A Shift in Perspective

After last week I took Saturday easy. Sort of. I told Bryan that I wanted to spend time baking in preparation for Easter, so I spent several hours in the kitchen while he kept the kids alive. Baking all day doesn't sound easy, and it wasn't, but it was a treat for me since I love to bake. Then, after the kids were all in bed, I kept working in the kitchen and I listened to a wonderful book, Grace Where You Are by Emily Belle Freeman.

It had been on my list of books to read the week before Easter, but with the stress I was feeling I hadn't made it a priority. Then, during a conversation last week, my mom asked if I'd read it. That sent up a flag in my head, "Oh, this must be important, make time for it."

So I did. And it was exactly what I needed to calm my heart and my head. Our Easter was really nice, in part because I had prepared myself spiritually by reading this book.

I was surprised to see Phoebe's comment on yesterday's post. (She comments now, which I think is delightful.) She said that last week was a good week. Wow, was it? Thanks to her perspective, and some pondering of my own, I'm now able to look back and see the good parts of last week that accompanied the difficult.

Quarantine Week Four: The Pictures

Name Them One By One

This week has been hard. 

Tempers are running short, patience is running thin, stubborn refusal to do chores and schoolwork has been abundant. Cooper was up until 11 one night and 10 the next finishing the schoolwork that's only supposed to take two hours. Peter discovered today that he's not been checking the right places online for his assignments and he's missed several. Sophie switches between loving what we're doing for school and telling me how awful and stupid the work is. Phoebe is pretty self-sufficient, but is really missing her friends.

I'm feeling four weeks of no rest or break. Four weeks of only leaving the house a handful of times. Four weeks of getting almost no exercise and very little sleep. Four weeks of being "on" all the time for my job. Four weeks of incredible stress and worry. Four weeks of kids fighting with each other and with me while I work so hard to be the peacemaker. I feel it as a crushing heaviness in my chest. I feel it as a tightening of my breathing, my asthma on alert.

Yesterday the word came down from the Governor that our kids won't be going back to school during this academic school year. We weren't surprised, but we were sad. This means no volleyball team or engineering team competition to Alabama for Peter. My kids all had really exceptional teachers this year and I'm sad they won't be able to benefit from being in their classrooms anymore.

So, as is my habit, I've been working hard to find the positives: 

• I am thankful that we're all home.
• I'm thankful that we have food to eat.
• I'm thankful that Bryan can work from home.
• I'm thankful that Bryan has a job.
• I would prefer setting my kids' curriculum myself, but I'm thankful that I have the ability to teach what the teachers have set. 
• I'm thankful that we have enough electronic devices for everyone to do school at the same time.
• I'm thankful that we have enough bandwidth for everyone to be online at the same time.
• I'm thankful that we established chore charts and daily expectations several years ago so the house keeps running.
• I'm thankful that today starts our four-day weekend Spring Break. 
• I'm thankful that I've got fourteen years of experience as a stay-at-home parent so this isn't completely new territory for me. 
• I'm thankful we are all still healthy. 
• I'm thankful that we can sleep in instead of rushing to the bus every morning.
• I'm thankful for Bryan's mom for giving me a sewing machine when I graduated from BYU in 2004, even though I had absolutely no idea how to use it at the time.
• I'm thankful that I've learned to sew so I can make face masks for my family.
• I'm thankful for video calls to helps us feel connected to family and friends.
• I'm thankful that we have a vast home library.
• I'm thankful that we're in this house at this time and have more room than in any previous house.
• I'm thankful that Bryan and I both are good cooks.
• I'm thankful that we have more time to study scriptures as a family.

I'm thankful for the messages that came from Conference last weekend. The talks that spoke to my soul were from Bonnie H. Cordon, Quentin L. Cook, Dale G. Renlund, Neil L. Andersen, and especially Jeffery R. Holland. His talks always go right to my heart. The most profound quote for me came near the end: 

We pray for those who have lost loved ones in this modern plague, as well as for those currently infected or at risk. We certainly pray for those who are giving such magnificent healthcare. When we have conquered it—and we will—may we be equally committed to freeing the world from the virus of hunger and freeing neighborhoods and nations from the virus of poverty. May we hope for schools where students are taught—not terrified they will be shot—and for the gift of personal dignity for every child of God, unmarred by any form of racial, ethnic, or religious prejudice.Undergirding all of this is our relentless hope for greater devotion to the two greatest of all commandments: to love God by keeping His counsel and to love our neighbors by showing kindness and compassion, patience and forgiveness. These two divine directives are still—and forever will be—the only real hope we have for giving our children a better world than the one they now know.

On Saturday night President Russell M. Nelson asked us to hold a worldwide fast today, Good Friday. He asked that we fast "that the present pandemic may be controlled, caregivers protected, the economy strengthened, and life normalized." We are adding our faith to that fast. 

This week has been hard. But I have hope for better times ahead.

The Little Engineer

Topher loves trains. He spends big chunks of his day building train tracks, then driving trains up and down those tracks. I took this video a few weeks ago when I first realized he had the coordination needed to attach one track to the next.

Not a Card Sharp

"I call this The Drunk Man Baby Shuffle." -Cooper, showing off his card shuffling technique during a game of Uno.

Quarantine Week Three: The Pictures

 

Ownership

We just finished one of my favorite weekends of the year. I'm waiting for some of the talks to be uploaded before I properly talk about General Conference. But I will share one of the only pictures I took over the past two days. For the first time, Topher had his own Conference Notebook. He was delighted. He understood that he had his own book just like the big kids. His book contained about five coloring pages I printed out of the Friend magazine. He alternated between coloring the pages, coloring the book itself, dumping out all the crayons, then ripping the pages out. Conference Notebooks have a learning curve when you're not quite two.

The Edible Joke

I am not one for pranks. I'm not even too keen on surprises, though nice, gentle, happy surprises are okay. April Fool's Day isn't really my holiday. But my dear friend loves it and has so much fun with it that her enthusiasm was contagious this year. I pondered throughout the day about what I could do for the kids. Inspiration struck when I walked into my basement pantry to gather supplies for dinner.

I somehow managed to smuggle the ingredients upstairs and then subsequently prepare them without anyone noticing, which doesn't say much for my children's observational skills. I called everyone to the table and put the pot, lid on, on the table. We prayed, then I started serving. The kids all had looks of shock. They thought I had burned the angel hair pasta. Then they smelled it and started smiling.

Did you know that angel hair pasta covered in cherry pie filling, melted chocolate chips, and shredded coconut kind of looks like regular pasta?

When they realized what I'd done I whipped around and grabbed a second pot off the stove which contained regular pasta and meat sauce and called out, "April Fool's Day!" I think I was only supposed to say "April Fools!" but I'm a novice and was focused on other things. Then the kids were really confused. Peter decided I had double pranked them, first with the sugary impostor, then with the real thing.

Peter ate five plates of the chocolate cherry stuff, then announced it was starting to taste weird and stopped. Topher tasted it and threw it off his tray, after making sure he was wearing a fair portion of course. Phoebe thought it was okay but too chocolaty. Cooper and Sophie both loved it, sort of. This was Cooper's review: "It's not gross, but it's weird. The pasta and chocolate is a weird combination, but the chocolate and cherries is good. It's weird, not bad weird, but not good weird, it's like weird in a neutral way. It's like your mouth wants to keep eating it even though it's not a good flavor."

They all agreed I should do this again in the future.

Thophie'th New Thmile

"Mom! I have a little lithp now!" -Sophie, delighted at finally losing her final front tooth.

In a Pickle (Jar)

One of Cooper's school assignments this week was to draw a picture of a fish in something other than water. Have I mentioned that Cooper really loves pickles?