Ups and Downs and other random thoughts

Well we have certainly had some ups and downs lately!

Some lows have been:

• Brylee being a giggly distraction to others in Primary and ignoring her teachers and then saying “No” to the bishop when he asked her to turn around and sit down. I’m not sure why she was acting out so much and have talked to her about Primary being a privilege and that if she chooses to not listen to her teachers she will get to sit in time-out with me or Bryant instead.
• Maelee has been super rebellious as well this past week, fighting most everything I ask her to do and even started ignoring Bryant too. She has started getting into things that she knows she shouldn’t and I’m not sure how to get her to want to make good choices or even choices beyond what she wants.
• Tucker and Hunter are unable to hear me ask them to do anything when they are reading unless I start dishing out consequences for their lack of response or movement.
• It got hot this last week. I turned on the a/c but I’m a stickler and kept it at 77 because that should be cool enough during the day! I have discovered that the kitchen is the hottest room in the house when I am making dinner so I spend an hour or so in the kitchen while making dinner slaving away over the hot stove or oven and doing whatever else in their until dinner is ready.
• Allergies have been a real kicker this year! I mowed our lawn along with two neighbor’s lawns 2 weeks ago. Walker woke up as I was finishing, then I had to feed all the kids lunch and get kids down for naps etc. so it was quite awhile before I was able to take a shower and wash up. Well that lead to me having a hard time breathing so the next day I went to a dr who thought maybe I had a blood clot in my lung, apparently a likely scenario for someone who has recently had a baby. Thankfully, there was no clot but I had to pump and dump my milk for the next 24 hours thanks to the iodine for the CT scan. Ultimately I just needed to use Tucker’s old Albuterol inhaler for a couple days and I was able to breathe lots better. I still have a great cough that is finally getting better. I often have coughing fits that last 5 minutes or more (at least it feels like more) that are subsiding to only a dozen coughs at a time and a lot less frequent. I really look forward to the trees in our circle being done pollinating and then for a storm to clear it all away!

Some highlights have been:

• Going to the Elementary school for breakfast and lunch during the week.
• Training the kids to get their job done first thing in the morning so we can go somewhere like a park or the library or a splash pad.
• Walker sleeps regularly at night. He goes to bed a half hour or so before me and then sleeps until 2 or 3 in the morning, eats and usually goes right back to bed. THe few times he hasn’t fallen right back to sleep he has been fairly easy to get back to sleep.
• Bryant and I finished reading “Ready Player 1” together and are eager to start reading another book. I sure do like reading together more than watching a tv show together.
• We have a super small tomato growing in one of our potted tomato plants and I have finally transplanted the bell pepper plants so they can actually grow big and produce.
• I was able to check out a couple of books from the library onto our Kindle paperwhite for Tucker to read. This is a huge life saver because this kid LOVES to read and read all the books we checked out on Tuesday before Thursday! (He had at least 6 chapter books)
• This weekend it cooled off considerably and actually rained (now it is not so sticky in our house) so I have been enjoying have the windows open again.
• I have started teaching Tucker piano. We are just working our way through a level 1 book with its accompanying theory book. We’ll see how it goes. Somehow I have managed to sit down with him once every week and help him move forward. His dedication to practicing waxes and wanes based on his memory to practice. He is good at practicing when I remind him to practice but with our lazy summer days and lots of books to read he doesn’t think about the piano every day.
• I love having Bryant home for dinner! It is so nice to have another adult around at eating time!
• I had the energy to take the kids out last week when Bryant had his evening class and we played red light, green light and what time is it Mr Fox. Maelee not only joined in in the play she actually wanted a turn to be “it” and when it was her turn she performed beautifully. In the past (a couple of month ago at least) she would just sit and watch the other kids play games like duck duck goose. She would be willing to sit in the circle and claim a desire to be it but whenever tagged she would curl up and hide and not want to be it so I saw her choice to be involved a huge step forward in her confidence level with our family and in herself
• The seatbelt buckles and side curtain airbags have been recalled on our Ford Transit. Thankfully we have not experienced any problems and the fixes are covered by insurance
• We finally hit 5000 miles on our new van so it is getting an oil change for the first time since we bought it back in September!
• The kids doing jobs is making less work for me around the house, generally. You can’t always tell that the living room has been cleaned that day by the evening but the fact that the kids are picking up more consistently leaves a lot less for me to do

Random Thoughts

People occasionally tell me I’m a good mother to which I usually respond, Anyone can be a good mother for 15 minutes. This has had me thinking that if anyone can be a good mother for 15 minutes than anyone could be a good mother for an hour and then 2 hours. Of course being a “good” mom takes a lot of effort sometimes but under this philosophy I have tried to be a good mom more consistently.

Then I have been thinking about when I used to watch the Gurr kids all the time and they loved having me over, so much that their mother got her sisters to use me as a sitter during the week so that I could be available for her while in college and helped me find a good summer job to ensure that I didn’t leave the state to make more money. Well what made me so good? I spent most of my time playing and having fun. I never yelled at the children because heaven knows that their mom would follow up on what had happened while I had been sitting and yelling at the children would not have gone over well. After years of watching the children they grew and became more and more accustom to having me around. This led to them not listening to me as well as they did in previous years. But I still didn’t yell to get them to listen. I was “forced” to use other means to get them to listen.

So it should be with my children, right? If I truly believe (and I do) that we are all children of God and that my children are really his children and not mine then I shouldn’t permit myself to get angry at them either. After all they will be (or should be) reporting to Heavenly Father at the end of each day in their prayers. While they don’t currently confess my shortcomings in their own prayers, as they are still juvenile prayers for the most part, I know that Heavenly Father is aware of how I have behaved. Now He is not going to stop asking me to raise my children and is not going to take them away from me because I have lost my temper, instead he will help me be better and help me be the awesome mom that everyone wants to live with. My children will still have agency to say “no” and not listen when I ask them to do things. But hopefully as I strive to be a better “happy” example consistently they will strive for the same, right?