The Repentant Blogger

I just went to post my last blog and realized it has been over a MONTH since I last posted. Good heavens. I had a few lessons I needed to learn this last month and have been busy messing up, repenting, messing up some more, repenting, and then trying really hard to learn my lessons. Here is what I have been trying to learn and why I haven't been blogging.

1) Despite the passage of years, I still hate science. I understand it better now but the bottom line is that it really just isn't all that interesting to me.

2) People with cracked heels and a lousy sense of balance should just save their money and not buy high heeled shoes.

3) Be leary of pedicures given in shady nail shops in Murray, Utah. And if you choose not to heed that advice, at least take ALL your prescribed antibiotics and don't assume that just because the infected sores have gone away, that the staff infection is all cleared up.

4) When your child wakes up in the middle of the night with a bloody nose, don't let him wipe it on the furniture in the family room before getting him a piece of toliet paper.

5) It is OK to say "no" to babysitting other people's kids...even if you have to lie about it.

6) It is OK to let a child that is not your own sit in a poopy diaper. When you have enough poop in your life, you don't need to take on someone else's.

7) PBS is actually EDUCATIONAL T.V. so don't feel bad if your children need to watch it all day.

8) Stop wishing away my children's childhoods...I'll have plenty of time to get to all the things I want to do someday...although I'm certain when that time comes that I will be sitting in a rocking chair wishing I had all those days with my kids back.

9) Do your visiting teaching.

10) Stop cleaning the house and just get on the floor and play with your kids. Your kids will never ever remember if the dishes were done all the time but I'm convinced they will remember every moment that you put them off because you just had to do one more load of laundry.

Anyway, these are some of the reasons I've been unable to blog for the last month. They all have fairly interesting stories behind them but I'll save those for another blogging day.

Infants and Therapy

Yesterday in church I was having a conversation with a friend where I started a sentence by saying, "Well, Hannah's therapist told me..." My friend passed through an obvious range of emotions before holding up her hand and saying, "Whoa. I'm sorry. Hannah's therapist?" Given that sweet Hannah is 5 months old and that I didn't preface "therapist" with "PHYSICAL therapist" created some confusion although the ensuing conversation convinced me that maybe we really should start our children in therapy when they are young. I've considered keeping a notebook of all the bad mothering moments I've had to save my children money on therapy when they are older. Instead of spending the first 10 sessions recalling all the horrors, they could just hand the notebook to the therapist and get on to undoing all the damage. I should insert a disclaimer here that really I do try my best but way too often I go to bed with all the ungraceful moments I've had that day floating around in my head. I adore my children...love them from head to toe but I always like to start conversations with people I've never met that are either considering motherhood or just beginning motherhood with the warning, "I'm not a graceful mother. I promise that whatever you witness here today is not a reflection on how it has to be. I like to do things the hard way."

Today my children and I all ate breakfast on the floor because I've removed all chairs and stepping devices from our lives to keep Matthew out of the cupboards.
Tonight for dinner my boys had Cocoa Pebbles with bananas, 1/2 a frozen Cotton Candy gogurt and a paper towel with a piece of turkey on it.
At the wedding reception Saturday night I actually told Jake he had to eat 4 more bites of his butter frosted cake before he could have the mints (as if eating the cake were somehow healthier than the mints).
Hannah went to church yesterday with her onesie hanging out the sleeves of her cute tulip dress and by the end of church I'd stripped her of her ruffle socks, darling shoes, and head bow because I couldn't stand how confined she looked.
I actually had a conversation with a mother today that went EXACTLY like this:
Perfect mother: Excuse my hands. They're blue because the kids and I were dying wool in the backyard today.
Me: Dying wool?
Perfect mother: Yes. We dye the wool in Kool Aid (Sugar free kind I'm sure) and then prepare the wool for knitting.
Me: Yeah, we watched 3 straight hours of PBS Kids today.
Perfect mother: (Polite but horrified laugh) Oh, that's why we don't have cable.
Me: Yeah, I only have cable to keep me from giving away my children between 3:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. every day.
(Awkward silence)
I could have kept my mouth shut but it just begged to be said. And don't think I haven't called my husband on his cell phone and told him he could stay at work as late as he needed but if he stepped in that door one minute pass 6:00 p.m., he would have to go pick his children up at the neighbor's house.

Yes, starting therapy in infancy doesn't sound like such a bad thing. Happy Mother's Day!