Don’t Give Me Diamonds

February 12, 2014February 12, 20147 Comments

We got engaged on Valentine’s Day and you gave me a diamond. That was eight years ago.

In eight years we have lived in three cities, had four different jobs, one master’s degree and four kids.

Eight years ago on that night I imagined Prince Charming and Cinderella. Gazing and frolicking into eternity. I knew the words from 1 Corinthians 13 but I had no idea what they meant.

Love is patient, love is kind. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.Love never fails.

This Valentine’s Day eight years later, I have learned that love is so much more precious than diamonds. Sweeter than candy. More beautiful than a bouquet of radiant red roses.

Love is a choice. Built on hard work and moments together that are not as “frolicky” and glamorous as I thought they might be.

Eight years later I am thankful that we have chosen to love in all of our moments, the good and the bad. We have persevered through the pressure cooker of four kids in less than five years. We have built a life together.

We have moments more important than diamonds.

This Valentine’s Day I don’t want the diamonds or the gifts. I just want you.

I want your time and your laugh.

I want you holding our baby daughter late at night.

I want you leaning over the twin sized bed in our son’s room; teaching him the Doxology and explaining what the word “faith” means.

I want you to swim with our sons and toss them around in the water.

I want you in the driver’s seat of our minivan when the sunlight hits your graying temples and I can see how our moments together have aged you.

I want you in the good and the bad. Even when I make you crazy mad and upset with me.

I want you to love me in this postpartum mess of emotions and elastic pants.

I want your patience, kindness and faithfulness even when I don’t deserve it.

I want your southern smile when I ask you to take a trash bag of stinky diapers outside in the polar vortex and ice and snow.

After eight years I don’t want the diamonds or the flowers or chocolates. I just want the moments.

Not the frolicky. Not the glamorous.

The kissing before we’ve brushed our teeth with four kids in between us moments.

The love is patient, love is kind moments of everyday life.

The moments when we go on a date in our sweatpants because we are too tired to get dressed.

The moments that prove we have chosen love. We have chosen one another. We have persevered through the good and the bad.

That is an always and forever kind of love.

Please this Valentine’s Day, I just want you. I want you next to me even if it’s in our sweatpants on the couch with a bag of Kirkland popcorn.

No diamonds. Just you. Just the way you are. With your graying temples and my more rounded hips.

Continue to just give me the moments. It is not in the frolicking or the glamor but in the real moments of our life together when I experience the 1 Corinthians 13 kind of love.

4 Tools For Your Parenting Survival Kit

September 18, 2013February 5, 20143 Comments

I have pretty much seen just about everything a toddler can get into. Not too long ago I was prepping my meals for the week when my one year old walked into the kitchen with a battery in his mouth and my two year old had figured out how to get his head in the oven behind my back. Thank goodness the oven was not turned on.

I am also very certain that the water on my toddler’s toothbrush yesterday was from the toilet instead of the sink.

So what should I do? Hop on my phone and google the horrors that might occur from drinking a little toilet water or look up other horror stories about babies and batteries?

#1 I try to find the humor in the chaos.

The things that happen around the house on a normal day can actually be quite comical.

I get peed on and my freshly washed hair, that I hadn’t taken the time to wash in three days, gets chunky throw up in it almost right after I finish with the straightener and my four year old has found a new love for peeing in a cup and handing it to me ever since he took a visit with me to my OB GYN.

I could get really angry about the vomit and the batteries or whine about the fact that there is actual urine in the cups I drink out of but what good does that really do? The anger and whining and the horror stories of the Internet just breed anxiety and frustration.

So I try to find the humor in the chaos.

I choose to find the comic relief behind the situations that do not seem to go my way.

#2 Don’t jump at every single opportunity to correct you kids.

If I corrected every wiggle, every spill and every selfish moment I would be correcting my kids every second of the day. Sometimes you need to just let them be kids and figure it out on their own.

I am trying to learn to correct my boys if they are causing serious danger to themselves or others or if there is direct defiance towards me.

You know the sayings:

Choose your battles.

Don’t major on the minors.

Pick one or maybe two things that you are going to work on with you kids and correct only those behaviors. You will find rest and peace when your whole day is not spent bickering at your children.

#3 Don’t freak out.

Imagine you’re in trouble, let’s say trapped in a burning house, and the first responders find you and start freaking out.

“Oh, my… What did you do? How did you do this? What were you thinking? This is terrible! This is the worst burning house I have ever seen.”

I would die from anxiety if first responders were not trained to remained calm.

Try to remain calm when your kid falls off the couch or gets their fingers pinched in the door. It happens to pretty much everyone. Your fretting and worry only makes the situation worse.

You are their first responder. Remain calm for your child and don’t add to their anxiety.

Just breathe and don’t freak out.

I have sent my oldest son into a frantic tantrum when one of my other children pooped in the bathtub. Because I was anxious he was balled up on the floor hyperventilating in the fetal position because poopy water touched his body.

I have scarred him for life because I was a poor first responder.

Remain calm.

#4 Be flexible and be nice to yourself.

My kids have been known to put themselves to bed and my 20 month old never forgets to tell me that 8am is “breakfast time.” Like clockwork we eat, sleep and play but I have learned that the needs of my children are more important than my routine.

Some of my four year old’s best memories include times like when we skipped the zoo and ate our breakfast on a blanket while watching Cars movie.

If you have planned a big day out but everyone is melting down because they are tired from a long weekend, stay home instead. If maybe you are just too tired to get out the play doh and finger paints on craft day, skip the crafts and go outside instead.

Be nice to yourself. Experiencing story time or another finger painting activity is not worth the thirty minutes of torturous tantrums from kids or mommy. It is more important if everyone is emotionally and physically rested than getting through that structured activity you had planned.

Be flexible and be nice to yourself.

It’s simple really. Breathe and relax there is grace for you, grace for your children and grace for this day. His mercies are abundant and never ending.

Find the laughter in the chaos.

Don’t correct every little thing.

Be a good first responder.

Be flexible and be nice to yourself.

Why The Twos Aren’t Terrible

August 14, 2013June 22, 20166 Comments

I cringe every time I hear someone say the phrase.

It’s like anticipating a great meal at a restaurant and someone tells you, oh… but it’s terrible. Or the movie you’ve waited to see all year gets a terrible review and you read it right after purchasing your ticket.

Hearing the phrase “terrible twos” can be a major let down. It sets young mothers up to anticipate a year of pure horror. I cringe when I hear a more experienced mom telling a newer mom these words. It makes moms look at the year of two through a lens of negativity, anticipating the worst.

Now in all seriousness, I am a realist and I don’t live in on a fluffy cloud of sparkles with rainbows and unicorns. My children are just like all other children. They throw tantrums and disobey my voice. My children are opinionated, strong willed and have been found to lay face down on the floor crying during church. But my children are far from terrible.

My oldest is four and a half and my second born turns three in a few days. I am not an expert but I have recently lived through two (almost) consecutive years of life with a two year old (I have a twenty one month old as well so I am on the brink of another stab at it).

And I will say it. The twos aren’t terrible at all and I really wish I would stop hearing the bummer phrase. I am really on a mission to stop the phrase all together.

The year of two should be called “The Passionate Twos” instead.

Okay, so the alliteration is not there but the terrible defined is: to cause great fear or alarm or even dreadful.

In contrast, passionate defined is: capable of having or dominated by powerful emotions.

Have you ever looked at a two year old and sensed great fear?

I don’t sense great fear looking at that baby face.

But The Passionate Two Year Old is very capable of having powerful emotions (like: laying face down on the floor and crying their sweet little eyes out).

They cry big but the laugh big and love big too.

The Passionate Two Year Old is learning to express what they want.

Instead of a “grown up” nonchalant eye roll or deep sigh, twos only know how to lay on the floor and cry.

And I don’t blame them either. A two year old does not yet have the social cues to know that it is unacceptable to lay on the floor and cry and a two year old has not quite learned how to deal with disappointment because they have experienced very few disappointing circumstances in their short seven hundred and thirtyish days of living.

Really, since birth a two year old has (pretty much) gotten what they needed when they needed it.

Diaper changes, food, sleep and playtime and then when their little brains start thinking in their own way and hear the word “no” we as adults have decided to call the The Passionate Two Year Old, being dominated by intense emotion, terrible or dreadful.

Why do we do that? And why do we then feel like we are important enough to turn around and let younger moms know “what is coming.”

How could this be terrible?

How could someone who wants to “be cozy with you” be terrible?

How could someone who builds a tall tower for the first time and says, “I did it mommy” be terrible?

Two year olds go through so much change and we should give them more credit. Their ability to speak and reason change dramatically in their second year and most two year olds change to a toddler bed, get a new sibling, give up their pacifiers and learn how to use the potty in the year of two.

That is an enormous amount of change for a little one.

As adults we ask two year olds to cope with so much and then gasp when they express intense emotion.

I think two year olds are pretty amazing.

Curious.

And sweet.

But just because they are passionate does not make them terrible at all.

If you are expecting, have an infant or a one year old please know what is coming next is not terrible, dreadful or a year of intense fear.

The year of two is teaching your precious, sweet, curious child to deal with their intense emotions they are experiencing for the first time like disappointment, jealousy, envy and loss. (I honestly know many adults well into their thirties who don’t handle any of those emotions very well yet.)

The year of two is filled with some of the best story times, longest snuggles, I love you mommys, first sweet thankful prayers, bear hugs, imaginative play and curiosity that cannot be harnessed.

Advocate for your Passionate Two Year Old and stop saying “Terrible Twos!”

Sheesh, two year olds are not terrible at all.

Happy Birthday Sweet Asher, your passion, sweetness and curiosity have inspired this post and made me a better mommy.

Take Off Your Cape

March 4, 2013March 28, 20142 Comments

Most of the time I am really full of myself and I have my superhero moments:

I am a mom, I am a woman, I can take it all on.

Today was one of those days. I am on two different antibiotics and three over the counters but hey, the show must go on. My boys have their first swimming lessons and I am not going to let my wimpy immune system get in the way.

I tie the cape around my neck and head out the door.

As always, I am squeaking into the community center parking lot right on time. Not a minute to spare. I like the drama of cutting it close.

We prayed and prayed for a parking spot. I saw some tail lights come on but another aggressive mom swooped in with a suburban, put her blinker on and gave me the evil eye.

Okay, you take the spot, I have my cape, bring it on.

I pull onto the curb and unload. It is raining and 40 degrees and my two year old lays down on the curb and cries, he wants me to hold him.

In cape mode I pull him along tears and all.

I literally pushed my toddler in with my foot as I was holding the heavy door with one hand and holding my baby in the other.

I am so consumed with myself, my cape and my ability to do it all despite my kryptonite illness; I hand my traumatized toddler to the girls in childcare and swoop onto swimming lessons.

The cape has covered up my ability to see the damage I am actually causing.

My oldest got to his lesson and I had to quickly head back out to the parking lot to legally park in a space. On my way back to the gym my heart was heavy.

As I slowed down the tie around my neck from the cape started to come undone.

My poor toddler. How traumatic to be frantically dragged into the childcare at the community center?

With the cape off I took the time to stop in and scoop up the sweet boy.

With the cape off I could see my need for repentance; to say I am sorry for kicking him through the door and into the arms of strangers.

In light of eternity, taking a minute to console my toddler is much more kingdom worthy than being punctual for a swimming lesson.

Finally poolside and I finally caught my oldest son’s eyes in the chaos of this morning.

He was sobbing.

With the superhero cape on and all the swooping, I officially damaged two of my children.

In my attempts to be a superhero I actually failed both the children I was trying to impress by getting them to their lesson on time.

My oldest left the pool and clung to me. Through his sobs he said, “Mommy, you left me and I couldn’t see you. I was scared.”

I did leave him. It was my fault. With the cape on I couldn’t see the effects of my superhero behavior. The cape was covering up the damage I was actually causing.

In light of eternity, being punctual for swimming lessons is not that important.

Sometimes when our intentions are good, when as moms we are trying to do what we think is the right thing for our kids, we actually hurt them in the process.

I was a disaster to my boys this morning all for the sake of swooping into a swimming lesson on time.

My superhero intentions were harmful.

The real superhero moments happened when I removed the cape. When I forgot about saving the day I was able to find that my kryptonite was actually inside of me.

“His power is made perfect in weakness. His grace is sufficient for me.”

The superhero moments of the gospel are the opportunities to cling to the fact that His grace is sufficient.

I am weak. I can’t hide behind the cape. God does not expect that of me.

When I untie the cape I can see His grace is sufficient for me.