

This post is linked up with The Mom Creative's "Throwback Thursday Stories" #TBTstories.

Starting School #TBTstories

Linking up with Throwback Thursday Stories on The Mom Creative.
This week: 1987. I was six.

Kate will start kindergarten two months from tomorrow. That's right—early August. (Last year, I think public schools here started July 31, so at least this is a little closer to "fall.") In any case, I'm super excited about her starting "real school." Field trips, school projects, getting to know her teacher, all that fun stuff. I feel like the dorkiest mom out there to be so excited about this, but maybe I'm not alone. Matt's the one who's feeling misty-eyed about this milestone.

The pictures above were from my first day of first grade. I did preschool and kindergarten at a church preschool, so first grade was the start of my elementary school experience, as kindergarten will be for Kate. I don't know if Kate will pose so adorably on the step of the school bus (or even if we'll have her ride the bus in the mornings) but you can bet I'll be taking pics in front of our house with Kate and her little backpack. She'll be wearing a uniform (public schools here do "standard attire") but otherwise, I don't think the scene will look too much different. Lots of things change, but the excitement and sentimentality over the first day of school is a constant.

The Kitchen Table #TBTStories

Throwback Thursday Stories, hosted by The Mom Creative.

Today: 1984. I was turning three.

I recently bought a new kitchen table and chairs. We just got all new kitchen cabinets and countertops too, so I definitely wasn't wanting to spend money on new furniture at the same time, but our old table and chairs were kaput. More accurately, just the chairs, which were falling apart underneath us.

You see, that dining set was my parents' first, purchased when they got married in 1973. It was in my house growing up until I was thirteen, when we moved to a new house and my mom upgraded to a new set. This one sat in the basement for a decade (a well-earned sabbatical after 21 years of service), until I had my first little apartment in grad school. It became mine and has graced Matt's and my kitchens in Nashville, Clarksville, and now back to Nashville.

The table itself and the two chairs in less-bad condition now reside in the playroom, where they will host many hours of puzzles, games, and homework in the years to come. I'm glad not to be tossing the thing entirely, because it has such sentimental value. Forty-one years of family dinners just me and my parents, afternoons of homework throwing my math book across it, and birthday celebrations like the one in the photo above, when I turned three, surrounded by my parents, all four grandparents (such a blessing to have them all live close by), and a great-aunt and -uncle who never had children of their own. This was the crowd that gathered every year on my birthday, and it was always so special.

I chose this photo because you can actually see the style of the chair around my little toddler body. I spotted a similar style when watching the movie American Hustle last night. Such a seventies style, and I won't forget it. We're upgrading and getting with the times now, but the memories made around such a simple thing as the kitchen table will continue to grow with my own kids.

Itchy #TBTStories

This week's Throwback Thursday Story:
Approximately 1987. I was probably six or about to turn six.

This was the kids' musical program at the end of Bible Study Fellowship or Mother's Day Out—something like that, at a Baptist church, I believe. Not our home church. I'm the one in the dress with the red smocking and bow.

Three reasons this picture speaks to me:

1. I'm holding my name tag, rather than wearing it. I've never liked tags, stickers, cause-support ribbons, other things in excess of my clothes being put on me (including bows that were part of my clothes, which is why I disliked this dress, I recall). So I declined to have my little piece of paper (shaped like a sheep, I believe, though I can't quite tell from the picture) pinned to me. That's so me.

2. I'm itching my bottom. I don't believe this dress is particularly scratchy. It's hanging in Kate's closet now, along with several other childhood dresses my mom saved, and I can verify it has no crinoline or other stiff lining. So I don't know what the problem was, but something bugged me. Something other than the name tag I was holding instead of wearing. Maybe it was the bow at my neck, psychosomatically itching my bottom.

3. There are three Jessicas in this picture. Such children of the '80s. The girl at the far left and the girl in the shorts and sneakers two kids to my right also have "Jessica" name tags. Amazingly, I don't see any Jennifers. There were four Jennifers in my fourth grade class. Sarah, Beth, and Brittany (the other girls' names I can make out in the picture) were pretty popular 1980s names as well.

I've always prided myself on having a great memory, and I honestly feel like I can remember this day, wearing the red dress that I liked less than my similarly-styled blue dress (also hanging in Kate's closet), and declining to have the paper pinned to me. Or perhaps it just feels that way because this photo captures such a "me" moment. Love it.

Falling Down #TBTStories

Throwback Thursday Stories is a new link-up series being hosted on The Mom Creative.  
This week: Summer 1986. I was five. 
 
I've got a running theme so far with these Throwback Thursday Stories, as two weeks ago I shared the story of a socially awkward rollerskating party I attended in middle school, and this week I have another rollerskating-related story.

Not quite two weeks ago—two days after sharing that awkward party story, in fact—I took Kate rollerskating. It was her second time skating (fifth or sixth, if you count ice skating), and she still struggled a bit to stay upright. She kept getting frustrated, going so slowly, shuffling along with her little PVC-pipe walker thing the beginners can use, and wanted to sit down for a break after practically every lap.

I could see how discouraged she was getting, despite the fact that there were plenty of big kids, even teens and adults, struggling to keep their balance and falling down. She didn't want to try anymore, because she wasn't succeeding right away.

As she sat on a carpeted bench (not much has changed in roller rinks in 21 years), staring down at her skates, I sat on the floor in front of her and told her a story. It was the story of this picture, in fact.

I got my first pair of roller skates for my fifth birthday. They were the adjustable kind that strapped on right over your shoes. These were metal, though Fisher Price started making those blue plastic ones with the orange wheels around the same time, I believe. I tried them out on the smooth garage floor and my dad took pictures. Somewhere in that first try, I lost my balance. I probably fell down. A few times. I don't know. All I know is Dad caught that blurry photo of me struggling to regain my balance.

I told Kate about that day when I first tried rollerskating, but more importantly, I told her about the day weeks later, when Mom got the photos developed and I saw that picture of me falling down, my blurry hand flailing for balance. I hated that photo so much that I crumpled it up and threw it in the trash can. Then, minutes or hours later, I felt so guilty for having thrown it away that I went and fished it out of the trash, smoothed it out as best I could, and put it back with the other photos from the roll. If you look closely, though the photo has been adhered under a page protector and smashed in a heavy album for 28 years, you can see the creases from that temporary crumpling.

The moral of the story, as I told it to Kate, was that we shouldn't be ashamed of losing our balance and falling down, especially when we're just starting to learn a new skill.

As I flipped through my parents' photo albums last week to find this photo, Mom said it looked like I was just dancing, or waving, not falling. Perhaps that is the case, and my hatred of the photo was based just on its blurriness and the unflattering position the camera caught me in. Shame over falling made it a better story for that moment encouraging Kate to get back on her wheels and try again. But shame over how one looks in a photo—or worse, a mirror—will make that story come in handy again, I'm sure, ten years or so down the road.

Who'd You Come With? #TBTstories

Throwback Thursday Stories is a new link-up series being hosted on The Mom Creative. I've been itching to write—really write—since attending the Festival of Faith and Writing last week at Calvin College. And this story is the one itching to come out.

This week: Spring 1993. I was 11.

Middle school haunts many of us, I imagine. But there's a particular moment that haunts me more frequently than others, because the very emotion of that interaction washes over me every time I go to a conference for work, like last week's Calvin Festival. I've been traveling a lot since getting back into book acquisitions last fall, and these events where my goal is to mix and mingle and meet potential authors are an introvert's nightmare.

Beyond the feeling of "please get me away from all these people and back to the isolation of my hotel room!" is the feeling of social awkwardness that plagues me. And a single moment from a sixth grade skating party replays in my mind as I navigate those crowds of strangers.

"Who'd you come with?"

This question was posed to me by a cooler classmate as we hung around the perimeter of our local rollerskating rink, Champs Rollerdrome. The walls were lined with carpet to ease the pain of impact for less skilled skaters, and above the carpeted portion were oversized pennants featuring the names of many area middle schools. (Champs knew its role as a "safe" drop-off spot for preteens who longed to socialize away from parents' watchful eyes.) I don't remember if our school was featured on one of those neon pennants, but I know there was one with the name of the private school to which I would transfer a blessed sixteen months later—a smaller school, at which a quiet, dorky girl like me could still end up as class president and editor of the yearbook.

My 8th birthday party at Champs. Amazingly, my experiences there could get more awkward than that super-eighties crimped side ponytail.

It was a birthday party for two or three classmates, one of whom I'd been in Brownies with years before and saw fit to invite me even though my place on the social ladder of sixth grade society was a few rungs below her, and even further below her co-birthday-girls.

"Who'd you come with?" another girl asked me.

"Jenny invited me," I said.

"No, who'd you ride here with?"

"My parents brought me," I said, suddenly realizing that apparently it wasn't enough to be included on a guest list. If you really fit in, you would have met up with other friends beforehand and been dropped off together by one kid's parent.

Who makes these rules?

My sense of awkwardness and not-belonging reached a whole new level after that conversation. What a strange society that sees making out on a carpeted bench by a carpeted wall, surrounded by staring classmates (as one girl and boy did, later in the party) less a source of oddity than arriving alone to the party? (I can still picture that girl, with her permed, dirty-blond hair, opening her eyes to see the circle of gawkers while she sucked face with that boy.)

Silly as it is, that question, "Who'd you come with?" runs on repeat in my head whenever 32-year-old, professional me navigates the down time between plenaries and breakout sessions at any conference where pastors, Christian writers, angsty ex-fundamentalists—anyone who might make a good author for us—gather. People walk and chat in groups of two or three, and I wonder if I'm the only one who came to the conference alone. Probably not, but could be. Pastors have colleagues that benefit from the same continuing ed events they do. Maybe they caravan and carpool to the convention center or church hosting the conference. Last week's Festival of Faith and Writing draws many non-professional writers and avid readers, friends who make a getaway of coming to hear poetry readings and insights for getting that novel you've secretly been working on for twenty years out of the drawer and into the hands of an editor who doesn't care that you don't have a platform. (Platform doesn't matter as much in fiction, after all.)

Anne Lamott delivered one of the plenaries last week, and referred to a "toxic self-consciousness" from which many of us suffer, comparing our insides to everyone else's outsides. She called out the two uninvited voices in her head: one that says "You're so much better than everyone else," and the other that says "You are a total loser." (After all, self-consciousness is a double-edged sword. Insecurity and superiority are not mutually exclusive.) Her advice was to acknowledge those unwanted guests and move on with a simple, "Thank you for sharing." Those voices don't need to be considered the truth.

"You look so cute today in your new dress, Jessica. You're so much more put-together than that lady in her mom jeans and fanny pack."

"Thank you for sharing. The Gap outlet clearance rack has some good finds, and I'm sure that lady is comfortable and well-equipped."

"You look hopelessly awkward standing there, twiddling your thumbs, waiting to talk to that speaker. Everybody must be thinking what a dork you are."

"Thank you for sharing. I'm doing my job, and there's a long line. Everybody else is probably more worried about what people are thinking of them than about whether I have self-confidence and an active social life."


I fake confidence and even extroversion fairly well, people tell me. But inside, I'm not too much different than that awkward sixth-grade girl being informed of yet another thing to feel awkward about.

"Who'd you come with?"

Just the voices in my head. But don't worry. I'm learning how to shut them up.