Sunday with Daddy

The kids woke up around 5:30 this morning . . . which was actually 4:30 with the time change.  Isaac woke up Abby, and downstairs they went to take advantage of their new "freedom/talent": turning on the television and Netflix all by themselves.  It was a while before my tired mind cued into what was happening, and I got downstairs to bring them back up and put them in bed.  But Isaac never went back to sleep . . . Abby didn't sleep for long.  Brianna, who had been asleep in our bed since 3:00 with nightmares or who knows what, also woke up.  And Mommy never got back to sleep.

Two hours later, we realized there had ALSO been a time change.  So I went to church by myself; and Dave stayed home to put all the kids down for a nap.

When I got home, I found that NO ONE had slept yet!  Instead, they'd had a Daddy day:

They ate Daddy's homemade pumpkin/raisin muffins.

They read stories.

They learned to take pictures of each other.

They played Memory Match with the Animal Cards.

And they watched Veggie Tales.

It was a fantastic day!  When I got home, I had eyes peering down from the upstairs window and was greeted with huge hugs and bursts of excitement!  Now I know how Dave feels when he comes home every day.

We continued to play games.
And we had lunch.
And we ALL took a nap . . . all except Brianna.

Then Abby woke me up, asking if she could lay with me.  As we cuddled, she told me, "Mommy, did you know that I LOVE that there's a baby in your tummy?  And did you know that the baby in your tummy has a little egg around it to protect it?  Daddy showed us all the babies of the other Mommies in the book.  And they have an egg around them and are floating in water.  And then, they're going to come out of the egg.  Ummmm . . . I'm not exactly sure how they get out of there.  But the doctor takes them out, right Mommy?  And then we get to have a baby BROTHER!  I'm so excited for our new baby!  It's going to be SO CUTE!"  Dave bought a book on babies at D.I. and showed them all the pictures of what is happening inside my tummy!  And Abby is now ALL-KNOWING on all things baby!  Except how the doctor gets it out of there . . . . I think that one's going to remain a mystery for a while! :-)

After we cuddled and talked, we went down and played the matching game with Brianna.  And Daddy and Isaac sat on the sofa and talked and played games on the Tablet.  Until they watched a Living Scriptures DVD while Mommy and Daddy played Scrabble at the kitchen table.

We finished the night with baked sweet potatoes, steamed veggies, and grilled ham - everyone's favorite!

Before we put them to bed, Isaac started saying that there was a big, SCARY ghost in his room.  So Dave told him that tomorrow, for FHE, we are going to make "special necklaces" that keep ghosts away.

And then he said, "I think we need a story tonight.  Who's ready for a story?" This is a nightly tradition in our house - well, most nights at least.  Daddy reads or tells the kids a story before bed.

So they all gathered around to hear Daddy's bedtime story.  It started out, "Once upon a time, there was a man named Feklehump.  He had a wife - with a HUGE belly with a baby in it - and three kids:  One beautiful, sweet little girl with long, golden hair. One handsome little boy who liked to do things his own way.  And one adorable little toddler who was so much fun every time she got really tired.

One day, Feklehump turned into a ghost . . . . -- Um, Melinda?  Where is this story going?  I need a plot."

"I don't know - but it can't be scary or they'll have nightmares all night long.  Make it kind of funny like Casper."

"Oh - okay.  So Feklehump turned into a ghost.  And everyone knows that ghosts are supposed to scare people.  In fact, it's ghost CODE that they have to scare people, right?  And Feklehump was no different.  But he found out really fast that he had a very. serious. problem.  Every time he opened his mouth to scare people, it came out like this . . . ."

Then he took his hands and started to reach towards the terrified kids before suddenly yelling, 'Hahahahahaha!'" as he started to tickle them!

In seconds, fear turned into surprised delight, and they were ROLLING on the floor, laughing.  Abby was laughing that laugh that only comes to little girls when they are OVERtired and can't keep the laughter from coming out, no matter how hard they try.

And that was just the beginning . . . . .

And the ending of a PERFECT day with Daddy!

I am WOMAN! (And LOVE it!)

Of all the debates out there in the world today, there is one that never ceases to blow my mind.  It's that whole "equality" issue.  All of these specific groups calling for their "rights" -- and all of them centered around the argument that we all have to be equal.  And I am really starting to wonder what that even means, if we even know, or if we've gotten so used to throwing it around in the name of all things "unfair and unjust" that we have totally LOST sight of what EQUALITY really is.

I remember a conversation I had my first or second year of college.  I was talking to a fairly flamboyant and proud-of-her-feminism young woman.  As I listened to her, I wondered if she knew how hard and ridiculous she was sounding.  Finally I said something like, "Well - I don't know about all of that.  And maybe you do want to be everything a MAN is and do everything a MAN does.  But me, I DON'T REALLY WANT TO BE A MAN.  I just want to be a really strong woman!"

I've thought about that a few times since.  I mean, if I had lived during the time of Abigail Adams -- I would have been a die-hard feminist in every sense of the word for the things SHE was fighting for and felt strongly about.  The same with Jane Addams.  And Jane Austen.  Oooh -- there are so MANY amazing "feminists" in history that make me smile just thinking about them.  But by my definition of righteous feminism, I wouldn't be a feminist with Nancy Peolosi or Hillary Clinton or so many others in today's world.  In fact, I am sad that when you do a search on influential women, you find so many women listed whose lives have stood for things that I would rather NOT have had influence history.  And these women have redefined what it means to be a "woman" and what our "gender roles" should be.  Ironically, few of them have had very much time for motherhood at all.  Or they had their one token child and that was it.  They seem to have been so caught up in living lives that put them on equal ground with men -- and being the "first" woman to do what has culturally been done by men -- that they forgot to make time to do one of the things that ONLY WOMEN CAN DO.  And that's just one example! :-)

Maybe seeing some of these women and what they would try to do to and with "womanhood" in the name of equality and personal rights is what led Elder Neal A. Maxwell to wisely observe,

"When the real history
of mankind is fully disclosed,

will it feature
the echoes of gunfire or

the shaping sound of lullabies?

The great armistices made by military men or

the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods?

Will what happened in cradles and kitchens

prove to be more controlling than

what happened in congresses?"

I remember Sister Margaret D. Nadauld speaking in a General Conference  on the "Joy of Womanhood" and she said,
"Women of God can never be like women of the world. The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity."

And lets just be honest!  To be a woman who is tender, kind, refined, filled with faith and goodness and virtue and purity -- that is NO SMALL TASK!!!  I mean, after studying Proverbs 31, I think I could work my WHOLE LIFE to just become a woman of virtue! I wonder how many women in the world spend their time thinking about and striving to become these things.   


This has since become one of my favorite quotes!  Not only does it provide an AWESOME example of PROFOUND alliteration, but it also provides an AWESOME standard for where women of today have to FIGHT to get back to because of the direction some of the women of yesterday have taken in the name of "gender equality."

When I was majoring in Creative Writing at Southern Virginia University, I wrote this poem:

As society seeks to build

Strong Women,

I fear I will

have to Be Stronger

to Be a Mother

not only to my own children but

to my

Neighborhood,

Country,

World.

I am grateful I am a woman!  I am grateful that I have things I CAN do and MUST do that men will NEVER be able to do!  I am grateful that my husband is a man.  I am grateful that he has things that he CAN do and MUST do that I will NEVER be able to do!  And I am grateful that I get to learn even MORE about strength in gender as I mother my children and learn and grow from their DIFFERENCES every day!

Create Smiles

We have been doing a lot of cleaning and packing and moving things to a storage unit and sorting and just starting the whole process of selling our condo and moving.  It's been AWESOME!!!  I LOVE being prepared!  I LOVE being organized -- can't STAND disaster areas that require warning signs to avoid law suits.  Our office WAS such an area -- I mean, I didn't even dare step in there to take a picture.  But NOW . . . well, it is going to be my creativity suite . . . right after it's Lexy and Kenzie's bedroom for a week and a half while my sister stays with me to help me recover from upcoming foot surgery number 2. Yay for sisters and nieces and nephews and surgery . . . wait, maybe I wouldn't go QUITE that far! :-)

As we sorted through things today, I found this poem that I wrote for David while we were dating.  He was having a hard time with "dead week" and finals week, and I wanted to do something to cheer him up.  So I went to the Dollar Store to look for things for that all-time favorite dating tool - the "Good Luck Kit."  I couldn't find the "right thing" there for the life of me!  Instead, I found these cute stickers of toddlers playing at the beach.  I bought a pack of 12x12 paper, took out the sun-shiniest piece (bright yellow, of course) in there, and wrote the following:

Lessons from the SEA:

When life doesn't go

Exactly as you've planned,

And the only castles you are building

Seem to be in the sand;

When the waves come in

And the sun is setting low . . .

You look down to find

That a crab just got your toe!

When you've got your diving gear on

And feel you are prepared to dive,

Then the storm comes in and . . .

Swimming as fast as you can . . .

You come out barely alive!

You think, "Hey!  Wait a minute!

This was supposed to be FUN!"

But you forget you're doing more

Than just basking in the sun.

And though you really could just stay atop

And play all the day long . . .

The adventures lying just out of reach

Beckon oh so strong!

So you shake off the sand,

Tell your toe to let it be,

And you just keep

Swimming, swimming, swimming

Like other fish who have

Joined the SEA!

Okay, I will be the FIRST to admit that it's corny!  And I am sad to admit how much I fought back and was victorious over the urge to alter it here to present a better poem to you than the one I originally wrote.

But what would be the point of that?  Because the other truth is that I wrote it in like five minutes and it made me SMILE.  It actually lit me up inside to write it for him!  And it made Dave SMILE.  It made him laugh and lit him up inside to receive it!  And it made us both smile time and time again as we have found it in the office and re-lived that little memory of me trying to make him happy when there was nothing else I could do to make the situation better.  And reading it in terms of finals and education and career dreams and LIFE . . . it's a great pick-me-up poem! :-)

And I re-learned something about myself today: I like to create smiles and laughter through creative writing!  I have always written these crazy little poems and done "Get Well Baskets" and "Candy Bar Posters" and "Singing Telegrams" and songs and date stories and things like that.  I kick myself for not keeping copies to help preserve a little bit of "me" for both myself and my children to discover time and time again.

But that means I have to make up for lost time, right?  And I am really excited tonight to remember this.  This is something that is me!  This is a  talent!  This is a desire of my heart!  This is a hobby I can have that doesn't compete with Dave's hobbies!  I like to write!  I like to make people smile!  I like to make people laugh!  I like to create in this way!

So I need to get back to developing it.  My friend Anne and I have talked for years about writing Children's books -- a talent Dave has told me almost since we started dating that I definitely have and would be really great at.  And I think I'm ready to start exploring that again!  I mean, I have children -- and they love books!