stop pretending

"...I need you to love me
and I won't keep my heart from you anymore
and I'll stop this pretending that I can
somehow deserve what I already have."

This is from a song about our relationship with God.

I woke this morning to a baby who had been quiet all night whose diaper was not even half soaked. She was wiggling and smiling as she woke, not crying. What a great baby.

M and G healthy, happy, beautiful.

This life is sweet.

Conversations with M

"I caught the spatula before it hit the ground mama!" she said.
"Wow you are very cooridnated" I said.
"...and awesome" she said.
"And awesome" I said.
"...and gorgeous" she said.
"And Gorgeous" I said.

"What did daddy say?" I asked
"Please close the door" she said as though she were repeating a rote chemistry equation.
So I went and closed the so he could sleep.

"M if you drop your food on the floor what am I going to say?"
"Bummer" she says.

After telling her to go put on a new shirt several times I said:
"M you don't have a shirt on, what does that mean?" thinking she may catch on to the pending punishment in my voice.
"It means I'm naked" she said very matter of fact. Then she did go put on a shirt.

Every day she says things that amaze and amuse me.

Like father like son

Some enchanted evening you will see your son,
You will see him reading across an empty room.
And somehow you know,
you know even then,
the sound of his laughter will ring in your dreams.

Good ideas from my "psychiatrist"

My sister is a psychiatrist so I call her "my psychiatrist" and she does actually help me sort through things from time to time.

Right now she is the aide in the Sunbeam class for her congregation when she's not commuting between NY and CA. Really! But this is the wisdom she imparted to me for class management:

Make a chart so there is a job for each child and they can see that they have a part. You can let them pick their job in order of who is being reverent... This keeps you from always calling only on the 1-2 kids who are good at being quiet.

My other sister said this doesn't work so well when you have kids fight over jobs. That's just part of life I guess.

We use a chart like this for FHE and it works well for our kids. Even little M will teach the lesson when it's assigned to her. We have Prayer, Song, Lesson, and Treat. When PJP gets older we'll probably add some activity. Onward and upward with more jobs and more kids. Whew!

Frequently new ideas hit me and I just need to absorb them.

Uh oh, baby is waking.

Grateful

It's been a good weekend. A long weekend full of smiling babies, all 3 of them.


P took G to the gator game. He's gone to 2 now. P is so jealous of the childhood he's giving his son.


M is an incredibly nice little girl. I frequently can't believe she's my daughter. Not only because I was not such a nice little girl... but because she's so nice it's hard to believe she's not the child of someone much more saintly. She's really awesome. Tonight G and I were play fighting, just block punch sorts of things. M said "Guys don't do that" in a perfectly reasonable calm voice. It reminded me of how when she was under a year old and we were having puppets fight, she started to cry. M has her wild moments. M also has serene times, sweet times, great idea times, startlingly articulate times, and kissing times. She's a great little girl. She loves beautiful things and I try to make her life a happy place.

smilerz

G has this amazing ability to smile great in every photo. I know I'm biased but really, it's great.



He's had this amazing ability since infancy. He has a way of staring at the camera so it comes across as sincere, a private joke, just you and me camera.



M is such a gorgeous child and I can never catch it on camera. OK, like 2 times maybe. Is it the dimple?

infant signing

One of the things I love about signing is that my older kids position baby's hands to make her say things. You can't do that with their vocal chords. A skeptic might say that's not real communication. But the reason we call Mothers "Ma" and Fathers "Da" are because those are some of the first sounds a baby makes, and we added meaning to them.

So a baby clutching it's fist is just something a baby does. If you give them milk every time they do it, they make a connection. And then they have the power to ask for something using a gesture they can make.

MJ

My sister is visiting with her baby. It's so fun.

Lucky haircut

So I did give M a haircut. It was only about 3 inches but she has magic hair so it looks like I cut off more and it looks better than it should.

Then on Monday she had a stomach bug. Gross. But, luckily, her hair cut was just the length to keep it away from her emetic mouth.

It is strange I know, but during her ordeal of throwing up about 10 times I was just so proud of her. Too much information Alert! She always threw up in an easy to clean place like the tub or her plastic sheeted bed. She only cried because she was hungry and she took a nap on the bathroom floor.




I sometimes can't believe what amazingly good children I have. Luckily I'm pretty nice to them so maybe sometimes they feel lucky to have me for a mom.