There is this moment in my children’s lives that makes me exceedingly happy. I’ve thought a lot on it, and still can’t quite put my thoughts into words accurate enough to the moment and the accompanying feelings, but I’m going to try anyway.

Soon after the children become mobile, they make their own way over to something they know will be there — the coffee table where we store their library books, the pantry where we store the snacks, the corner where we store their toys. They go over there intending to go over there; it isn’t a place they just happen to wander by so they may as well enjoy what’s there. No, they head to those spots because they know exactly where they are, and they know they will get something they want once there.

They know they are allowed to do such a thing.

That’s the moment I love — when my children understand the workings of our house and have the ability to choose to make themselves at home.

I’ve loved when my babies crawled from one room to find me in another. They were looking for me, and knew they had a right to move about the house until they found me. I love when the toddler opens the bathroom cabinet and helps herself to a Band-aid. I love when the 5-year-old goes to the craft closet to find some yarn, and then decorates the scissors, her sister’s flip flops, the backs of chairs, and her wrists with strings of knotted yarn.

I guess what I love is seeing that they know this home is their home. I love seeing that they know they belong here, without question.

One of the funnest things to see with the second child is that where the family goes, the toddler unquestioningly goes. She’s right behind us, marching her own little unique march, but keeping time with the rhythm of our family.

We are in this together; we’re part of a group. We are loyal to each other.

There is comfort in belonging, happiness in knowing you have a place — a spot reserved just for you. I love that my children know their spot.

The spots of yarn-embellished furniture and clothing currently dotting our house, however — I just hope this phase of “making herself at home” is a quick one.

As I was sitting in church last Sunday, a thought occurred to me. I’ve learned to trust thoughts that occur to me in church. I ignored a persistent thought that kept coming to me each Sunday at church for an entire year once because the thing I kept feeling to do was a hard thing to do. But once I followed the thought and did what I felt to do, my life improved immeasurably.

Since then, I trust my thoughts in church.

I don’t remember what the speaker was saying when this thought occurred to me last Sunday, but suddenly I felt like I need to stop yelling in my home — and I need to stop now.

Since I work best when I can measure improvement, I next thought about marking off my yell-free days on a calendar so I could look back and see progress. But then the thought went further (Farther? One day, I’ll figure out the correct meanings of those two words.).

I felt very strongly that this is not a solo expedition. Our entire family needs to become yell-free, and if one of us fails, we all fail. If we’re going to succeed, we are all going to succeed. We need to be in this together.

So I mentioned my thoughts to my husband that night and told him my calendar idea. He liked it, and some easy ground rules were quickly established.

1. Angry yelling is out. Yelling up the stairs to see if the kids are doing OK is fine. Shouting in excitement is allowed.
2. If we have a yell-free day, we mark it off on the calendar. If even one person yells in anger, we can’t mark the day off.
3. The baby is allowed to yell. She’s crazy.

(And cute. I mean, come on.)

And then there are rewards.

Since yelling is my go-to in moments of frustration, and since my 5-year-old goes from 0 to 60 in a matter of miliseconds, I thought it would be incredibly difficult for us to have a yell-free day, so we decided that our first milestone would be one whole day without yelling.

Once we reached that milestone, we would be rewarded with an episode of My Little Pony at the end of the day. (The rewards are a little skewed to entice the younger half of our house’s population. A little unfair to me, but whatever. I’m not bitter.)

Yesterday was our first trial day. There were several close calls as my 5-year-old became frustrated with me for various denials of permission throughout the day, but I was able to quickly calm her down with a reminder that we wanted to watch My Little Pony that night.

The happy result of the reward system was that it gave me opportunity to teach her how to calm herself down. I was able to first remind her of the TV show, and then direct her to pause, calm down and try again.

After dinner last night, we jumped and exclaimed (with happy yelling!) that we had made it! A whole day with no angry yelling from anybody! Lydia (5) set up blankets in front of the TV, each girl picked her favorite pony figurine to sit beside her during the show and we all settled in for a 22-minute episode.

At one point, we thought we heard a knock at the door, so my husband ran upstairs to see who it was. When he returned seconds later, he settled in next to me and asked, “So what did I miss? Twilight Sparkle didn’t have wings when I left.”

“She’s turning into a princess,” I explained and then we laughed as we realized we were as absorbed in the pony show as our two snuggling daughters.

We could get used to this yell-free zone. Our next milestone is seven straight days of no yelling. The reward will be staying up late to watch a movie together.

We’ve had some close calls again today, but we’ll make it. One day at a time.

]]> http://www.thrilledbythethought.com/2013/06/11/no-yelling-allowed/feed/ 2 http://www.thrilledbythethought.com/2013/06/06/two-is-more-fun-than-one/ http://www.thrilledbythethought.com/2013/06/06/two-is-more-fun-than-one/#comments Fri, 07 Jun 2013 04:05:19 +0000 Rebecca http://www.thrilledbythethought.com/?p=2388

This morning, Lydia (5) finished breakfast before Emma (almost 2) and went to the living room to play with her My Little Ponies.

Emma had walked right by the My Little Pony castle and the dozen pastel ponies littering the floor on her way to breakfast and hadn’t batted an eye. But as soon as she saw her big sister playing with the ponies, she was only interested in one thing.

“Ponies, Mommy!” she shouted as she excitedly kicked her legs in her booster seat. “Wanna play ponies!”

I pointed to her strawberries and suggested she eat some more. Without taking her eyes off her sister and the ponies, she grabbed a fistful of strawberries, shoved them in her mouth and shouted again, “Wanna play ponies!”

Emma does some things earlier than Lydia did. Lydia didn’t play pretend until she was an older 2-year-old. Emma, not even 2 years old, sets up the ponies, combs their hair and puts “lipstick” on them, all the while singing a song only she can understand about the ponies. She sings “rock-a-baby” to her dolls, she makes crashing noises as she plays with her toy cars, and her dinosaurs roar incredibly imaginative roars.

When Lydia was this age, she needed me to guide her play a lot more than Emma needs it. I don’t think Emma is more developmentally advanced than Lydia was. I just think she has somebody super fun to copy — her big sister.

I remember wanting to do many of the things my big brothers did. For a time, I would wake up every morning determined to play the song on the piano one brother was practicing each day. I would be sure I could do it, convinced that day was the day, only to go to the piano and have no idea where to begin. I remember demanding my mother address me as “Son,” just like she called my brothers, only to retract my demand once she started fulfilling my strange request.

But much like being called “Son” weirded me out, I didn’t really want to be like my brothers for long. I was incredibly girly, so my interests and my brothers’ interests stopped colliding pretty quick.

It’s fun to see my girls be interested in the same things at this point. Lydia is incredibly patient with her little sister most of the time, teaching her how to share the pony comb, showing her how to hook the train cars together and demonstrating the appropriate way to shuffle-step. Emma soaks it all up, and is happiest when her big sister spends time with her.

There was a time when I was content to have one child and one child only. Lydia and I had so much fun together, and life was easy with her.

I love my Emma for Emma, and am so happy to have her as my daughter. But I love my Lydia and Emma as Lydia and Emma; that is, I love the sisterhood in my house. I love that when we welcomed Emma to our family, she introduced the sibling relationship into our home.

I love that she made me a mother of sisters, and while I am her guide and Lydia’s guide individually, I take more of a passive role as spectator of the blossoming friendship of sisters.

I love seeing the joy to copy, the desire to be like each other. I love the way Emma grows as she watches her big sister. She tries more things and has less fear because she has somebody to show her the way.

But Emma also is definitely a child who knows what she wants. Her sure, steady, marching walk shows she has no problem marching to the beat of her own drum.

Sometimes I pull my hair out splitting up fights. But most of the time, I get to sit back and watch each girl be themselves while also finding joy in being like each other.

I freely admit that I brainwash them. From the time Emma was born, I have told both girls that they are each other’s best friends. I hope I’m right.

{4-year-old Lydia and 1-year-old Emma}

Big families are a little bit like middle school. Somebody is mad at somebody, somebody is being a brat on purpose, somebody is being a brat on accident, somebody is hogging all the attention, somebody is complaining about the somebody hogging all the attention. And the patriarch and matriarch are just standing at the front of the classroom trying to get everyone to quiet down and pay attention because the lesson they have to teach is really important.

But there’s also a lot of fun. The jokester is busy launching spitwads, the girls are busy commiserating over female issues, inside jokes are flying, people are hugging and laughing, and there is genuine happiness at being together.

The difference is there is no end of the school year where everyone goes home, has a fantastic summer and then comes back for another year wiser, more capable and more attractive. It’s for better or for worse in families, but even with the worse, families are much more preferable than 7th grade — because the better is so much better.

Yesterday, at 5:00 pm Pacific Time, my brother in California took his family and drove five minutes to my parents’ house while the other five of us siblings, spouses and families all dialed a phone number from our homes in Utah, Idaho and Georgia to enter a conference call.

Several weeks ago, my parents decided it was time for them to serve a year-long mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They filled out the paperwork, got doctors’ approvals, and then waited and prayed that they would be sent where they need to be.

The call took a lot longer to arrive in the mail than anybody expected, but it finally arrived on their 41st anniversary, a fitting time to gather their children around (even if it was by phone) and discover their next step in life.

After everyone arrived to the conference call last night, a prayer was said by my brother, and then my 14-year-old nephew read aloud the mission call from the prophet of our church that my parents had been waiting anxiously to receive.

My nephew began reading and said the words, “You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Detroit, Michigan mission.”

Oohs and ahhs, whoops and hollers interrupted my nephew as voices through the phone shared their excitement. My mom brought us back to the present moment when she urged my nephew to keep reading. “What’s our assignment?”

My nephew continued and told us they were called as employment resource specialists for the Detroit, Michigan mission. They will be there for one year.

The phone call got confusing with so many people, so it was time to wrap up. My dad said another prayer, and we all said goodbye.

My parents leave for a whole year this July. Tonight, my little brother — the baby of the family — deploys to Afghanistan. We knew he would deploy eventually, but we didn’t know it would come so soon. Last night, as we gathered the best we could as a family, my brother and my dad both prayed for the safety of our soldier.

The patriarch and the matriarch at the front of the classroom are stepping out of the room for a while just hoping everyone will keep their heads down and keep doing their work. We don’t need a riot on our hands, for goodness sake. They aren’t leaving anyone in charge, and even if they did, everyone would rebel against that person. You know how it goes in middle school.

The people of Detroit will find jobs. They will feel peace and love. The people of Afghanistan will have one more strong soldier working to protect them.

The rest of us will just keep working on the algebras of our life, knocking our heads against the desk to figure out how to turn a letter into a number.

But because this is a forever family, we’ll all make it to the 8th grade, and we’ll come back wiser, more capable and more attractive.

During my freshman year of college, my roommate introduced me to a website that had hundreds of free screen savers. This was pre-Facebook, so whenever I needed to zone out for a minute between paragraphs of the papers I was writing for homework, I would waste time by downloading a new screen saver.

One day, I downloaded a Vermeer screen saver. “What’s a Vermeer?” I thought. Moments later, the Girl With a Pearl Earring was staring at me from my computer monitor, and just like that I was in love with Johannes Vermeer, Dutch painter from the 17th century.

Vermeer’s other paintings captivated me too, but I was absolutely in love with the Girl With a Pearl Earring. She is so beautiful, the blue in that turban is stunning, and the glimmer in her earring, in her eyes and on her lips is amazing. I found myself searching the internet to discover any information about Vermeer, and became fascinated with his life — or what little we know about it.

That’s when I decided to study art history. As it turns out, a degree in art history, while fascinating, does not lead to a life as lucrative as say… a degree in anything else. I haven’t done anything with my degree except give great museum tours to my husband. But I can’t say I regret my choice in degrees. The gazillions of papers I was responsible for writing each semester helped me hone my writing skills, the paintings I studied helped me create a visual for the history of the world I can easily access inside my mind, and since I studied artists, art and history, I feel my eyes were opened to many more subjects and issues in this world than they would have been otherwise. Plus, it’s a degree. So boo yeah.

Last week, our little family traveled to Tracy, California to see grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. While we were there, we made a trip to San Francisco where my Girl With a Pearl Earring was visiting the DeYoung Museum.

Long ago, I made it a personal goal to see all the Vermeers in the world. There are only 36 or 37, and I’ve already seen 13, so my goal is a real possibility. But since The Girl With a Pearl Earring is normally housed in the Netherlands, I was certain I wouldn’t see my most favorite painting in the world until much later in my life.

I still can’t believe my luck that this painting would be on tour this year, and that it would be on tour in a museum so accessible to me.

The night before we went to make my dreams come true, my brother teased me. “Haven’t you seen a picture of the painting? Why is it going to be better in person?”

He’s a huge sports enthusiast, so I told him it was like getting the best seat in the stadium for a Superbowl win by his favorite team. He nodded, but I could tell it was just a polite nod.

No matter. Once we were at the museum and I could barely move a muscle because of the numerous crowds, it became clear to me that I am not the only person in the world who treasures paintings as so much of the world treasures sports.

We entered the exhibit, and very quickly determined that the museum was going to make us work for THE painting. The girl and her pearl earring were nowhere to be seen. Without saying a word, my burly husband, who looks like he should be playing football, cleared a path for my mom and me to travel to the painting. The crowds were parted like the Red Sea as that man who loves me muscled his way through. I felt a little bad that we were temporarily ignoring every other beautiful painting on the walls, but then we turned a corner and saw her at the end of the room in all her beauty.

I waited patiently for the group of people three rows deep to meander away so I could shove my face as close as possible to this mysterious girl with no name.

In person, the blue was bluer, the pearl was pearlier, the glisten in her eyes and on her lips was a greater glisten than I could have imagined.

But other than that, she was exactly as I expected. And in no way did that disappoint me. She is beautiful in person, and she is beautiful photographed and slapped into a textbook.

To see her in person, however, was emotional and personal. It was an experience, and it was worth the travel and expense. My brothers may think it’s just a painting, so who cares? You may think it’s just a painting, so who cares?

But to see her in person was my perfect Superbowl seat. It was the Eiffel Tower, a hole in one, the Egyptian pyramids, the Statue of Liberty, Niagara Falls, a lion in the African desert.

It was indescribable, but you understand because you have a Girl With a Pearl Earring too. We all do.

Yesterday, Lydia (5) presented me with a jewelry box made out of colored popsicle sticks and decorated with her special Lilifee stickers. Lilifee is a German cartoon fairy, and the stickers were given to her by our German exchange student a couple years ago. They obviously aren’t easy to come by, so I felt like it was kind of a big deal that Lydia shared them with me. She  also had done most of the work on the jewelry box by herself. I cried a little when I opened it. (When and how did I become that mother who cries?)

Emma (21 months) didn’t make me a jewelry box for Mother’s Day. No, instead her gift to me was waking up with a goopy eye. You’ve never seen an eye this goopy. Her hair was stuck in the goop. If that made you throw up a little bit, just think what it was like to witness such a goopy eye in person.

I was certain this was quite possibly the worst thing that could ever happen to me, but I know I do tend to get a little dramatic, so I tried to put this eyeball problem into perspective. After a moment, I admitted: I guess it’s not the worst thing that could have happened. It’s not like the goop was in both eyes.

I took Lydia to church while Ryan took Emma to the doctor. Pink eye was the diagnosis. Just look at that little swollen eye.

The remedy, of course, is eye drops. Eye drops that must be administered in an open eyeball four times a day. FOUR! This administration of eye drops requires the administrator to pry open the eye and stare directly into said infected eye.

Ryan assumed all eye drop administration duties yesterday while I separated myself by either going onto an entirely different floor of our house or by dry heaving in the bathroom.

I think it’s entirely reasonable for me to expect him to take off this entire week and stay home so I don’t have to step up to the role of eye drop administrator. But judging by his cheery disposition as he headed into work in the dark of the morning today, the man has no intentions of using vacation days to nurse an infected eye back to health.

I considered bringing Emma to him at work each time she needs eye drops, but ultimately decided (very bravely, I might add) that this is one yucky duty of motherhood I just have to accept. This is the part where I’m supposed to say that even with all the grossness and misery of these experiences, motherhood is still worth it. I’m not so sure.

After a prayer to calm my nerves (and my stomach), I ventured near the little dear, eye drop bottle in-hand. There was writhing, screaming and tears. And she pitched a fit too. I’m not entirely sure any of the drops actually made it into the eye, but once those drops were squeezed out of the bottle, I felt I had done my motherly duty to the best of my ability.

Through her tears, Emma gave a half smile and said in a cry-happy voice, “I did it!”

Yes, baby girl. You did it. And you’re going to do it again and again for the next week. Oh boy. Somehow we’ll make it.

On a completely unrelated note, we took a walk at Temple Square after church and the doctor. All I wanted was to have a good picture taken of my girls and me to capture our Mother’s Day. You know the one — the shot that captures the grace, elegance, youth and beauty of motherhood. The one that shows a devotion and love between child and mother. The one where the children look adoringly at their mother, grateful for all she has sacrificed to welcome them to and keep them in the world. The one I can pull out when my children are sassing me and say, “SEE! I’m a good mother, and I always have been! Look at our happiness!”

We tried.

Just look at their faces in this next one to see how thrilled they are to be my children.

This next one kind of captures what I wanted, if you just assume the poor, swollen eye is a cute wink.

Alright, you got me. Even with all the grossness and misery of eyeballs, motherhood is, indeed, worth it.

On a car ride home, my husband and I were discussing a skill our almost-2-year-old possesses that we think is particularly awesome.

“We make a good mix,” he said.

At that moment I stopped at a red light, and Emma, the almost-2-year-old, called out, “Mama” in a familiar tone. I knew exactly what I would see when I turned around.

Just as I suspected, she was showing me the inside of her mouth, where a chocolate chip cookie was in a state of being masticated.

“Ohhhh,” I said in a sing-songy voice, knowing a positive response would be the only thing that would end her little show.

But she wasn’t done.

“Dada!” she called out. The routine was repeated.

She learned this from her 5-year-old sister who is always showing us some “trick” — a spoon hanging out of her mouth in a funny-to-her way, a piece of cheese sticking out of her mouth acting as a tongue… you get the idea. We’re very patient with her shenanigans.

Emma’s next victim was her 5-year-old sister.

“Liddie!” she shouted. Lydia turned, saw her sister’s open mouth, and immediately said, “Ummm… I don’t know if you know this, but nobody wants to see that, Emma.”

We burst into laughter at her hypocritical chastisement.

In the next moment, I glanced at my husband who was about to absentmindedly put the metal tip of the phone charger onto his tongue.

“Ack! Don’t do that!” I shouted.

He laughed at himself and said, “I revise my earlier statement about us making a good mix. I think it’s just you.”

I pointed to the phone charger, then indicated the open mouth in the back seat that was responsible for our laughter and said, “Nope, you’re right. I think we make a good mix.”

Lydia (5) danced in two recitals this weekend. She’s the youngest in her class, which always makes me a little nervous for her. When we go to the observation days of dance class, she’s always a step behind. Sometimes her arms are doing the right thing while her feet remain motionless — or vice versa.

It’s darling. She’s so young, and she’s just having a good time. But sometimes I worry. Should we hold her back one year so she can be with kids her age and have another year to solidify what she’s learning? Or should we keep her where she is, and hope she’ll rise to the challenge of slightly harder dance moves?

Ultimately, we decided to keep her where she is, but as things go in mother-land, I’ve second-guessed our decision several times (I guess that means I’ve third-guessed and fourth-guessed and so on…).

And then the recital came. None of the kids in her group (including my own) seemed to have it exactly right, which made it all the more cute. But there was my little girl in the middle of it all — getting her arms and feet coordinating together, remembering to wave with the correct hand, gaining control of her shuffle steps. She bumped into another student here, she missed something there, she watched her neighbor for guidance sometimes. But she was doing it and she was getting it mostly right.

I remember thinking to myself, “When did she learn to put her heel out while her arm swings back?” It’s hard to get all your limbs doing the right thing, but she managed to do it.

Along with another mother, I was responsible for getting the dancers to the stage on time during the second performance. I felt like we were in a Degas painting as I watched the pint-sized girls line up in the wings, touching each other’s shoulders and standing on tip-toes to get a better look at what was happening on-stage. It was really one of the cutest things, and I wish I had my camera with me.

And then their turn came up and they hurry-scurried out on to the stage with so much confidence and excitement. Lydia told me she fell during this performance. I didn’t see it happen from my position backstage. I was heartbroken for her until I asked her what she did. “I just got back up and kept dancing,” she explained matter-of-factly. When did she get big enough to handle a situation like that without falling apart?

During the first performance, I sat next to a friend from church. She was there to see three of her granddaughters and one niece perform. She had already been to other recitals that day to see other granddaughters and nieces perform. At first I thought how frustrating it must be to lose an entire Saturday to simply observing others’ talents.

Then my daughter came on stage and showed her confidence. I felt so much joy as I watched her succeed. I could only imagine the amount of joy my friend and her husband felt as they watched grandchild after grandchild show their own skill and confidence.

It isn’t losing an entire Saturday. Whatever we gave up to spend that Saturday in the pursuit of our children’s pursuits isn’t important. These moments are the reason why we are here.

This is Dino. He’s the love of her young life.

When we are out and about, she will occasionally ask the question, “Dino?” She’s just looking for reassurance that Dino is ok. I always remind her that Dino is sleeping in her crib. That makes her happy.

She recently decided that Dino is a boy. So now she shows us Dino and says, “Boy-yeah.”

As the boy Dino ages in love, he is losing his firmness. She recently discovered that when you hold his head down by his feet and let go, his head will boing up and down. She finds endless pleasure in this, and shouts for us to “LOOK!” while she demonstrates his new talent. 

As all best and favorite stuffed animals go, Dino carries with him a favorite spot. She is always smelling his back. It brings her comfort and such a look of peace.

When she is feeling especially generous, she offers that special part of Dino’s back to each member of her family. Each family member sniffs the back, wonders what’s so special about it, and expresses gratitude for her generosity. She beams every time.

This is when she turned 1.

{I wrote this post yesterday. Then just to mock me, or perhaps to prove my point, Utah threw another weather curve ball my way with a morning of falling snow.}

The sun is shining again, and it’s so glorious! Winter in Utah is long, always lasting long past the date on the calendar that claims to mark the official start of spring.

My first winter in Utah was my freshman year of college. My roommate was from South Carolina, and together we had been in awe of the first snowfall of winter in November. By April, we were plum worn out of winter. Our blood wasn’t made for this kind of inhumane living.

When the snow melted on the first warm day in April, we gleefully packed up our winter clothes and boots, shoved them underneath our beds and didn’t look back.

The next week, we were confused and hurt. In my part of California and in South Carolina, seasons follow the calendar pretty well. If it gets warm in March or April, you can bet it’s going to stay relatively warm until summer when it gets blisteringly hot. We had sent our Utah winter packing, but like an angry ex-lover he was back, exacting his vengeance upon us for being so foolish as to think we could be rid of him so easily.

It took me four or five Utah winters to finally understand that winter doesn’t give up that easily here. He’s stubborn, and is the most obnoxious show-off around. He wants more time on the stage, and he always gets it. For some reason, spring just bows down and takes his pushy ways.

Even though temperatures were in the 70s the other day, I do not trust what I feel when I step outside.

Lydia (5) wore a skirt with no leggings or tights. Her sister (21-ish months) was confused by such a sight. Skin on legs? We have skin on our legs? She rubbed and rubbed her poor sister’s exposed knees until Lydia was writhing on the ground in tickle-agony.

Oh, sweet baby of mine. Just you wait until I purchase your first pair of summer flip-flops. Unfortunately, nobody can say when that will be, considering the calendar in Utah is a dirty liar.