Choosing your battles...

I have been given grief, sometimes minor grief sometimes major grief, for the choices I have made and am making with my kids. This isn't about that grief or the rightness or wrongness of it, but more about not listening to it. As mothers we listen....we listen to our kids, listen to them whine, listen to them demand, listen to them laugh, listen to them cry, and occasionally when we are lucky, we listen to them sleep. We listen to our friends, we listen to our acquaintances, we listen to our parents, their friends, their friends' parents. We listen to everyone's advice, sometimes we ignore everyone's advice (which we should probably do more) but we always hear it anyway. We listen to TV, magazines, books. Books by professionals, books by parents, books by professional parents. Books by people who must know more than we do about our kids. Must know more than we do about parenting. We feel so overwhelmed by the massive task of raising little people, that we forget, completely forget to listen to ourselves. Please try to stop listening to everyone but yourself, your child, and the instinct that God gave you to not only survive, but thrive through this task of parenthood. I am trying and I will never stop trying. But it is a constant battle, a constant struggle, and proves its worth once in a while. Like this:

William is an extreme little boy. Everything is extreme, Extreme happiness, extreme sadness, extreme anger. Extreme like and dislike. Once he was extremely into snakes for about a month, we read about snakes and watched snake movies...I did not try to talk him out of his interest in snakes, or broaden his horizons to other reptiles, or anything....I sat back and indulged his extreme like, and guess what, he eventually moved on to volcanoes. Now we are excited about avalanches. William also had and still does have an extreme fascination with weapons, sometimes guns, sometimes swords....I haven't told him it's not okay to play with these things, rather that it's okay to play nicely with these things, not to hurt anyone, and not to break anything. I have thrown out every broken toy weapon we have, and have struggled constantly with the rules of these types of toys. But, eventually this extreme fascination gave way to knights with swords, dragons and princesses, castles and wizards. Fantasy....which is something I wanted my kids to be into since they were born. But I could no more force that interest than I could force their eye color. Fantasy has led into fairy tales, and princesses. Yes, I have a four year old boy with a soft side. He loves Snow White, Cinderella, Jasmine and her friends...we just came home from the library, with Tinkerbell, Power Rangers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and he wanted to watch Tinkerbell first. I won't tell him he can't watch these movies, or read these stories, or (gasp!) can't dress up like one if he wants. Because every time I say he can dress up like a princess or fairy if he wants, he decides he better dress up like a boy fairy or a prince. I usually say he can dress up like one if he wants to, but usually the girls do that and the boys are knights and kings and dragons, or even a boy fairy. He is satisfied. He is a little boy who wants to be a princess. It is no different from letting your daughter play with a monster truck. I hope you would. I would.

Rowen translating time...

Can you guess what this is? William can, he is a better translator than me!!

In the car, "muh duh wisssen muh-gick"

On the way to the car, "not a out me!"

When watching a movie or reading a book...."I don wock hum, dawey"

I will post translations in a couple days, feel free to comment and guess what he is saying.

Grab the tissues....

I have an assignment for you...go to the links on the left...go to My Friend Kim's Blog, go to page 2 of the posts and read Loss: part one, then go back to the first page and read Loss: part two.

Just do it. Kim is amazing...you very well may not ever need to know what she says in part one, but chances are pretty high you will need to know someday what she says in part two.

Grab the tissues. Read. Go kiss your kids. Now. In that order.

Other people's writing...

Remember the quote down in my favorite things? The one that says that the best writing is the kind that is like an assignment, it inspires you to write your own...well....this writing does that, it's from "a beautiful blog" link on the left side <---over there. Anyway, this writing is EVEN more than an assignment. It gives me the instruction not to attempt to create something better than it, for I know I can't put it so eloquently. Wow. It actually instructs me to stop trying and just admire. To admit my own shortcomings and be really really happy someone found the words before I did, and better than I could. Enjoy reading this as much as I did:

Since the day I realized I was going to be a dad for the first time...even before that, I was formulating ideas in my brain about how I would raise my children. Not how we would right all of the injustices perpetrated upon us in our childhood. Not how we'd eat organic or dismiss the TV. Certainly not how, through hard work and discipline, my children would excel and succeed in a hyper competitive world. Mostly, I would imagine climbing mountains. Outfitting my kids tightly into kayaks for multi-day excursions into deep river canyons. Skiing. Before starting a family, these were my passions. My every day pursuits. I wanted them to feel the connection to the Earth that I had felt.

Then, as the children appeared...and multiplied, I realized getting out the door, into the car and headed toward the beach without forgetting lunch or swimsuits or diapers could be an expedition of which to be proud. And, while introducing my kids to the astonishing beauty and abundant challenges of the natural world is still at the top of my parenting list, engaging in a match of wits and wills with a three year old girl and her brothers remains my focus.

Watching them grow and experience life beyond the door has been different and perhaps more pleasurable than I'd imagined. I'd never been so aware of the energy that envelopes a child when they enter the water, until it was my child. The significance of planting and nurturing a seed. How that connection would be personal, entirely their own, and different from mine. Yet, sometimes, these paths of connectivity intersect and an experience is shared. These are the days for which I live.

Late last summer we were in the woods enjoying a rain storm from the shelter of our camp. Calvin turned to me and said, "I want to go for a paddle".
For a split second, I was thinking, "Oh, man. I do NOT want to go out in that rain". I managed to avoid my initial response and we pushed off. We paddled in unison, without saying a word, as the rain poured down on us. I watched my son sitting strong in the bow of that boat, with his head up, taking in the wonder of that moment. He turned around with the broadest of grins and just smiled at me.

"This was a good idea," I said.

Just a thought...

You might have heard this quote before, and heard that it was from Nelson Mandela, but it is actually from Maryanne Williamson, and Nelson Mandela quoted it in a speech. Either way, now you get my thoughts and ramblings on it....

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I think of this quote all the time, run it over and over in my head. I wonder really if we are scared of our light. Or more realistically if I am scared of mine. Am I scared of the power I have? Sometimes and in some ways I am sure that is true. And in and of itself that is a powerful quote, but lately my mind has gone somewhere else with this...

I don't think we are afraid of our light, or of our goodness. I think though that a lot of us are afraid of success. For possibly a few reasons. Of course most of us are afraid to try and fail, but then even more of us are afraid to find out either way, so we don't try. Perhaps we are scared that we will get everything that we want, and then we will change our minds or decide that it turned out after all not to be what we wanted, and will have to start all over again. Possibly we are scared of the effort involved in achieving what we actually want. But then again, we might get all that we want and realize it still requires effort to maintain. So I see so many people (me included) who don't try enough in whatever facet of their lives because they have already decided that they don't deserve success, or won't get success. So rather than find out that they may be wrong, they don't ever take the risks involved in getting to the success. A 50/50 chance gives much better odds than sitting still and having a 100% chance that nothing will happen.

The more life I live and the more people I know, the more I see this fear affecting lives. It affects mine and I am sure in some ways it affects yours. Either way, I think that effort is a much better past time than fear. Time spent in fear, or especially time spent paralyzed because of fear, is time wasted. I hope that you and I can try to spend less and less time in fear and doubt and insecurity and unsure-ness, and more time putting in the effort required to get what we want out of life.

Try that one on for a new year's resolution!

Awwww Cute....

So, tonight like most nights, my boys don't want to go to sleep, they talk and spend too much time "winding down". But tonight, Rowen ended up in my bed and William was in his own bed. After a while of this a few drinks of juice and give me this, turn the light back on, etc, Rowen finally fell asleep. Then a while later, William came out of his bed and said, "I wanna lay with Rowen." I don't know what I was thinking because I told him yes. I told him he could move the pillows, climb between Rowen and the wall and go to sleep, really quietly, because if he woke up Rowen he would get a spank on the bum and a quick trip back to his bed. I never heard a thing and this is what it looks like now. Awwwww. I know exactly what I was thinking now.

There are plenty of moments where these two are fighting and screaming. There aren't quite as many moments like this one. I need to give them more opportunities like this. I need to facilitate more opportunities like this. I need to photograph and enjoy moments like this. If only for the evidence that they really do like each other.

Happy New Year!!

First blog post of 2009. Wow.

So, New Year's with a kiddo....okay well, my first New Year as a mom, William was a little baby, Jason and I took him to the party at my sister Ingrid's house. I actually can't remember the New Year's when Will was 1. Actually can't remember the one when he was 2 either, when Rowen was a newborn. Hmmm....I have a bad memory...okay but then last year when Will was 3 and Rowen was 1, I was working a graveyard shift at Snowbird. So I missed that one completely.

But this year, I took both kids to Ingrid's house for the party. Both boys loved running around and playing with their cousins. William was especially happy about whichever of his cousins got a batman costume for Christmas. He wore it most of the night. Rowen was a bit crabby, but hey the party didn't even start until after his regular bedtime, who can blame him?

James was hamming it up for the camera.

Who doesn't love a nice cozy fire?

William is going to BE Batman when he grows up. Oh and by the way, I asked Batman at this party if he wanted a snack, and he told me, "Batman never eats snacks Mom."