Out of context

Ah, the intricacies of the English language. Here's a few expressions that have stumped my kids recently.

Eliza ripped a map off the wall and said “Ta da!” [Sage's tumbling teacher taught her to say this after she did a forward roll. Eliza obviously picked up on the phrase, if not the meaning.]

Eliza held up an apple to examine it and said “Sick!” then happily ate it. [I don't care what exclamation she uses, as long as she keeps eating the fruits and veggies.]

When I was reading a book too slowly for Eliza, she interrupted with a loud "Amen,” forced the book closed, slid off my lap, and walked off. [She tries to cut off family prayers that go "too long" this way, too. The length she's willing to wait patiently during a prayer is inversely proportional to the deliciousness of the food sitting in front of her or the exciting-ness of the toy she had to set aside for prayer.]

Sage looked up from the toy she was playing with, while I was trying on clothes in the dressing room at Target, and said, "Mommy, you’re so righteous!” [What if everyone thought trying on clothes were a sign of righteousness?!?]

Making sense of death

Last month, Sage told me she dreamed about me dying, and she was sad. I told her I didn’t think I was going to die soon, because “usually people only die when they’re old.” Sage’s face broke into a smile and she told me happily, “But we’re not old, we’re new!”

February marked the anniversary (what a dumb word in this context) of the death of Mark's mom, as well as my grandma. We've talked to Sage a lot about death--between trying to explain Jesus' death, as well as the death of her grandmas. Kids are so believing that they’re quick to accept many things you tell them about death. However, their frames of reference are very limited, so the picture they get is…well, interesting to say the least.

Last month during sharing time (Primary), Sage snuck over to Mark and me behind the piano to relay this important message. “You know what I thought about last night? I thought about how you and Dad didn’t die because you have important things to do.” Uh…right.

Kids’ understanding of death is so piecemeal, based on what they hear and absorb of discussions on the subject. One of Sage’s friends, a smart little 4-year-old, recently had the experience at Red Lobster of choosing a lobster from the tank, which was cooked for him. After his meal, he asked his grandma when the lobster would come back alive. It seems his Primary teachers failed to mention that lobsters don’t experience near instantaneous resurrection after being grilled!

Last month, when Mark reminded Sage that his mom died, her chipper response was “It’s okay, because we have another mommy,” and she pointed to me.

Kids must be legitimately confused by conflicting outcomes in their own experience with death in real life, and stories like Sleeping Beauty and Jairus’ daughter who was raised from the dead by Jesus. She’s dead…no she’s asleep…no she’s alive.

Does Snow White’s poisoned apple and kiss by Prince Charming rob power and reality from Christ’s death and resurrection, and stories like the raising of Jairus’s daughter and Lazarus? I wondered how Sage perceived it, so I asked her if Sleeping Beauty was resurrected. She scoffed, and said no. I’m not sure how she'd explain away the deed, but I was glad she seemed to be separating church and Disney!

Who knows what kids are going to make of death based on fairy tales, the media, the miraculous stories in the scriptures, and the harsh realities of life. But at least I can be consistent about sharing my own conviction with my kids of the reality of Jesus Christ—that He lived, died, and then was resurrected for us.

Sage has been asked to give a talk in Primary on Easter Sunday. I jumped at the chance to teach her correct information, including my own testimony that Jesus lives. I had to do it in simple enough words that 3-year-olds can understand. Here’s what I came up with (try to imagine the accompanying pictures). I believe it with all my heart, even though it sounds very simple. And I know that Sage believes it, too.

Jesus is my Savior.

He suffered for our sins so we can be clean and happy.

Then Jesus died for us on a cross. This is called the Atonement.

People were very sad. They put his body in a tomb.

After three days, Mary went to visit his body, and found him alive. Jesus had been resurrected. It was Easter.

This is my grandma. She died last year. I know that she is with Jesus now, and she will be resurrected, too.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

He does live. Happy Easter.

I may never go out again

Four Reasons I May Never Go Out Again

1. My 3-year-old hates to do up her own carseat, even though she can.
2. My 1-year-old refuses to let me do up her carseat, because she thinks she can do it herself, and insists on proving this every time. [And the lower harness is the jigsaw puzzle kind—tricky for adults!]
3. No matter how long the car ride is, and how much she wants to get out of the car while it’s in motion, my 1-year-old refuses to get out when we finally arrive. She just wants to sit in the car and rebuckle her carseat. Apparently the 5 minutes of buckling it in the first place were not enough.
4. The governor just passed a law requiring all children in the state to be in booster seats through age 8. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have kids. Or he hates his wife. And if not that, she probably hates him now.

Public transportation is looking more and more appealing. Either that or hermitage, until my youngest is 9.

3 reasons Sage is going to love 3/17/08

1. It’s Jungle Day at Sage's tumbling class.
Sage loves her tumbling class. There are just three kids, their moms, and one fabulous teacher. At any given moment during the two blessed tumbling hours per week, Sage's face usually looks like it does in this picture. The teacher is so great; she has a new theme each class. On "Under the Sea" day, she pretended to be a shark, and chased the kids up and down a long bouncy mat (pictured). It was such a hit, they've requested it dozens of time since then, and she always obliges. I think I used to have that much energy. It seems like a long time ago. For now, I'm just happy to pay someone to play "shark" with my child. I'll take the pictures.


2. It’s St. Patrick’s Day…aka, Green Day.
And who has loved the color green since the beginning of time? Sage. Just wait till she sees that the “green cow” came to visit our fridge. And green eggs and ham might be on the menu for breakfast. (Does the ham have to be green, too? Is it Green (Eggs and Ham) or does ham alongside your Green Eggs suffice?) And that’s just the start of tomorrow's green food…



3. It’s Sugar Cookie Day at our house.
Mark works at Holy Cross Ministries, which was founded by the Sisters who founded Notre Dame. Since SLC doesn’t have a river to turn green, like the St. Joseph River in South Bend, the Sisters at Holy Cross Ministries are celebrating with a St. Patrick’s Day lunch. Mark needed 25 sugar cookies to take to work, so I picked a classic recipe and went to work. Unfortunately I didn’t realize this recipe yielded about 25,000 sugar cookies until I had mixed in about a month’s supply of flour without thinking. Lucky for me, one of Sage’s favorite activities in the whole world is decorating sugar cookies. In February, I frosted a heart cookie, and set it in front of her to decorate. I got distracted, and when I checked back on her, 2 jars of sprinkles had been almost completely emptied on that one lucky heart! The cookie had some serious sprinkle surface tension, and could probably raise your glucose level merely by making eye contact.

It's fun to remember last year's St. Patrick's Day that we celebrated in the land of the Fighting Irish (with Liz and Dave). We'll miss the dyeing (green) of the St. Joseph river, but I will definitely not be repeating last year's authentic Irish dinner of corned beef and cabbage. Some traditions can be sufficiently repeated in memory only, I think!

Does anyone else have any great St. Patrick's Day traditions?

GoodReads

Somehow I signed myself up with an online organization called “GoodReads." I don’t even know what I did. I was just trying to see who was on it that I knew, and a while later I got an email from one of my email contacts saying that I had contacted them via. GoodReads to be their friend but they couldn’t even tell what my name was. Oops.

I looked over my friends’ reading recommendations, and it was fun to see what other people were reading. But then, I started feeling overwhelmed, as I noticed some friends had reviewed dozens of books! I can’t be on this list. What would I put as my reading? Moo Moo, Brown Cow—5 stars, for a good variety of farm animals to expose kids to? Or how about 5 stars for Quick as a Cricket, for the number of times per day Eliza wants me to read it to her (even though she usually just likes to skip to her favorite pages with the lamb and the shrimp)? I have read an impressive number of pages, it’s just that those pages all come from repeat reads of books with 10 or less pages.

What non-board-books would I list? I have an embarrassingly short recent reads list. Maybe I could get Danielle (an amazingly regular reader who puts away at least one real book a week) to sum up a few for me, and I’ll let her review them under the pseudonym of “Janel Williams.” Or maybe I could “review” a few hot new reads, my own blog entries. Ha! So much for classic literature. So much for scholarly discussion with my peers. At this rate, I’d be better off just leaving my name as “anonymous.” Then no one can feel bad for my illiteracy.

It’s not that I don’t like reading. I get kind of obsessive when I start a new book. My brother-in-law, Bryce, loaned me a Clive Cussler, then a Michael Crichton, and I flew through those in a day or two…aided by a few near sleepless nights, followed by a few ultra-grumpola days. I just get too involved in reading. It’s hard for me to put books down sometimes. And from this comes my “feast or famine” reading routines.

I am reading two books right now, but not making much headway on either. Mao and Dare to Discipline. You just have to be in the mood for those (although, I’ve found, there’s no more inspiring time to read Dare to Discipline than when your three-year-old is acting up). I have heard Mao is a great read, and it would be nice to get through it before its second renewal runs out at the local library, and the librarians come hunt me down for my 5^th fine in one month. (I just cannot find Mary Had a Little Lamb anywhere, and am really disturbed about its purported $7 value. It was clearly not worth that much to my kids when they buried it somewhere. Also, a few weeks ago we drove off with a CD holder of DVDs on top of our car, so the library is down a few kids’ movies, and we’re down more than a few bucks to replace them.)

So the burning question remains: Should I keep my pride, and remain an anonymous non-contributor on GoodReads? Or should I suck it up, and list my pitiful contribution to the literary world (omitting, of course, embarrassing obsessions of the past (long past) like Sweet Valley Twins and The Babysitters Club), in hopes of being inspired by my truly literary friends?

The sound of music

Our TV doesn’t get reception, but it’s ok because we have Mark for both musical entertainment as well as commercial breaks. Music runs in Mark’s blood. One of Mark’s sisters recounted trips to the grocery store with Mark when he was little. They would never take more than a few steps up an aisle before Mark would recognize a product and promptly break into its associated song or chant its tagline. “Rice-r-roni, the San Francisco treat.” And over an aisle, you’d hear, “The quilted quicker picker-upper…Bounty!” Or the one that would embarrass his mom the most, “Coke is it!”

Mark’s musical blood can be both a blessing and…well, less of a blessing. For example, Sage is fully versed in all the words of “I Wanna Love you Tender” (among many other songs, both annoying and not), and during our car trip last week, I recognized the unmistakable words “Santa Baby” in Eliza’s chanting.

To Mark’s credit, Sage has over a dozen songs in Spanish memorized, and Eliza is as quick to request “Cabeza, Oh-oh [hombros]” as “Head, …Knees and Toes.” There is no doubt that our girls have picked up much of Mark’s musicality, and that makes me very happy.

Not only does Mark do a great vocal imitation of various singers (my favorite is Colm Wilkinson’s “Bring Him Home”), he is also a bit of a song writer in his own right. Well, at least he rearranges the words to familiar tunes (does that earn any particular title?). Mark is famous in my family for his unique variation on the song “Love Story” (Where do I begin…). My sister’s Christmas request was that I keep a list of Mark’s “variations” on common tunes. As many sound a little (unintentionally) sacrilegious, and likely violate copyright laws, I had better not publish them. Besides, as is common with Mark’s songs, they always stick in my head for a long time. If I want to sleep tonight, I better try to think of other things.

The song we’ve all had in our heads today was “Mamma Mia,” by Abba. We recently saw the preview for the similarly named movie with Meryl Streep, and had to check out Abba’s music video on Youtube. Listening to it twice was enough to have us all singing it, including Eliza, who walked around chanting “Mamma Mia” every few minutes, long after a normal 1-year-old should have forgotten it.

It was clear that Sage also had music on the mind today, because I caught her chanting a line from the folk song “Cindy,” (which she’s especially enjoyed singing since the birth of her cousin, who—in Sage’s mind—was probably named after the song. Right, Danielle?). When I heard Sage’s one-liner, without recognizing the context, I stopped quickly, torn between curiosity and the temptation to launch into a lecture about things that are not appropriate to repeat. Sage, unfortunately, had chosen to repeat over and over the line “She knocked the preacher down” (substituting “I” for “she”). “I knocked the preacher down.” Sounds bad, especially for a 3-year-old, huh? To clear her name, I had to look up the real words:

Now Cindy’s got religion,

She wheeled round and round

She got so full of glory

She knocked the preacher down

Interestingly enough, it’s for this same “Cindy” song that Sage has invented her own chorus, the protagonist now being “chicken nuggets” (“Get along home, little nuggies.”) Someone is clearly their father’s daughter. I wonder if the chicken nuggets will be knocking down the preacher soon. That’s better than Sage giving herself credit for such a deed, even though she undoubtedly has no idea what it means. Let’s just hope her Primary church teachers didn’t ask Sage what her favorite song was this week.

Earned vacation

Last week after Mark finished the bar [I have more to say about that in a future entry], we treated ourselves to a little vacation in southern Utah. The Woodburys generously allowed us to stay in the adorable little house they own there [they live in Las Vegas], and it made the perfect getaway. We packed up a bunch of games, clothes and food and headed down to a little peaceful isolation in the tiny town of 470 people (474 when we got there).

It’s been joked that “a vacation frequently means that the family goes away for a rest, accompanied by a mother who sees that the others get it.” Luckily this did not hold true for our trip! Our goal was to spend time together, and give the girls some extra attention. This translated into 2 very happy girls, and 2 parents who were very sick of playing “Guesstures” and Dora Candyland by the end of the week. But it was worth it! We missed having the internet for about 5 seconds, and then we began to enjoy having so few distractions from the good stuff: spending time together.

We did puzzles (including a killer hard 3-D Monsters Inc. puzzle) and played games, we laughed at how much the girls liked to “perform” by standing on the ledge of the fireplace and sing and jabber away.

We also went to Bryce Canyon, which Mark had never seen, and I had never seen adorned with snow. When it was time to leave, Sage cried because she loved “following the paths.” Eliza just wanted to talk to Uncle Bryce on the phone. Southern Utah is an amazing and beautiful place. My family spent a lot of vacations in the various National Parks and wonders, and it was fun to be the parent this time, and share those wonders with my family.

The car travel gave Mark and me some good conversation time (2 1/2 hours with boring scenery and sleeping kids!...notice Eliza's attempt to get out of her carseat straps below). Why is it so hard to make time to talk in normal life? I blame it on the internet, with which I have a love-hate relationship.

Now we’re back home, and trying to figure out how to maximize the next 3 days—Mark’s last before he enters “the real world” of working next week! He’s been a student for over 19 (almost consecutive) years; it’s hard to imagine what it will be like to not have the flexibility and fluctuating demands of studenthood. We’re definitely starting a new phase of life, and it’s exciting and scary at the same time. The scary part includes the packet of loan repayment slips that came in the mail. The exciting part includes living off real money and not student loans!

May we have many happy vacations like this one in our future, wherever it takes us.