Baptism

Joel said, "Jamie, do you want to get baptized?"
Jamie said, "Yeah."
Joel said, "All you have to do is get a good breath. Do you want to do that?"
"Yeah."
"Just get a good breath and go underwater. Davis did it." [referring to his friend Davis who he saw get baptized over a year ago]

DDM Followup

"The Dillydally Monster is going to eat you." Joel said to Jamie after they went to bed.
Jamie said, "I don't want to be eaten."
Joel said, "He won't eat me. Just you. And then we'll get a different Jamie. Not you. Someone else. Do you want to live?"
"Yeah."
"Then go to sleep."

"I'll do it my way"

Joel had Soccer Camp this week. Or rather, Joel was at Soccer Camp. The other kids were playing soccer. Not sure what Joel did. But he had fun. And he came home tired. Mission sortof accomplished.

Spiritual Growth

I'm not very good at sharing spiritual experiences. They're personal. Putting them into words trivializes them for me. I love to hear others, though, and so, by that same token, maybe another could benefit from hearing mine. Not all, though. I know most people may prefer to skip this week's post. But this week has been one big spiritual growth spurt for me after another. I'm overwhelmed in a most exquisite way.

It was just last week that I asked God if this was it for me. Was my life just going to be a series of enjoyable struggles and triumphs with marriage, childrearing, music, etc.? Was I not really going to grow much more? Will it just be this steady ebb and flow for the rest of my life? That was the vision of my future that I had. It wasn't that bad an outlook, but it was somewhat disappointing. I certainly wasn't asking for trials or hardships to come along. Marriage and childrearing is packed with plenty of difficulties for a lifetime. But I was asking God if this is what He had planned for my life when he sent me to this earth. Was raising two boys and managing a stable household all that was expected of me because perhaps they or their progeny would be the ones to become something more?

The next day or so, I got a resounding "No." More on that in a later Blog. For now, this is what the Lord has been telling me this week:

• There's a lot for me to do and it's high time I start doing it. Stop being lazy and use every moment for something useful.
• There are a lot of scripture stories with which I am unfamiliar. I've read them before and studied them here and there, but the retention isn't there. And I'm going to need them soon.
  
• My children and my spouse need to hear about my spiritual experiences, so they can benefit from them, too.
• I need to listen to people more and talk a lot less. They will tell me ways that I can make the world a better place.
• Family Home Evening needs to happen every week. For me, for the kids, and for our relationship with Heavenly Father to grow.
• Be sensitive to the comings and goings of the Spirit. I need the Spirit constantly with me. Don't do things that jeopardize that.

I love that Heavenly Father always answers my prayers. It's humbling and wonderful to know that all I have to do is ask and listen. Then do.

Rhinestone shades or cheap sunglasses
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah

Hurray! No more laundry!!

A few days ago, when I asked Joel to put away his freshly folded laundry, he complained that he was tired of putting clothes away. "No More!" he said.
OK, granted, he had just put two loads of laundry away that night, but, really, how old is he? Of his four and a half years, he's only been putting his laundry away for one of them. I'm inclined not to give him a voice in the matter. Except, the little voice inside me said, "If you don't wash clothes you won't have to put them away."
"Fine," Joel said. "I just won't ever take these off."
Realizing the little voice wasn't just inside my head, I felt the need to reinforce the point, "So, those are the last clothes you'll ever wear?"
"Yup," he said, "until I'm 5."
*Shrug* Good enough.
But then he took another look at what he was wearing and realized that he wanted to go change. I'm likening this to a burial outfit or cremation or birthday suit or whatever you've decided you'd like to accompany you when you to return to the dust. For Joel, who was wearing a blue shirt and some long blue pants that he swears are black, clearly this outfit wouldn't be up to the task. I told him that he would have to put the "blue" clothes in the laundry and actually put them away again in the near future if he chose to change into something else for his last outfit. This thought made him well up like an irrigation ditch. "But I want my red clothes to be the last thing I wear."
Melting, I decided to leave the decision in Joel's hands. He understands the laundry process. He can work this out.
So, after wearing his red clothes for the rest of the day, like all creatures of habit, he changed into his pajamas for bed, and got up in the morning and put more play clothes on and so on. After a few days, I figured this is a closed issue, and he's decided that clean laundry's worth the effort.
Until today. He wakes up, puts on this red outfit and, as serious as any 4 yr old, says these are his "last clothes".
So, now, while trying not to think of Mrs Piggle Wiggle's radish cure, I rejoice. No more laundry for Joel! Until he's 5.

Bedtime antics

[Necessary setup for today's blog: We have three phones (one on each floor) and a base station. We have a designated phone in the boys' room so we can use the system's monitoring feature to listen in on them wherever we are in the house. It also has an intercom feature that pulses the desired phone with loud, high-pitched alarm sounds which we've rarely ever used until now.]

When the boys go to bed in the same room together, "sleeping" becomes a very loose term. It seems we've tried everything (punishments, separations, music, exhaustion, what am I missing???). For Joel, it's too tempting to respond to Jamie's unrelenting invitations to jump on the bed, make up nonsense words, and dork around all through the night. Except when the "Dillydally Monster" is coming.

Tonight, I rang the intercom whenever the noise turned particularly chaotic. I did it 3 times. They didn't know what that sound was that was interrupting their fun, and they stopped to listen, then started up again, each time.

Finally, I called Joel out, as if, like other nights, I was informing him that his chance to sleep with Jamie was over, and he would have to go sleep in the closet crib, again. But instead, I asked if he heard the dillydally monster alarm go off. It dawned on him that he did, indeed, hear the alarm. And with recognition came panic. [Fortunately] He remembered that the Dillydally monster doesn't come if you're in bed asleep, so he made a bee-line for bed. Then he turned to me and said he had to go tell Jamie what was about to happen. He sounded so urgent and pleading...that he had to protect Jamie and convince him that they needed to go to bed right away! In 15 seconds, all was quiet. Joel was even too afraid to get up and help Jamie get his pillow and bears that he had thrown out of his crib. And there hasn't been a peep out of them since.

I'm sure I will regret this one day, but for tonight, the Dillydally monster equals peace and harmony.

Bean

Bean is Joel's best friend. Joel has buddies, like Boon and BeahBeah (also pictured above), but Bean is his Best friend. They do everything together, so much so that we had to put a moratorium on Bean 's extracurricular activities. We got tired of calling people to ask if they'd seen him and fetching him from here and there. So, now he's a SAHB.


Bean's name has a little history. He started out as Bluebeary, thus named by the company who made him and called by his parents while Joel was a babe. But as Joel began to talk, his word for blueberry was "bea," so naturally he called his bear Bea. Then one day, quite suddenly, he added an "n" to Bea's name and thus he became "Bean." Nobody knows where the "n" came from.

It didn't take long for us to realize that Bean could really be lost one day. With Joel's attachment to him becoming more and more apparent, we were concerned about the future civil unrest in our home. In preparation for this day, we ordered another blue bear identical to Bean. He arrived all fluffy and clean, so, like any wise parent, I spent a few weeks washing him and wearing him down so as to pass Joel's scrutiny. And, of course, when the time came to slip in the new bear, Joel would have nothing to do with it. As far as he was concerned, Bean's brother, Boon, was here to visit, and Boon was the far less superior bear. I can almost taste the lesson here, but I can't decide which one is worth mentioning. Are siblings unequal? Man was created equal, but not bears? Rotate bears before an attachment can be formed?

Maybe that's what the comment section is for.

Today was my day off. I didn't manage to take a nap until after the kids went to bed for the night. I couldn't just put myself to bed at 8pm, could I?? And I couldn't keep myself up past 8, so, I'll be up late tonight, practicing, probably.

Harlan and I enjoyed playing games with Joel while Jamie napped. Then we all picked blackberries in the backyard. Harlan made cobbler. He figured the only way to make it with fresher blackberries was to preheat the oven while we're picking them. We enjoyed the weather in our backyard chairs thinking about ways to fill our yard with more fruit. August really rocks here.

Bubbles

Kids have these huge spirits packed into tiny bodies that can do all those amazing things that I wish I could do but can't, like crawl into that space between the couch and the wall and disappear for hours, jump and tumble all over the furniture and from all heights without waking up stiff in the morning, and covering their entire (or almost) surface area with bubbles.

I'm not really going anywhere with this. I'm just a little awed and jealous.

Yesterday, Joel fell off the dining room chair (which is actually a bar stool), headfirst, and just like a lump of jam, he molded to the floor and sprung right back up saying, "I'm OK." He just smiled and hopped right back up on his chair. I tried to imagine what he might have hurt, thinking that if it were me, I'd be checking for broken bones and mortal wounds... But, to him, it was as if nothing happened really.

Just another testament to the thought and perfection Heavenly Father put into creating us.