Tag: parenting

One Year Olds

Musings on Life and Beauty

I’ve learned a lesson in the past month or so.

This is it:  One year olds are a lot of work!


Go ahead and laugh.  The humor of this lesson is not lost on me.

I have eight children and I just figured out that one year olds are a lot of work.

My baby is now 16 months old.  I’ve never had one this age and not been pregnant.  Most of the time I’ve been pregnant well before my baby turned one year old.  I always thought it was the pregnancy that made life seem crazy and it never occurred to me that the age of my baby contributed to that feeling.  Truly, I thought that a one year old, by themselves, would be a piece of cake.

I was wrong.   One year olds are all the wonderful things I’ve always associated with them:  cuddly, adorable, energetic, sweet, fun, the list goes on.  But they are also a lot of work.  They hold your legs and scream to be held, they climb up on things, break things, spill things and make incredible messes.  They want to be independent but they’re not really safe.  They bounce back and forth between baby and emerging toddler.  They start throwing fits when they can’t explain what they want.  They’re cutting molars, and their behavior is still the wild card in the family (ok, maybe the teenagers are wild cards too).  But oh, they are wonderful!

The Christmas that just passed was the 15th Christmas my husband and I have spent together.  It was also my first Christmas of my married life that I haven’t been pregnant, nursing, or both.  The funny thing is, life isn’t as easy as I thought it would be, because I have a one year old.  On our recent trip and just like she’s been for the past few months, our littlest was a LOT of work.   Happy work, but still work.  Enough work that you never really sit down and relax.

But it’s still my favorite age.  Could someone please push pause so I can enjoy her like this just a bit longer?

Hopeful Homemaker

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Time in the Stable

Christmas

It seems that every year I find a different aspect of the Christmas story to ponder.  As with all of Christ’s teachings, as my life changes there are new insights which settle on my heart.  As this beautiful nativity (painted by my daughter several years ago) portrays, Jesus Christ really is the heart of it all.


Sometimes, however, other supporting roles tug at my heart.  This year, as has been the case before, I’ve been thinking a lot about Mary.

I’ve been marveling that God chose an inexperienced mother to raise his Only Begotten Son.  I know the fulfillment of prophecies required that he be the firstborn, but still I feel amazed that Heavenly Father trusted his Son to a mother who’d never done it before.

I feel particularly grateful for that thought this Christmas season for, ironically, I’m feeling very inexperienced myself.  In some ways I feel more inexperienced now than I did when my first baby was placed in my arms.   Recently my teen-aged son and I were trying to resolve a misunderstanding.  In the middle of it all I felt overwhelmed by the reality that I am a rookie.  I’ve never done this before.  I’ve never had a teenager before.  I’ve never raised eight children before.  I’ve never worried about the things I worry about before.  All of it is new.   Nothing about my life before this prepared me for the magnitude of what I’m doing now.  I’m trying frantically to learn but the learning curve is steep and I feel terribly behind.

Pondering Mary has comforted me, reminding me that she, too, must have felt terribly overwhelmed with the trust placed in her.  She must have also wondered if she was learning fast enough.  But she did it.  She completed her assignment.  And I will keep working on mine.

Maybe there’s hope for me yet.

Jennifer

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Victory Candles

Musings on Life and Beauty

Many years ago I read about something one mother did to celebrate the little victories in the life of her family.


She kept a candle on her kitchen table, called a victory candle, and on days when a family member had accomplished something noteworthy, they lit the victory candle and talked about the achievement.  She wrote about how her children would come home from school sometimes saying, “We need to light the victory candle tonight!”

I’ve tried to do this over the years, but for some reason my husband and children haven’t really latched onto the idea of lighting a victory candle.

I light them anyway, but  they have come to represent a different sort of victory for me.

On the days when we’re running crazy, when I’m not very organized, when the meal isn’t what I wish it was, when the children seem at odds with one another, I light the victory candles.  Yes, I light them on the days when it most feels like we’re losing the battles of life.

I light them to help myself pause and celebrate what we’re doing.  In spite of exhaustion, chaos, or just the lateness of the hour, we are having family dinner. We are gathered at the table to pray, eat and talk together.  And that is a victory.

So on the nights when my failures are the most glaring, I turn down the lights and we eat dinner by candle light.  It brings a mood to the table that fills in the gaps and helps smooth over my inefficiencies.  Instead of sitting at the  table feeling like a failure, this simple act allows me to sit at the table and say to myself, “We are doing it.  We are having  family dinner.  We are being consistent.  This is a victory.”

It’s my simple strategy for fighting off the feelings of discouragement that come knocking at my heart on the  tough days.  And it  helps, it really does, which makes it a victory all over again.

Candles, anyone?

Hopeful Homemaker

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