Belated Mother's Day Post

WARNING: This is very much a “mommy blogger” post/novel and I fully recognize I am the only one that won’t be bored by reading it. I won’t feel offended if you "mark as read” and check back another day.

It’s been a week since Mother’s Day and I still haven’t blogged it. Sometimes life is just too busy for blogging. I guess late is better than never.

I have mixed feelings about the whole Mother’s Day thing. It seems like there’s too high of an expectation for everything and everyone to be perfect and I feel like it shines a spotlight on all the ways that I don’t measure up as a mom. That being said, I do love the good food and I love that the kids try so hard to be good. I’m learning to go in with low expectations. The highlights this year were breakfast in bed, chocolate covered strawberries, yummy turkey sandwiches on homemade (Rhodes) rolls, and having my kids sing to me at church (and Ben singing me a solo when he got home since he decided to be a turkey when it was time to sing at church). I got fun presents . . . two of which I didn’t buy or help make for myself. We spent the evening taking pictures of Karl’s family and playing at the park. It was a good day.

I love being a mom. I love that I have four quality kids and that I know them better than anyone else in the whole world does. I’ve thought a lot this week about how much they have grown up. It makes me happy and a little sad . . . but mostly happy. Our goal is to raise happy, responsible, independent kids. It is fun to see them taking steps (sometimes baby steps) toward that end. I want to remember the little victories that we celebrate in this house, so here a few recent ones:

Ben gave a talk in Primary a couple of weeks ago. It was just a normal, 8-year-old Primary talk about baptism, but it made me a bit teary. As he stood up there reading his talk perfectly, my mind jumped back to his first talk four years ago. He was my little late-talking Sunbeam who HATED going to church. His talk was on Noah’s ark. I think Nate and I were the only ones that actually understood the words he was saying and that is because we had written them. Sometimes it is hard to see the progress the kids are making from day to day, but when I saw him up there so confident and speaking so clearly, it hit me like a ton of bricks how far he has come in the last few years. It was a good moment!

Emily is a sensitive girl. That used to mean that she was kind of emotionally fragile and she would get her heart broken really easily. Luckily, she has toughened up a bit over the last couple of years (there’s nothing like preschool and kindergarten to give you a tough skin). I don’t worry so much about her holding her own on the playground anymore. The best part is that her heightened sensitivity has made it so she can read people really well. She seems to have a sixth sense about when someone is feeling sad and goes out of her way to make them feel better with a hug or a picture or a love note. She is a sweet girl that way. She also has a great sense of humor. She isn’t so funny herself, but she gets jokes.

Elise is our random, funny, spontaneous and (I hate to say it) LAZY little girl. She will do anything to get out of working and it has been more than a little difficult to create any kind of a work ethic in that turkey. Imagine my surprise last week when she cleaned up the whole playroom . . . by herself . . . without being asked! I know it was an anomaly, but it gave me hope that she has it in her to work. We’ve already told our kids that they are not living in our basement when they are 35, so hopefully we can help Elise develop into a little worker bee between now and then.

Abby is changing faster than the other kids and her progress makes me a little more sad since she seems to be growing up so fast. I promised myself that I wouldn’t keep my baby a baby forever, so I’m letting her move on to being a big girl even though I’m not entirely ready for it. My favorite new thing about Abby is listening to her sing. She has three songs in her repertoire and she sings them over and over . . . I Am a Child of God, Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam, and Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. I guess she also knows a few lines from the Diamond Castle songs, but we don’t hear those as frequently. She also has a great vocabulary. It is funny to hear the words that come out of a two-year-old’s mouth when she has older siblings. Words like "Bakugans" and "Indiana Jones" and "awesome". My favorite new verbalization of the week is “Gramma Reesa.” My mom stayed here this weekend and Abby kept calling down the stairs to her at the top of her lungs, “Come here Gramma Reesa.” Very cute.