Category: Motherhood

People at work

This is what Paige moved home to last week, but we finished and she has a bedroom again.

So much of my life, our lives, feels like it’s under construction right now. We are stretched. We are challenged.

Paige finished her second year of college, moved home for the summer, and begins her job search tomorrow.

Daniel learned to dance the Lindy Hop in ballroom. This is a seriously difficult dance.

Timothy is filming sketch comedy each day after school. I knew he would be drawn to this eventually.

Mark and Paige painted her room with me.

The boys have a big piano ensemble performance this week.

AP test weeks have arrived.

Richard left in a snowstorm to go camping with the Boy Scouts on Friday and came home happy.

Life is full. I am learning that many things I spend my time doing, thinking they will make the family happy, don’t do this at all. A few examples:

Clean house? Not important to them.

Clean clothing? Important to them.

Conversation at 11pm? Important to teens only.

Talking TO them? Not welcome.

Listening to them? Always important.

Milk and cereal always on hand? Important.

Telling them about what I am reading? Not important. A real turn-off.

Using what I am reading to be more empathetic? Important.

Seasonal decorations? Not important, except at Christmas time.

Freshly painted baseboards? Not important to them.

Much of what I do is just for me, after all. It’s ok to do what I love, but I need to be honest about who I am really serving. Wrapped up in things only I care about under the guise of serving my family is counterproductive. This makes me unapproachable and busy. This is not how I want to be.

Easter Journals 2017


How do you teach children to rely on the Savior? How do you help them see a need for a relationship with Jesus Christ? What teaching method will work for ages 10-17? How can I share my testimony in a way they will hear it?

These are a few questions I have been thinking about. I know that these questions can’t be addressed with a one-time effort, but I wanted to make something our family could do each day leading up to Easter to bring us closer to Jesus Christ.

I made an Easter journal for each family member with a scripture to read and a question to answer each day for five days. I printed out questions and art and mounted them in the journals to help inspire writing.

We promised each writing activity would only require 10 minutes. We shortened it to 5 minutes after one day. We read the scriptures aloud and then set a timer for each of us to write in our little journals. I promised I wouldn’t make them share what they wrote and we wouldn’t read what they wrote. We had a short discussion after each journal entry, sharing experiences and ideas. I gave them each a container of Jelly Bellies to eat as they wrote. Richard and I also wrote in journals.

How did it go?

  • I don’t know what went on in their hearts, but there was a good feeling in our discussions after we wrote.
  • We couldn’t make it happen every day. We had to double up a few times when we had everyone together, in a good mood, and awake.
  • They ate a lot of Jelly Bellies.
  • We had fun talking about many other things once the activity was over each evening.

These were the scriptures I chose, based on our family’s needs. They are Book of Mormon scriptures to compliment the Bible verses we read every Easter.

  1. Alma 7:11-12 …That he may know… how to succor his people
  2. Alma 26:12,16 In his strength I can do all things.
  3. Alma 38:8-9 No other way or means whereby man can be saved, only in and through Jesus Christ…
  4. Moroni 9:25-26 May Christ lift thee up [over difficult circumstances]
  5. Mosiah 16:6-9 He is the light and the life of the world.

Here are a few things we said about Jesus Christ this week in our family:

  • He is in every genuine smile, true friendship, beautiful scene, and good family relationship; he is in every act of patience, kindness, and generosity.
  • He knows what it’s like to be “us.”
  • When he bore our infirmities, this means he took on everything that makes us fall short of perfection.
  • Repentance is a joyful thing, and easier than carrying guilt.
  • Repentance is simple, like the children of Israel looking to the brazen serpent to be saved from the snakes.
  • Repentance is also like Namaan being told to wash in the Jordan 7 times. It is basic and we can be clean.
  • He helps us do difficult things like learn a language, be a missionary, and take tests.
  • Because of him, can see our family members again who have passed away.
  • He is accessible through good music, acts of charity, walking in nature, and taking time to be still.

Happy Easter!

I Didn’t See it Coming

Recently, something triggered the thought, “How did we get to this point, a daughter halfway through college, and sons speeding after her?” I felt disconnected and shocked to see where time had carried us. 

We have been present in the kids’ lives; There are 14 years home schooling to look back on. We have been mindful and careful in parenting decisions. We have been there for almost every important milestone. We’ve been there for the little things, such as family meals and scripture study, tucking in, and prayers. It seems like we have earned the right to feel the situation with more sense of reality, but I don’t. How could anything creep up on us with all this focus on our family?

Perhaps that’s just it, we have been so focused on the minutes, I haven’t grasped the years going by. I keep hearing that this is common. It makes me wonder how it will be when my “youthful” self is in a shell that looks much older than I am now. Will that reality be just as shocking? Probably.

F is for February

F is for February. It is also for:

Failure: I missed some cues and regret it.

Fun: trip to St George, Lego movie

Friendships: broken heart

Fitness: racquetball

Flurries: snow this week

Faith: my lesson topic in Relief Society

Food: turkey and mashed potatoes; oven s’mores

Forgiveness: an essential key to resilience

Funny: joke shop in Payson, UT

Facebook: I’m not looking at it.

Fever: a couple of kids sick

Finally: My Christmas present on back-order arrived.

Forty-six: Richard’s birthday is this weekend.

Fantastic: the boys’ piano pieces

Finger: Paige’s finger is still broken but making progress

Fine: Everything is going to be OK.

teepeegirl.com

Artist’s hand

Screenshot_20170121-112858It’s interesting that Paige took a picture of her hand this week. Last night she was in a skating accident and the nail of her ring finger was crushed off by someone’s ice skate and the finger is fractured where the nail once was. I met her at the medical clinic after it happened. I thought of my friends, who have sons and daughters living far away for school and missions, who can’t run to their children when they get hurt. I felt grateful that I could do that.

As we pulled into a pharmacy to buy band-aids and ibuprofen at 11 pm, Paige received text after text from her Relief Society president asking how she was doing. Good job, President.

Now, let’s pray that she heals quickly and can get back to drawing for her classes soon.

Some resolutions

 

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Mark and I are making collages of the major kingdoms for biology. Here is Kingdom Fungi.

I have a few New Year’s resolutions, some private, and a few that anyone may know:

1. No cell phone use when a family member is in the room. If I have to look at my phone with family, keep it to necessary correspondence and get off quickly.

2. Read every day.

3. Learn family members’ cell phone numbers.

4. Write to my grandmother once a month.

 

Finding Joy in the Desert

My early years in Arizona were intense and isolated. I didn’t have a lot of friends and I was with the kids all day, every day. I was home schooling and Richard had many church obligations on Sunday and some weekday evenings. One evening, Richard took the three boys camping and Paige was at a friend’s house watching movies. I realized I would be alone all evening, and none of my children needed me.

I sat on the couch, and the silence hovered all around me. The piano wasn’t being played. The dishes were done. No one was asking me for a cup of milk or a bowl of goldfish crackers. The accumulated fatigue from my lifestyle seemed to settle like a frost, and my body, used to constant motion and focus, took its cue and didn’t feel like doing ANYTHING. I couldn’t settle on what to do with this time alone. I had lost excitement for things other than parenting that I loved to do.

I had hit a wall of exhaustion, and it would take more than one night alone to sort things out. But I did. I wasn’t always exhausted, but there was a pessimism that hounded me. I hope my experience can be helpful to someone else.

Now that the fog of those early parenting years is gone, I see more distinctly how stretched I was. To be clear, I loved playing with, teaching, reading to, and spending time with my children. But it was also very difficult. Writing my worries about the kids and my doubts in my parenting choices in my journal was a healthy outlet. I’d come away from a good journal-writing session feeling like the problems were expressed and solutions were on the way. I rarely took time to write about the good things about parenting in my journal, though, and that was something that needed to change.

Being tired, even exhausted, is a real part of being a parent of young children. Difficulty doesn’t necessarily mean something is bad. Those early years are a temporary marathon. If I could do it again, I wouldn’t feel ashamed of my personal need for solitude. I didn’t want to give the impression to anyone, especially the kids, that I saw parenting as a burden. But parenting IS a burden; it is a worthy, beautiful burden, and like any burden, it needs to be set down sometimes. I was wrong to think that taking some time away from the kids was selfish. It taxed my mental health to deny myself time with Richard and deny myself time alone. It created impossible dilemmas in my marriage. My prayers suffered. I could physically do the things I needed to do, but my spirit was faltering. I had developed a bad attitude about so many things.

I found my way out over the next few years by making some very minor adjustments in my life. There is nothing religious in my formula except a search for joy. I didn’t pray more or make huge efforts in temple work. I just decided to focus on the happy side of my story. I was still a stay at home mom with 4 children to educate. Richard was still busy at church. We were still living in the desert. All that changed was my attitude. The change came gradually because I did the following (these are links to old posts)*:

*If you are a parent of young children, perhaps your needs are different than mine. While I needed solitude, maybe you need more time with friends. I needed independence; a housekeeper or regular babysitter would have been too hard for me to accept. You may be different. Perhaps help around the house would be just the thing. Pride and comparison can get in the way of finding joy, too. It seems to me that the best thing to do is make a list of your interests, gifts, limitations, and dreams and make a plan. Finding joy can be as basic as smiling at a belligerent toddler instead of getting angry, or finding time to do something you love, even for one minute.

Smile First: Teenage edition

Smile First

(An updated version of a post I wrote in 2012)

I watched a young child inch his way from the back of a crowded room to the front to get closer to his mother who was speaking at the head of the congregation at church. He sat down on the front row and gazed up at her, anticipating her return. When she finished speaking and began walking to her seat, the child, anxious to be with his mother, uttered a hopeful little, “Mama,” looking for a hug and a joyful reunion. She was embarrassed that he had been walking around during the meeting and her grim face showed that she was upset with him (and maybe the father who had allowed the boy to wander). As she picked him up in a hurried way, he read all of her signs and began to cry. She wasn’t happy to see him waiting for her on the front row, after all.

She did something that is easy to do when a child does something, innocent or not, that draws attention to us in a crowd: she forgot to smile first.

When I saw this, I recognized myself. All children make noise and act out. They should be taught how to behave in church and at restaurants and stores, but I wonder if my children felt rejection when I “shushed” them all of the time. I wanted to be admired socially as a good parent. My children have never been very noisy, but there are other social missteps that they have shown. How many times had I been embarrassed that my child would not participate in an activity with other children or had been an overly picky eater as a guest in someone’s home, and resorted to strongly whispered bribes, pleas, and orders to try to get them to just be like everybody else?

My children, who have now learned how to sit still during a meeting and eat a variety of foods, don’t pose the same challenges that they did when they were little. Is there a principle of parenting here that can be applied to teens? What is a teenage equivalent to wandering around during a church meeting? Clothing choices, hair styles, being disengaged at family social gatherings and mumbling instead of speaking clearly are ways that teenagers inadvertently cause parents some social angst. I’m trying to omit the thought, “What will other people think if I don’t show public disapproval for immature behavior?”

Over the past few years I have remembered this phrase, “Smile first and correct them later.” I’ve made it a point to show my children and the world that I love these kids more than I disapprove of them. It takes courage to stop worrying what other people might think of my parenting if I choose to smile first and to correct them away from the crowd.

We celebrated

Halloween feels different when teens are at parties and there is only one child at home to go trick or treating with. Mark is tremendously fun company and we enjoyed our walk through the neighborhood.

Have you read Bram Stoker’s Dracula? The description of Dracula includes the usual things you see in a classic costume, but one horrible detail is that he had hairy palms. Eww.

Timothy had no words to describe what he was dressed up to be, and neither have I. But the costume had the funny factor for sure.

Mark and I are pretty proud of the jack-o’-lantern we created.

The morning light of November 1 finds my shelves adorned with Pilgrims and Indians and expressions of thanks. Let the celebration of gratitude begin!