4th picture

I don't usually respond to most "taggings" from fellow bloggers or emailers. If I'm not interested enough in zodiac signs to remember my own, how can I possibly expect my readers to want to read about my zodiac sign or whether I like x-rays or ultrasounds better? Maybe I just don't like being told what to write.

However, there is one tag I've wanted to do, especially after our trip to Southern Utah last weekend with my family. And maybe the catch is that it involves pictures, which I love. The instructions to this tag are to post the fourth picture in your fourth folder and describe it. Now, if the 4th picture in the 4th folder of my 4^th folder of "My Pictures" showed me looking chubby, I would no doubt add this "tag" to the many others I have ignored. But since the fourth picture in the fourth folder of the fourth folder yields a picture I love, this tag wins a post.

Almost exactly two years ago Sage and Eliza were taking a bath and I was doing something in the kitchen. Suddenly I heard Sage admonishing 9-month-old Eliza “Don't take off your clothes!” Wondering what could possibly be going on, I rushed in, to find Eliza covered in foam letters.

It is so endearing to witness my kids really enjoying and loving each other. Sage and Eliza have a very symbiotic relationship. They contribute important things in each other's lives. I always get a little emotional when I see Sage hoisting Eliza up in the McDonald’s playplace, or when I see Eliza willingly carrying Sage’s coat and lunchbag home from Sage's preschool.

That being said, it's hard for me to see Sage and Eliza fight. Our 3 ½ hour car trip home yesterday consisted of a lot of that. We had all three kids packed into the back seat of our little Subaru with Eliza in the middle (due to Lily’s tortocolis and Sage’s booster seat restrictions). At any given 10-minute window, had you listened in on our conversations, you would have heard a variation on this phrase:

“Eliza, stop ______ (touching Sage, putting your feet on Lily’s face, pulling Sage’s hair, waking up Lily, stealing Sage's blanket,...) or you ____ (won’t get cheetos/dessert/a toy, will have to have your arms held tight, won't get to choose a movie,...).

Sage and Eliza are kind of in a fighting phase right now. I keep telling myself the phase should be over any minute now, as I issue prayers heavenward that are filled with varying degrees of hope and pessimism depending on the day. Now I understand why I recall almost all our family scripture times of my youth ending in a discussion of "no contention." It is difficult and exhausting to try to keep up with the prophets’ admonition that “ye will not suffer your children that they...fight and quarrel one with another.” (Mosiah 4:14), especially in car trips. If I’m not feeding Lily when a fight breaks out, I often find myself without energy or even ideas as to how to best solve the current battle. It can be a discouraging war against the natural man.

But it’s pictures like this tub episode with Sage and Eliza that remind me that the "no contention" goal IS worth working towards, and maybe even talking about at every scripture time.

And in the meantime, maybe I will buy a minivan.