Tag: parenting

How to measure?

Musings on Life and Beauty



It’s 10:45 p.m.

Chairs are out of place in the family room, gathered in the loose circle we pulled them to for Family Night.

Backpacks, binders, cleats, shin guards, books, baby toys  and miscellaneous items of clothing lie strewn around the main floor.

Upstairs a Littlest Pet Shop village has overtaken the landing outside the bedroom doors.  The toy room is getting awfully messy again.

Clothing decorates bedroom carpet and damp towels hang in odd places around the rooms, cast thoughtlessly aside in the rush for fresh smelling pajamas.

Minutes ago I said goodnight to the last child awake as he finished his homework and headed to bed.  That’s 17 straight hours of parenting without a break.

I look around at the mess I call my home.

I look down at myself and see clothes that have been slimed by a runny nose at least 150 times, pants dirty from little hands out in the yard, an outfit splattered with remnants of today’s menus, placed expertly by tiny hands and faces.

It can be discouraging to sit, late in the evening with the exhaustion of the day creeping into my muscles and stinging my eyes, and survey the damage of just one day.

I realize I’m faced with a choice, a choice I must make before the day ends.

How to measure?
I did many things today; things that no one could see at a glance around the house because the ONE thing I didn’t do is so painfully obvious.

I feel tempted to stay up late and clean.  Tempted to throw in the towel and go to bed.  Tempted to feel discouraged that the price of a  busy day could be so high in terms of physical surroundings.  And so I ponder, how to measure?

Yesterday I listened to Boyd K. Packer say that we must try not to be too impressed with the scoreboard, that the most important things in our families cannot be counted.

How does today’s scoreboard add up?

I start with my clothes.  Every smear of food is evidence of my efforts to feed the growing bodies of little ones, evidence of my baby’s attachment to me, evidence that I am where she runs to no matter what she needs.  The slime from her runny nose is evidence of how much I held her, how many times I tried to comfort her as she dealt with an incoming tooth, evidence of the countless hugs we shared as she wrapped her tiny arms tightly around my neck while resting her head on my shoulder.  And I smile as I think of the way my heart clenched with joy as I squeezed her back.  Every. Single. Time.

I look around the house.  The backpacks and binders are evidence of time spent focusing on each student individually, reviewing homework and helping as needed.  The shin guards and cleats are the reminder of the last minute soccer and lacrosse practices added to the afternoon schedule.  Dirty socks with dark streaks on them speak of time spent as a family in the yard, placing flags where sprinkler heads will soon live.

Damp towels testify to baths and showers, and clean bodies snuggled in beds.  Toys on the floor hold the echo of  imaginations hard at work.

The circle of chairs remind me that, in spite of being tired, in spite of a couple of arguing kids, we were obedient.  We held Family Home Evening.  We sang together, talked together, prayed together.  Outside we worked together.  And the dirty kitchen testifies that we ate together.

I look again at the mess, pondering a different kind of scoreboard, a different measuring stick.  That’s a lot of togetherness:  working, eating, singing, talking, praying.

I can view this mess as two different kinds of evidence:  evidence of all the cleaning I didn’t do, or evidence of all the nurturing I did.  I think of  the late evening bath I drew for my baby, of how she sat in fascination as we both let water run through our fingers.  The scent of my favorite baby lotion still lingers on my clothes after our final tight hug before she went to bed.

I’ve made my choice.  I’ll take the mess.

This is life being lived.
The evidence is in my favor.

In spite of my better judgment, I only clear the dinner dishes and place them in the sink, doing just enough cleaning to allow for a smooth breakfast and sack lunch assembly in the morning.  I know all the rules about cleaning before bed, but my own runny nose, burning eyes and stuffy head remind me that a happy, healthy mom is better than a clean kitchen any day.  I think of the new book in my room that is calling to my heart and decide to rest while I can.

I am  grateful that not every day presents nurturing and cleanliness as mutually exclusive, and equally grateful for how today’s score adds up.  I call today a success.

I’m also calling it over.

Hopeful Homemaker

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Morning at the Museum

Musings on Life and Beauty

School is in.  I have three children at home with me during the day.  The oldest of the three, my four year old son, was registered for preschool this year but my friend who teaches it had to make a career change unexpectedly.

I did a bit of research on other options but didn’t find the right fit and therefore decided to do preschool at home this year.  I hope it will be a good experience for my son and I, as well as the two littlest girls.

August featured $2 Tuesdays at Thanksgiving Point, home to the largest dinosaur museum in the world.  That brought the total cost to $4 instead of $20.  What an opportunity!  I could start off our preschool experience with a field trip to see the dinosaurs.I thought to myself, “Great!  I’ll go on the last Tuesday of the month.  School will be back in so it should be slow.”


Yep.  That’s how I planned it.

Me and eight hundred other mothers of preschoolers, along with another hundred mothers who homeschool.  (Great minds think alike?)

When we drove in at 10:05, the line stretched out the building, across the front of the museum, around the corner and down the sidewalk.

I’ll admit I was tempted to turn around and go home.  But I had talked it up, my little ones were counting on it, and I felt they were all well-rested so I decided to go anyway.

I’m glad I did.  While in line, I ran into a dear old friend, Beth.  It was fun to enjoy parts of the museum with her, to see her children, and to spend a few minutes catching up.  That unexpected reunion was priceless.

As we walked through the museum turned maze (thanks to a million strollers) I enjoyed looking at the exhibits and watching my children point to things that they liked.


My four year old mostly wanted me to take pictures of the teeth.




The sheer size of the supersaurus is amazing.


Our last stop was in a hands-on play room.  Large cement troughs wind around the room full of sand, a bit of water and a few toy dinosaurs and trees.  Children stand at the edges and play in the sand.  Under one small section of the play area is a hole that smaller children can climb through in order to stand on a raised floor in the center, allowing them to play as well.  It took quite a while for it to clear out enough for my little guy to have a chance to really play in the sand, but once he did, he loved it.  I sat and talked with my friend until they were ready to move on and my little girls were ready to start crying.


Then, like I’d seen dozens of other moms do in the past 20 minutes, and like I myself have done thousands of times before, I gave my son a 5 minute warning that it was time to go.  Five minutes later the baby was screaming and I announced that it was time to leave.  Ten seconds after that my son started crying.  Not crying, really, but wailing.  Wailing at the top of his lungs.  He didn’t want to leave.  He didn’t want to surrender the dinosaurs.  He wanted to stay right there.

Keep in mind here that there is a 3 foot wide cement trough between me and him, full of sand and water, and it’s as high as my waist.  There he stood, in the center of the little kid area, wailing.

I stood on the edge, being jostled by a fresh wave of parents trying to negotiate a small space, trying to stay close enough to watch the stroller with my screaming baby in it, and close enough to the four year old that he could see I was serious.  Other parents started looking at him like they wondered where his mother was.  I watched them.  I watched him.  I watched the babies in the stroller.  I was trying to get his attention, but the noise in the room was like the echo in a gym full of yelling people.  No one could hear me but myself.  And I thought, “THIS is why I avoid crowded places.”

And so, after hundreds of other kids had come and gone peacefully, washing their hands and moving on after their 5 minute warnings, I was the mother who had the honor of getting down on her hands and knees to crawl through the 24 inch high opening under the trough to grab her son’s ankle and pull him out.  I was the mother who had the honor of trying to restrain a screaming, kicking boy (one arm pinning his arms to his chest, the other arm holding his legs at the knees) while trying to also push a double stroller holding two little girls (who had just been lulled to sleep by the noise) through a maze of other people and strollers who wondered why I wasn’t getting out faster but didn’t bother to move slightly to one side or the other so I could do just that.  (And yes, that was a run-on sentence.)

And I kept saying to myself,  “It’s just a moment.  A very public, very embarrassing, moment, but a moment nonetheless.”  I realized that I wasn’t the slightest bit upset or ruffled or frustrated.  It was what it was.  He was making his choice, I was making mine.  I even had the presence of mind to take a picture.

Girls:


Boy:


I happened to glance up as we exited the building, and saw three vultures circling overhead.  Turkey vultures, to be exact.  (Believe me, I know what they look like.)  Hmmm, I thought.  Vultures circling over a dinosaur museum, vultures circling over a lady hauling two sleeping children and one screaming boy out of a dinosaur museum.  I couldn’t help but find it humorous.

As I carried him screaming through the parking lot I had to chuckle at the comedy of our appearance.  And because I can’t resist, here they are one more time.

Girls:




Boy:


So we came home.  And I suddenly felt very, very tired.  Not so much from his outburst but from 2.5 hours in a museum that was as loud as a crowded gymnasium.  Talk about over-stimulation.

I should have cleaned my kitchen, but instead I wrote this post.

While my four year old boy played like an angel with his two year old sister.  Like I said, it was only a moment .

Wish me luck on future preschool field trips.

Jennifer

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They’re Just Moments

Musings on Life and Beauty

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about moments.

The essence of motherhood is packaged in them.  You know, the moments when you observe your child doing something wonderful and you realize that perhaps, you ARE doing something right after all.  Or the moments (like this one) when you walk around the corner and are stopped dead in your tracks by the sweetness and wonder of your children, and by tears suddenly stinging your eyes.  Yes, they are precious moments.  Payoff moments.

But the kind of moments I’ve had on my mind are the OTHER kind.  The moments when they look like this.


I’ve been thinking about how often my children all explode in the same moment.  Rarely is it just one of them at a time.  Usually the stressful moments are stressful because they’re compounded by multiple things.

Take yesterday, for example.  The two year old picked up a pull toy and, without thinking, swung it around.  The toy smacked the baby, who was standing a few feet away,  in the head.  Baby started screaming and needed an ice pack on her head.  The two year old, realizing she hurt her little sister, began to scream (and just trust me when I say that she has the loudest scream of all my kids; it often reminds me of Boo in Monsters, Inc.).  Because the kids all love her and hate to hear her scream, a sudden argument broke out among them over how to calm the two year old down.  As this was going on, as I was now holding two screaming little ones while trying to keep an ice pack on one head, the carpool arrived for my oldest daughter who had gymnastics.  Panic ensued as she realized that one, she was running late, and then two, she couldn’t find her leotard.  So, with screaming babies and an argument going on, I reminded her that she left it in her soccer bag last week when she went directly from the gym to a game.  The stress built as everyone chimed in to remind her that her ride was outside waiting for her.  In the middle of this, a neighbor arrived with a plate of beautiful peaches from her mother’s tree.  The chaos now moved to the front porch as I greeted my neighbor and went to explain the delay to the waiting mom.  My seven year old asked to hold the still whimpering baby as I gratefully accepted the plate of peaches.  As I stood there holding them, the seven year hold bounced a little to pull the baby back up onto her hip and hit her head on the bottom of the plate in my hand, sending peaches flying.  Right at this moment my oldest son started our little motorcycle for a spin around the yard, adding a new dimension to the noise as we all had to yell to communicate.

Those are the kinds of moments I’ve been pondering.  I have them all the time .  One minute it’s relatively calm and 30 seconds later I have 4 children in tears.  I’ve blogged about a few of them here , here , here , here and here .  I might have more of them because my children are so close in age and because there are 8 of them, but I’m pretty sure that moms everywhere experience moments of intense stress or craziness.

I’ve learned a thing or two about these moments.  This is my conclusion.

They are crazy.  They are stressful.  They’re made up of lots of little things, all minor in their scope and relatively simple to fix, but they happen at the same time.

They all converge to occupy the same 5 minutes of my life.
The time frame affects my ability to respond to each individual thing, making it easy to feel frazzled or overwhelmed.  THAT is what makes it hard.

And then it’s over.  The peaches are picked up, the leotard is found.  The baby’s bump on her head looks ok, the two year old quits screaming.  The roar of the motorcycle moves to the backyard as I finish my conversation with the neighbor and watch the ride to gymnastics depart.  I carry everyone inside and look at the clock.  Wow.  Eight minutes, start to finish.

Sometimes moments leave me with a headache.  Sometimes they leave me wondering what I’m doing wrong.  And sometimes they leave me shaking my head and laughing.  I’ve experienced enough of them that the smile usually tugs at the corners of my mouth in the middle of the fray because I’m thinking “It’s just a moment.  It will pass.”  Another one will come, and likely sooner than I hope, but they always pass.

Wendy Ulrich wrote, “Patience teaches us that this precise moment is tolerable.  As we respond to what this moment requires of us, the future will take care of itself.”

I guess that’s what I’ve realized.  The moments are tolerable.  They do more than illustrate the immediate needs of our little ones; they reveal who we are.  They teach us about ourselves.  Experiencing a “moment” with my young children doesn’t need to make me question what I’m doing wrong unless I fail to handle it well.  If I can get through it with a smile in my eyes and a firm but cheerful voice, then I’m doing just fine.

So, next time you’re dealing with a moment of your own say to yourself, “It’s just a moment. It is tolerable and it will pass.”  Remember that you’re not alone.

You’ll be right.  And you just might find something to chuckle about in the midst of it.

Jennifer

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