Fitted sheets and lullabies

Last night was filled with multiple awakenings by a sad, sick 4 year old child and empty of any quality sleep. Every 15 minutes I was desperately needed by this boy who was scared to death at  the intensity of his illness.

 

The morning after a night like that always tests me and pushes my body to its limits. Of course there were multiple loads of sheets and towels and pajamas to launder. As I yawned and folded yet another fitted sheet I realized that my skills at folding fitted sheets are subpar.

 

My Mother certainly tried to teach me how to fold them neatly; hospital corners were expected in the making of a bed in my growing up home. My Mother is an amazing organizer and has neatness woven into her character. I missed out on that gene somehow. . The skill of somehow managing to control those rounded corners into a tidy pile of linen to be properly placed on a closet shelf was not something that transferred from my mother’s skill set into my own.

 

Last night when my sweet boy was wracked with illness and I held him and kissed his sweaty brow and rocked him and rubbed his back,  I sang to him and gently put him back to sleep. Neat sheets were low on the priority list last night.

 

In addition to her skills with hospital corners and fitted sheets, my Mother also taught me about nurturing a sick child in the night. I remember being very young and getting horrible ear infections and sore throats. One of my earliest memories (probably the same age as my son), is of her, rocking me in the wee hours of the morning in the creaky old rocker, while singing “Bye-O" to me (our family lullaby). My Mom sings off key and always has, but I remember as a child thinking her voice was like an angel’s. I can almost picture this night in my mind’s eye, it is one of my very earliest memories.

 

I'm quite certain the skill of folding a fitted sheet pales in comparison to the most important lessons she taught me that night almost 40 years ago. Thank you Mom for all the life skills you taught me, but most of all thank you for teaching me through example that my children are worth sacrificing for, staying up for, and staying home for. I know through watching you that Motherhood is a noble and worthy calling and the best choice for my life. Happy Mother's Day!

Survive or thrive?

(Image found here http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/1200x/62/60/c6/6260c6ee2511fac22e73fc06e8c6fcd4.jpg)

I remember going to my first power of moms retreat and April Perry talking  about not just surviving but thriving in this journey of motherhood. That really resonated with me because I had already years before decided that I do not want to spend a good chunk of my life in survival mode. I've been doing this parenting thing for 15 years and have at least that long until my youngest leaves home. That's 30 years that I don't want to white knuckle it through life, but I want to thrive and become who I am supposed to become. I want my kids to know that I loved life and adored being their Mom, that I was always trying to learn and grow and be better. My Mom is such a great example of always learning, growing and bettering herself.  Of course there are days that I white knuckle it and barely get through but I don't want that to be my life.  It's about making a conscious choice to love this life I've chosen and that has been given to me. It's about waking up every morning and to start out with the question, "What is this day going to bring and what am I going to get out of it? What am I going to learn and what adventure are we going to have? I am going to be an amazing Mom and person today!" 

This wasn't always the case. I remember some days waking up and sort of dreading getting out of bed, I remember even occasionally vocalizing that I hated my life. I had sort of let life happen to me and hadn't made the choice to choose happiness and deliberately make my life happy. It's not about circumstance, it's about mindset. I for sure still have days where I have a hard time getting out of bed and where I feel down, but those are much fewer and farther between than they used to be because I have made the choice to intentionally be happy no matter what. 

So what is your choice? 

Giveaway winner

Sorry I haven't gotten to this until now but the Motherhood Realized books I ordered just barely came today! Sorry they aren't signed by the authors like I said they would be, that just didn't happen at the book launch like I thought it would. 

So the winner is Amy Hughes! I had Drew choose either 1,2 or 3, so this was highly scientific. Amy email me your address and I will send you the book in the next week, you will love it! 

Because of Him

This painting is by Carl Bloch and is depicting the angel who comforted the Savior in Gethsemane. It is one of my very favorites. I know we have angels who comfort is in our darkest hours as well.

I absolutely love this new video my church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) has put out for Easter. It is touching and beautiful no matter your religious beliefs. 

Because I am blogging from my phone I can't embed the video, but here's the link. I promise it is worth your time. #becauseofHim

http://easter.mormon.org

Easter week

I love the week of Easter. This year we are using this book for our Easter week celebrations. It gives great ideas that you can make as simple or as complex as you like. We are doing a daily devotional where we read scriptures about what happened that particular day leading up to the crucifixion and we have chosen an Atonement hymn (I Stand All Amazed) and a Resurrection hymn (Did Jesus Really Live Again from  the Children's songbook) that we are learning in our devotionals. We are doing some week long activities about loving and serving each other (because we desperately need that). 

We will do a regular egg hunt on Saturday with our family and the Easter bunny will bring baskets on Sunday with a few simple fun things. 

We will also do our spiritual egg hunt on Sunday (link found here http://www.howdoesshe.com/simple-easter-countdown/). 

We will make resurrection rolls for breakfast. (Link here:

http://beautyandbedlam.com/resurrection-rolls-easter-recipe/)

Our Easter dinner will consist of some symbolic foods such as fish (fishers of men, Jesus ate fish after his resurrection), bread (bread of life), grape juice (water to wine, sacrament). I will probably come up with some other ideas as I read more about the Savior this week. 

This is the first year we have done this much to celebrate. My kids are ready for this and can handle it,  we have always done a few things to learn about the real meaning of Easter, but now we are adding in more. If your kids are little, one or two simple things are perfect to teach the kids. Using pictures to tell them about the Savior is perfect, talking about spring and the new growth and rebirth is also a way to teach them. The bible videos from lds.org are fantastic as well.  

I know that My Savior came to earth to live among men and that he willingly suffered in Gethsemane for our sins, weaknesses and struggles. I know that he willingly gave up His life for each one of us and because of His glorious Resurrection we will live again.

What do you do to celebrate Easter?

*my computer is on the fritz and I am blogging on my phone, so my blog posts may be shorter and less frequent until it's fixed.

GIVEAWAY...and my favorite parenting book ideas

You could say one of my hobbies is reading Parenting books.  I like reading different philosophies and ideas and then incorporating some of the ideas into our family.  I don't totally subscribe to one philosophy, I take bits and pieces and use what feels best to me to use in our family.

There are thousands of parenting books and it is easy to get totally overwhelmed with information and ideas.  Honestly sometimes reading these books can be detrimental because you think they are the "experts" and start listening to them instead of your own intuition.  You are the real expert on your child and you should look at parenting books as a supplement to your own information and ideas about your child.  Don't totally take their word for it, but you can get new ideas and strategies from books about parenting.

One of my new favorites is  the new book "Motherhood Realized: An inspiring anthology for the hardest job you'll ever love."  It is a beautiful, real look at the role of Motherhood and the ups and downs but ultimately the joys of it.  I am on the "book launch team" (sorry if you are sick of hearing about it from me). This has been very exciting because this book is #65 on ALL of amazon.com and has a real shot of making it to the NY times bestseller list.  We are making a big push for this week to try and get it on that list so that media opportunities will be more available.  This isn't to pad any one person's pocket, this is to promote the importance of motherhood and to join women together to help each other.  It would make wonderful Mother's Day gifts, baby shower gifts, birthday gifts for friends etc.... Consider buying one or two or ten.  You can buy it here  If you buy this week, there are some additional gifts from Power of Moms, read about those here

I have read an advance copy and it is beautiful.  It made me laugh out loud and made me cry. The best part for me was that these are short essays that I can read in 5 minutes and I can read in the carpool lane or while my kids are playing.  It's an easy way to get a bit of an uplift in a short time.   I will give a signed copy away if you comment on this post.  I will give it out (or mail it out) next week after I attend the book launch and get a few of the authors to sign it.   Who wants to attend the book launch with me??

Comment below with your favorite parenting book. 

So here are a few parenting book ideas:

Here are a few of my favorites:

How to talk so kids will listen, and listen so kids will talk by Adele Faber

I didn't plan to be a Witch and a Joyful Mother of Children by Linda Eyre

Raising a Spirited Child by Mary Kurcinka (has fantastic ideas for raising any child)

Mitten Strings for God and The Gift of an Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison

Parenting with Love and Logic  by Jim and Charles Fay (don't love everything in it, but lots of great ideas in this one 

Deliberate Motherhood

If I Have to tell you one more time by Amy McCready (reading this right now...so good)

The 5 Love Languages of Children by Gary Chapman

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Books I have not read, but have come highly recommended

Celebrate Calm (this is actually CD's and a website to subscribe to celebratecalm.com)

The Game of Work by Charles Coonradt

Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw

Hold on to your Kids: why parents need to matter more than peers

The Secrets of Happy Families by Bruce Feiler

Parenting books for the LDS Community:

Not every one who reads my blog is LDS, so I put this in a different category because of that.  Here are some of my favorites with an LDS perspective:

The Book of Mormon (seriously the best book to learn about parenting, it is all about families, it is all about imperfect families.)

The Power of Positive Parenting by Glenn Latham

Christlike Parenting by Glenn Latham (one of my very favorites)

Raising up a family to the Lord by Gene R Cook

Mothering with Spiritual Power: Book of Mormon inspirations for raising a righteous family by Debra Woods

I am a Mother by Jane Clayson Johnson

ABQ retreat

I had a fantastic weekend in Albuquerque with Tiffany Sowby. We flew out at the crack of dawn, literally.  Our flight left at 6 a.m, it was crazy early but gave us a whole day in ABQ which was great, I hadn't ever spent any time there. We met up with Angela Brown who's husband is cousins with my husband and we have bonded through both having 5 kids and a totally crazy life and thanks to Facebook.

We met up with Angela (in the light blue sweater) for lunch, we had such a good time we decided to make it a girls night and get a hotel (we were previously going to stay at someone's house).  We had some therapy sessions, lots of good discussions about life and we laughed.....A.LOT.

The next morning we went to a beautiful home and met up with some amazing, deliberate Mothers.  We had amazing discussions and I learned so much from them.  I'll put my insights at the end of the post.  I was a bit nervous to present as it was my 1st retreat as one of the main presenters, but once I started it was SO FUN.  I really loved it so much.  I hope to be able to teach in this format more often.  

This is Tiffany, she is awesome.  She is the director of trainers for Power of Moms and I'm grateful she gave me this opportunity to do my first (hopefully of many) retreat.  Before we left, Dave asked me if I was nervous to spend so much time with her because we haven't spent much time together other than the two Las Vegas retreats, but I told him I thought we would get along and I was right.  I felt like we have known each other for a long time. We have a lot in common and had some enlightening, interesting talks.  We have plans to go to lunch together and dinner with our husbands in the future.

Here's some photos of the day, including one of me presenting :)

We had 4 babies there (the other had left already when we thought to take this picture).  They were SO good and so cute!   My babies would never have done that well, I was amazed.

 This is the team who made this day happen.  Jen  and Emily on the left were the ones who wanted to bring a retreat to ABQ and worked so hard to make it a go.  Registration was slow to happen so Jen, Emily and Angela worked their magic  and spent hours working on getting more people there.  Thanks ladies, you are awesome!

There is a real phenomenon called Post Retreat Letdown Syndrome.  It happens to everyone.  My youngest was a monster this morning.  He did not want to go to church, this is a picture of him in the car waiting in the parking lot until he calmed down (it took a LONG time).

It's an interesting thing to teach, because I always learn SO much from teaching others.  It was great to be able to participate in the discussions and learn from the people who attended.  Here are a few of my insights:

• From our host who has grown children, when it comes to teens remember 3 things: don't take it personally, have a sense of humor and this is temporary!
• Another insight is totally avoid getting into a discussion until you have a calm face, voice and body.  Otherwise it is just an argument and nothing productive happens.
• Clear, communicated expectations are essential
• Teaching kids to work, isn't just about hard physical labor.  Music lessons, sports and school can also teach important principles of hard work and persistence.
• Life is long, you can have it all, just not all at once.
• Comparison is the thief of joy...Theodore Roosevelt
• How do we teach our kids that progressing and learning new things is a good thing if we aren't doing that?
• How do we teach our kids to love themselves and not compare to others if we are constantly comparing ourselves to others?
• My favorite insight.  I am so far from a perfect Mom, but I am a GOOD MOM because I am trying my best daily and I am 100% committed to my kids and I love them fiercely!

I am looking to hopefully teach some smaller workshops on this material locally. I am looking into teaching through community education or in people's homes with groups of women (if you want to host a workshop I would love to teach one).

A big HUGE shout out to my husband.  He is amazing, before I even asked him he took Friday off so he could be with the kids.  I came home to a fairly clean house and pansies planted in my front yard.  I LOVE flowers so he definitely spoke my love language.  He is wonderfully supportive, I'm so blessed.

I have attended 4 retreats which equates to interacting with 120+ women.  There are SO many wonderful, deliberate mothers out there who want to do their best.  It gives me hope that our society will be just fine.  This particular weekend these 22 mothers represented 88 children.  The ripple effects with be huge.  Even if they only implement one thing they learned it will strengthen their family and they will be better Moms.