Do not meddle in the affairs of Dragons, you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
Man, this is just becoming a list of birthday songs. *shrug*
This year my birthday song is Francesca Battistelli – Giants Fall
This year, especially the last six months, has been really hard. I expect the next six months to be just as hard. We have some really big giants to conquer in our lives. Some of them are really scary.
We can make it. We can slay those giants.
I wanted to add my little piece to the tributes that have been paid to President Monson today. I had a personal experience about President Monson I have been thinking about all day that I wanted to share. I wrote a post about it. I didn’t publish it. I saved it and it’s sitting, waiting.
It’s really hard for me to know what Spiritual things to share sometimes. The things that are the most meaningful, the strongest, are also the most personal and the most sacred. I want to share the light, but I also want to keep sacred things sacred.
How do you know? What is the difference between fear stopping you and wise restraint? I can’t tell today.
So, I’ll just say this:
President Monson is a Prophet of God. I know it. God told me thought the Spirit.
I Love you President Monson.
Welcome Home.
I took me a few months to find the right song for this year.
My little prayer
I’ve not written in a long time. It’s a combination of things; busyness, different focus, just life. But last night I was up in the night and I thought about some things that I wanted to write down.
Last night, at 3:00 am my three year old son came into my room with a bloody nose. This is not totally surprising, he’s been sick and tends to get nose bleeds when he’s had a cold. He’d also had two during the day so it was obvious he’s got a tender spot inside his nose right now.
He doesn’t do well with bloody noses. He fights and kicks and tries to escape. He HATES it when I hold his nose. Being tired, he fought more, and he already had blood on his face and his hands when I picked him up. I got his blood all over me. I looked in the mirror as I was rocking my crying child, with his blood streaked all over me, knowing he would be fine. In that moment I felt so much for all the mothers out there in the world right now who are rocking their child, knowing they won’t be fine.
In the wake of this weeks flooding in Houston I’ve been tender in my heart for the suffering of others. Holding my child, late at night, made that even more so. I thought about how blessed I have been. In the wake of illnesses, that could have taken the life of my children at different times, I didn’t always see that. Those were times of fear. There were times that I didn’t always see, in the moment, what the Lord was trying to teach me in the midst of those experiences. He was trying to take the difficult thing and use them to grow empathy in my heart.
As I rocked my son I prayed for the women who were holding their children above flood waters, those who are sitting by hospital beds, those who are sitting by graves. I felt and I know that the Lord loves each one of them.
The Lord does not make bad things happen in this world, but he can make us into something great from those terrible events in our lives. Use your love and your hands to help that come to pass for yourself and for others. If there is little else you can do pray, pray for those mothers and children. If you cannot open your home or your wallet, open your heart. Reach out in love. What you can do is enough.
The bleeding stopped, my son went back to sleep. I watched him for a while, thinking about all the other mothers, wanting to hug and rock them as I had rocked my son. Writing this is my small way of doing that.
If you need a hug I’m sending you one. If you need someone to rock you, I’m here rocking you. If you need someone to whisper in your ear that it will a be okay in the end, I’m doing that. If you need love, you’ve got mine. If you don’t need it now, carry this message with you until you do. Because we all do at some time.
You are not alone.
All the kids pack their lunches for school every day on there own. Sometimes this is a hard task to make them do, sometimes they just get it done, which is nice.
Lunchmeat is usually the one where I have to hound him to pack his lunch. One day he had left his lunch box at school so I made him, after hounding, put his lunch in a plastic Walmart sack.
In the morning everyone got their lunches and went to school as normal.
In the afternoon when I picked up the kids, Lunchmeat was very upset. When I asked him what was wrong he asked “Why did you only give me carrots for lunch?” I reminded him that he had packed his own lunch and asked what he was talking about. He pulled out a Walmart sack and out of it he pulled a three pound bag of carrots.He asked me why I changed his lunch for carrots.
When we got home his lunch was still sitting in the fridge.
Poor kid. What I don’t understand is why no one from the school did anything about it? Apparently several adults noted he only had carrots and commented to him but no one got him a new lunch or called me.
It’s gonna be OK
There is a daily ritual at my house that I refer to as “The Count”. This is the time of day where I look in the dishwasher and the cupboard and count the sippy cups. Anyone who has had a toddler will understand why this is an important ritual. Doing this has saved me money and stress. It has also saved me from losing my lunch. Opening a sippy cup that has been left filled with milk, under the couch for a week is not pleasant.
When I was a younger Mom, and less wise, I did not perform this ritual. This resulted in many a time of finding a sippy cup in some random place and wondering how long it had been there and what the contents had been. There were times where I just tossed the cup out rather than brave opening it.
Now, in my older and wiser years, I perform the ritual. Currently we own six sippy cups. Keeping the number of cups to a minimum is very helpful in this ritual. When I am loading the dishwasher after dinner I count the cups. If there are any fewer than six cups everything in the house stops as everyone searches for the missing cup or cups. Once the cup is found, rinsed, and placed in the dishwasher normal life can resume. NOTHING is allowed to go in until the ritual is complete. I am more sane because I do this.
What rituals do you have as a mom and save you from the mom version of DOOM?
Well, I’ve finally picked a birthday song. I thought of this one a LONG time ago but I was hoping to find one that was a little easier to explain why I chose it, and a little less personal, but I’ve not found one so here we go.
I know parts of this song sound super depressing but to me they are not, they have hope. What it means to me is that all the challenges in my life (not that I’ve had a super hard life) are things that have and that will make me grow and be stronger. I particularly think about this song in the context of my depression. The fight against it has taught me so much, has made me more understanding and has given me more compassion. Fighting it has made me stronger.
When you win these kind of battles it teaches you to fly. Some days I fly. Some days, you fly too.
“Superheroes”
All her life she has seen
All the meaner side of me
They took away the prophet’s dream for a profit on the street
All his life he’s been told
He’ll be nothing when he’s old
All the kicks and all the blows
He won’t ever let it show
‘Cause he’s stronger than you know
A heart of steel starts to grow
When you’ve been fighting for it all your life
You’ve been struggling to make things right
That’s how a superhero learns to fly
(Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power)
When you’ve been fighting for it all your life
You’ve been working every day and night
That’s how a superhero learns to fly
(Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power)
All the hurt, all the lies
All the tears that they cry
When the moment is just right
You see fire in their eyes
‘Cause he’s stronger than you know
A heart of steel starts to grow
When you’ve been fighting for it all your life
You’ve been struggling to make things right
That’s how a superhero learns to fly
Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power
When you’ve been fighting for it all your life
You’ve been working every day and night
That’s how a superhero learns to fly
(Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power)
(Power, power, power, power, power)
(Power, power, power, power, power)
(Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power)
(Power, power, power, power, power)
(Power, power, power, power, power)
(Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power)
She’s got lions in her heart
A fire in her soul
He’s got a beast in his belly
That’s so hard to control
‘Cause they’ve taken too much hits
Taking blow by blow
Now light a match, stand back, watch them explode
She’s got lions in her heart
A fire in her soul
He’s a got a beast in his belly
That’s so hard to control
‘Cause they’ve taken too much hits
Taking blow by blow
Now light a match, stand back, watch them explode, explode, explode, explode
When you’ve been fighting for it all your life
You’ve been struggling to make things right
That’s how a superhero learns to fly
(Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power)
When you’ve been fighting for it all your life
You’ve been working every day and night
That’s how a superhero learns to fly
(Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power)
(Power, power, power, power, power)
Oh, yeah…
(Power, power, power, power, power)
(Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power)
(Power, power, power, power, power)
(Power, power, power, power, power)
Ooh, yeah
Whoa
(Every day, every hour
Turn the pain into power)
When you’ve been fighting for it all your life
You’ve been struggling to make things right
That’s how a superhero learns to fly
I have a birthday curse.
It started when I was a little kid and my birthday fell RIGHT after the start of school. Everything was so crazy very often kids were not able to attend my parties…or at least that’s what I was told…
When I got older the curse got to be more pronounced, or at least in my head it did.
I remember when I turned 18. 12 of my friends planned a big party for me. Everyone was coming. On the day of only 2 showed up.
So I’ve learned to ignore my birthday for the most part. I tend not to plan things with other people or say much about my birthday because I’ve been conditioned to believe it will just lead to disappointment.
But even that attitude has not spared me from the curse.
About three years ago on the morning of my birthday our fridge broke. That was exciting. At least that year I still got cake.
One year hubby and my brother in law tried to fry me a turkey, because I LOVE me some fried turkey. First they ran out of propane and next the propane hose sprang a leak and lit on fire. Also the cake was a total failure. I do however count that birthday as a win because of all the love and effort that they put in for me in the face of the curse.
This year I got a little brave, I made plans with people.
And it worked! Mostly.
I had hot chocolate in the morning with one friend and lunch with another. I had a wonderful time. Then I got home. I had plans to play games with my family. I laid down for a few minutes after I got home and then was attacked by horrible allergies that kept me in bed for the next two days.
So I half won against the birthday curse.
Maybe next year I’ll 2/3’s win…
Do you have a day that invariably goes wrong? Like Friday the 13th’s (which are lucky for me, by the way) or does every Halloween end in disaster? I’d love to hear about your personal curse days.
So, I’ve implemented our summer plan. I do the same thing pretty much every summer, typically with a different focus. This summer our focus is going to be on kindness. My personal focus is going to be on consistency.
One of the things that drives me a little batty every summer (and in every day of my life) are the repeated questions. I don’t mind questions, I try to encourage my kids to ask me questions, but there are a few that get asked over and over with a certain degree of whinyness that I just go bonkers. And it doesn’t help that these questions are often asked of me two inches from my face at 6:00 am, thereby scaring me out of sleep and out of my mind.
To try and combat these two problems, I made the following documents and posted them on my bedroom door. Several people requested them so I thought I’d post them here. I got my kids to help me think up what should go on these. Lunchmeat really wanted to add the occurrence of Zombies to the “Should I wake up the Parents” sheet and was irritated when I didn’t. I told him Zombies fell under the “Bad Guys” category.
For those of you who saw the pictures of these signs on Instagram you will see that I have removed the images from the “Should I wake up the Parents” sign. I got the pictures off a clip art site so they are not my own so I felt it would not be right to re-post them here. Sorry!
Do you have a “Summer Plan”?
Do you have a particular focus in your “Summer Plan”?
What questions would you add to the “Answers to Common Questions” sheet?
Did I miss anything you would add to the “Should I wake up the Parents” sheet?
Jenny's Thoughts 