May I see your library card, please?

I took everything out of my daughter's room today.  I was tired of begging her to clean up after herself, tired of her apparent deafness at my polite requests, tired of denying her the privileges which are rightfully hers when she takes care of her things, and tired of hearing her say, "It's just that I hate work, Mom.  I just don't want to work!"  I'll show you work, my dear.  Raising you is work.

She was pretty torn up over the complete removal of everything near and dear (though a bit, too near and dear, if you ask me - as in strewn all over her bed near and dear).   I allotted her a single blanket, her pillow, and the clothes on her back.

We implemented a library system.  When she needs something, say, a pair of pajamas, she must check it out.  When she is through using the borrowed item, she must stow it away properly, in which case she may keep it.  If any items are outside the confines of her drawers, closet, or bookshelf, they will be removed and unavailable for checkout.  No fines you say?  Well, I'd like to think this isn't really punishment - the way I see it, I'm just simplifying life for her until she figures out how to manage all of the stuff she's accrued in her short life.   In the meantime, all that "stuff" is stacked in my once-tidy bedroom.  Wish me luck.

Watch out Ginger Rogers.

Sometimes the girls can have a say in their "enrichment" activities. And sometimes they can't. In January, I scored the ultimate victory by signing my three older girls up for swimming and tap dance. Instead of multiple practice and game schedules to attend to, we had two weekly commitments total. Just two. It was magical. Who needs agency, anyway?








I slightly regretted my decision when Rachel noticed that, as the youngest child in her tap class, she didn't catch on quite as quickly as the others. But she got over that and was adorable in her spring recital. As were the other two.


(not sure what is up with Lily's face in this shot...passing gas, perhaps?)

Oh the irony!

Irony of parenting # 1:  The pain (and I'm talking strictly physical here) does not, I repeat, not end with labor.
Irony of parenting #2:  All of your children will be early risers right up until the day they start school.  At which point, it will take a foghorn to awaken them.
And #3:  They will never ever have to go to the bathroom when you give them the opportunity before leaving home.  Only when you are in the middle of Winco.  And the bathroom is on the exact opposite end of the store.  And you've got ice cream in your cart.  And then when you get there, they will insist that they no longer have the urge.  But really, they're just scared of the automatic flusher.
Am I missing any?

Budding musician.

Lily developed a stunning vibrato at the tender age of three.  She can be found at many hours of the day belting out the lastest tune on the radio or, her personal favorite, any number of original, on-the-spot compositions.  She's got a gift.  An occasionally annoying gift, but we'll let her have it.

Today, after practicing piano, she asked me if she could borrow a few sheets of composition paper so she could write her own music.  Sure, I thought, it's not as if you don't spend half of your practice time fooling around with the keys, you might as well put all that creativity to paper.  She's cute.

Where am I going with this? Well nowhere, really, except that she had her 1st grade music performance a couple of weeks ago. The first of many opportunites to showcase that lovely vibrato (drowned out by 150 other voices, that is.) I love this child.

This is the stuff show and tell is made of.

Anna found Zags sitting on a snake a couple of weeks ago.  After a brief moment of recoil, she asked me if she could take it to school the next day to show (off) to her class.  "Heck, why not?", I said.  It couldn't be worse than the cat skull she had brought earlier in the year.  And secretly, I swell with a tidbit of pride that my little princesses are, in fact, not princesses and have no qualms about picking up dead animals.  It makes me smile and barf in my mouth a bit at the same time.

So I picked out an old plastic container for her and sent her outside to do the dirty deed.  She gingerly picked up the reptile, placed in carefully in the container, and put the lid on it... at the precise moment the snake came back to life.  Apparently, average garden snakes are smart enough to play dead.  Needless to say, we requested that she release it back into the wild, which she did, that is, right smack dab in front of Zags.  Poor snake.  As if fighting for one's life once in one night wasn't enough.  Did I just catch myself feeling sorry for a lousy snake?  I'm becoming soft in my old age.

Freshly-picked.

What $5 can buy in fun.

Small price to pay for some serious wipe-out fun.  90 degrees outside and everyone was in heaven.  At least until the thunderstorm arrived.

The next day, after another torrential downpour, the kids played in the resulting puddles in our culdesac.  I caught Lily hunched over the side of the road, lapping up running water like a cat.  Awesome.

Well, why not?

A couple of weeks ago my children were enjoying the good weather outside with the neighbors while I chatted with one of the moms in our backyard.  My youngest child, who had been playing in the front yard with two of her siblings came back to say hello.  She was wearing her swimsuit.  My neighbor wondered at her choice of attire and I said, "Oh, she wears her swimsuit all the time."  Here's a picture to prove it.  

And then two of my other daughters (and a friend who was joining us for the afternoon, came back wrapped in towels (and dressed in swimsuits, as well, phew!).  A little bit more unusual for the older ones.  I asked, "What are you doing?"
"Running through the sprinklers."
"Whose sprinklers?"
"The neighbors."
"Did you ask permission?"
Of course they hadn't.  What child under 10 asks permission of their sixty-year old neighbors who are nursing a lawn back to health if they can run through the sprinklers?

They sure had fun.  And were adorable, to boot.  And thankfully, our neighbors are lovely people who didn't mind a bit (or at least pretended not to) that all the neighborhood kids had made a mud pit of their grass.  On the same night they were hosting a surprise birthday party at their home.

Butterflies are overrated.

Two years ago, we purchased a butterfly garden and a set of caterpillars and watched the process of metamorphosis.  We set them free on a gorgeous spring day - they lingered on our fingertips before taking flight to the nearest flower.  It was magical.

We tried again this year, only the timing wasn't quite right.  Our cat joined the family just days after we'd transferred the chrysalides into the mesh container in which they would emerge and begin their lives as adult butterflies.  The butterflies were fascinating... to the cat.  He knocked over the butterfly garden, thus prompting us to keep them behind closed doors and pretty much out of sight in the laundry room to discourage Zags from ending their already brief period of sojourn on the earth prematurely.   Needless to say, it wasn't the experience for which we had hoped.  After several other failed attempts at keeping the door closed, Zags managed to incapacitate all but two of them.  Setting them free this time meant finding an open tulip in which to place each of them so that they could live out their flightless days with at least some nourishment.  Such is the life of a butterfly.  At least at our house.

I'll take the cardboard box over the trampoline, thank you.

When they tired of helping Tim and me set up the trampoline, they turned into pirates, fought with swords and made each other walk the plank.  Simple pleasures.

3rd grade market day.

The assignment:  Come up with a good or service to sell to one or more classmates using tokens as a medium of exchange.
Budget: $1. 
Anna's goods:  Homemade felt barrettes and individually-wrapped brownies.

I sure hope they're teaching the kids about opportunity cost, because these barrettes (worth only pennies of material) took over an hour of child labor.  The brownies will take minutes of active time and will most assuredly be the more desirable product.  Even Anna, after spending a lot of time on the barrettes commented that she figured she might as well use a brownie mix because third-graders won't appreciate the mint brownies I suggested.  It's like trying to sell designer goods to Walmart shoppers.  Makes perfect sense to me... a brownie mix it is.  Good thing they only cost a dollar (at Walmart, of course).

Candidly speaking...

I found my daughter sitting out on the roof one afternoon earlier this week.  "It's comfortable!  And not a bit slippery!", she tried to convince me.  I suppose I should be happy she discovered the roof after nine whole years and not a moment sooner, right? 

We finally set up the trampoline the great-grandparents helped purchase for Christmas.  Yes, Christmas, as in, almost five months ago.  I haven't seen my children since.  Except for the time I peeked out the window to find all of them running single file on the pad outside the enclosure.  Is it so hard to be conventional?

Gone are the Saturdays when I felt the need to ensure that fun, games and outings filled the moments not occupied by doing chores.  We find ourselves leaving the weekends largely unplanned and letting the kids have at it.   A new concept for me - I've always been one for excitement and adventure... or at least one family outing.  Yesterday they bounced to their hearts' content with nary an argument.  I could get used to that.

I concocted a delicious Texas Sheet Cake Friday afternoon and fed it to the missionaries.  What else was I to do with a half cup of buttermilk?  I didn't get a single bite until Saturday...after my migraine (one of the three I can count on every single month at very predictable, hormonal times).  I could do with a little less estrogen in my life.

Why the random assortment of happenings?  Because I attended a Relief Society activity on Tuesday that, among other things, reminded me of how dangerous it can be to measure oneself against what others portray on their blogs or other social media.   So I'm just trying to get real.

Life is full of the mundane.  I learned to live with that early in my marriage and it has saved my mental health.  I remember being in college and returning home every summer to "report", so to speak, the latest and greatest.  I often felt inferior when I had fewer dates than my roommates, or fewer accolades to add to my resume, or fewer adventures to boast of on the weekends. 

When I married Tim, instead of traveling across the country to accept my post-graduation dream job, I had to hunker down at a temp job in Provo, biding my time until he graduated two years later.  I had a well-meaning friend at the time, who reminded me that I was too bright to relegate myself to working a lame job and making dinner every night for my husband, I could be conquering the world.  I was glad I had the gospel to ground me, to remind me that some periods in life involve a bit of drudgery.  That one doesn't need to be making headlines to be happy. 

As a mother, I've learned not to measure myself by what I didn't check off my list but what I did (much of which was not on the list in the first place).   Sure, there are days I can prance around and pat myself on the back for baking 6 loaves of bread, volunteering in each of my kids' classes, teaching Joy School, doing 5 loads of laundry, teaching my kids piano, ensuring they don't watch a moment of TV or eat a bite of sugar all while maintaining a relatively clean home (I don't even aspire for immaculate, let's be real).  But most days I'm just pleased as punch that I managed to get dinner on the table.  I can't always measure my success in ways that the world recognizes.  But I can feel content in my efforts to do what is right.  And in this season of my life, that is being a mother.  In the best way that I know how.