Blogging eases transition to motherhood, study shows.

Hannah gave the girls a quilt for Christmas. Well, she gave them the promise of a quilt. She wanted to not just give them a quilt but the opportunity to make it together with her.

But we didn’t want the girls to be empty handed come Christmas morning. So I made a coupon as a token of the promise Mommy made. To give it class we printed it on metallic paper. We used the Silhouette Cameo to cut it out, including a perforated edge for tearing off the coupon.

It was a fun way to give a truly meaningful gift.

Judge David McDonald was my fourth great-grandfather. In 1842, he was the first professor of the Indiana University law department, a school that was founded to be ‘inferior to none west of the mountains’. In 1844, they graduated their first class of 5 students. According to the Indiana University Maurer Law School website, “Through the early year, the Law Department flourished under the direction of McDonald and other distinguished jurists”.

In 1864, Judge McDonald was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln as Judge for the US District Court. He served in this capacity until his death in 1869.

I am proud to call David McDonald my great-grandfather. He sets a high bar for what I can achieve. Although I am not a lawyer, I hope I live up to his high standard.

As an artist I crave this for my life. An artist’s studio is a reflection of the owner’s taste and intelligence, I tell myself. If I am an artist, I should not rest until every aspect of my life is a testament of my refined judgment and aesthetic sensibilities.

However, the sad truth is that my home and office do not even approach such great heights. In all honesty, it is nothing like this. Allow me to paint the picture.

I sit in an office crowded with boxes, boxes that overflow with unsorted papers, mail, notes, photos and more oddments. Pictures lean against the wall instead of being hung properly. A shirt hangs on the outside frame of the closet. The closet itself is burgeoning with boxes and disheveled shelves. Half folded laundry on the floor spills out of it’s container—which is not, by the way, a laundry basket but the lid of a storage box.

Why doesn’t my realty approach my ideal? Am I lazy or are there more important things than stark modernism? If I’m lazy then it’s my fault my office is in disarray. If there are more important things, then I’ve made a wise sacrifice of order for a higher cause.

Maybe it isn’t so black and white. When I moved into this new home office, I hung pictures, found and purchased new and new-to-me furniture. I even purchased new equipment to do my work. These significant investments bring me great pleasure and satisfaction, and they helped me organize my work. It wasn’t messy when I moved in—it was neat and orderly.

So what happened? Have I let down my militant guard against the non-designed life? It’s not that simple. Life is messy. Family life, in particular, is one fantastic, ridiculous, unfathomable, epic, were-you-raised-in-a-barn-!? mess.

When it’s the holiday season and you’re hosting, ‘life’ will get shoved into the home office because, hey, there is space there and we don’t have time right now to go through all this stuff.

When you have a new baby, there is an explosion of clothes, furniture and accoutrements. We have a cute little dresser that stands empty. We would love to put clothes in the drawers. Wouldn’t that be clever; to put the clothes in the drawers? But if she’s asleep we can’t get to the drawers without disturbing her. And if she’s awake then she needs feeding, changing, and care. Dresser draws are way down the list.

But I won’t give up. It is in the struggle that the man is made. I chose the life I have. And despite having clothes everywhere but the drawers, I find immense satisfaction in the living of this messy existence.

After all, this is what I wanted. I wanted a family. I wanted a wife. I wanted children. And now I have them. I have the perfect wife. I have children in abundance. And they are not orderly. I think they were, in fact, raised in a barn. But I love them.

Oh, how I love them.

Never was any man more blessed and happy than me. My wife is beautiful, caring and attentive. She is creative and intelligent. She is powerful. My children a beautiful and talented. They love me when I don’t deserve it and desire nothing more than to please me. If I get nothing for Christmas but a hug and a kiss from each of them, then I will have received far more than I deserve.

But what of my dream of the perfect home and office? Do I give up on it. No. I’ll keep working at it. I’ll spend a little less time on Facebook and a little more time on cleaning and organizing. When the clutter flows, I’ll ride the tide. When the mess ebbs, I’ll double my efforts to keep entropy at bay.

It may never be perfect. But I suspect those glossy pictures are a lie anyway. The set was probably a mess a few moments before the photo was taken. Maybe it was a mess again once the sets were taken down.

Perhaps the best we can hope for is to strike a balance between order and disorder that allows us to think clearly without being overcome by unrealistic expectations. Maybe the life well-lived is not the picture-perfect image frozen in time, but the life filled with love and peace despite it’s imperfections.

• Blue Skies
• Don’t Get Around Much Anymore
• (Don’t know the title of this song)

It was surreal. I remember watching a small tv in the conference room in our office. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Our employer advised us to go home.

Arriving home was even more unusual. Living next to Dulles airport meant there was constant air traffic over our apartment. But that day there wasn’t a single plane is the sky. The quietness was eerie.

I honor those firefighters, policemen and others who gave all to save others. It is a testament to the good people of this country. We’ve always been known as a generous nation and that fateful day and the events that followed proved it. I wish the best to all those who lost loved ones that day. We will always remember your sacrifice and loss.

A long time ago, Hannah made our family photos the screensaver on that computer. The screensaver activates after a couple of minutes of inactivity, displaying any family photo on the computer at random. And since we spend all our time in this room, everyday we are treated to a review of a few family memories.

As a result of this daily review, something unexpected and delightful has happened. Our children, down to the four-year-old, have a large collection of family memories engraved on their minds—even things they weren’t there for, even before they were born! Think of that. A person can ‘remember’ something that happened before they were born. And they are family memories, memories that give them identity of who they are and their importance in our family.

Having small portable cameras always in our pocket has helped expand the number of photos and therefore the number of memories we get to review. It is a small thing that technology has enabled us to have our lives continually played back to us but I count it a great blessing for our children to have their minds expanded with beautiful memories of their family each and every day.