Catching rabbits

As I buckled Annika into her car seat after dance class this morning, she propped her white tennis shoes up on the seat in front of her and said, "I am showing off my feet."
This quickly reminded me of the incident a week previous when Ariel was doing the same thing, bugging Dallin who sat in the front bench, so I found it necessary to nip this in the bud, and asked her to put them down. It seems like whenever I ask one child to stop doing something, another one sees an opportunity to get my attention, albeit negative, and does the same thing, so as I could have predicted, Adriana pops he feet up next to Annika's, as Annika asks, "Why?"
I had to come up with something quick, becasue I didn't want to remind them of how Ariel was bugging Dallin last week, and give them any ideas. The best I could come up with is that it is not polite, and I don't want it to become a bad habit, like putting your feet up on the table. At the same instant I was guiltily remembering how I like to put my feet up on the dashboard when we are driving long distances and I am in the passenger's seat. So, I am not only does that make me a hypocrite, but also a bad example. But I keep those thoughts to myself hoping they won't remember. Annika asks,"What is a habit?"
Relieved and the change in direction the conversation has taken, I explain that it is something you do all the time and a bad habit is something that you do a lot that you shouldn't, like biting your fingernails (something she does and we had been talking about earlier). To which she responds like she finally figured something out, "Oh, like catching rabbits?"
"Well, do you know anyone who catches rabbits all the time?"
"No."
"Me neither, so it's not really like that."

Maybe someday I will understand how her mind works. They put their feet down anyway, and I didn't even have to threaten or bribe.

Me are luperman

Dallin asked me to tie this blankie around him today as a cape. Then he ran around saying, "Me are luperman!" He always says "me are" instead of "I am" and he uses the "L" sound instead of the "S" sound at the beginning of words a lot. He didn't used to know the word "gun" (and I liked it that way) so if he ever tried to talk about a gun he would say a "looting thing" meaning "shooting thing." He would run around the house saying "Loot, loot! Me loot you!" It was really cute. The other day I was asking him what he wants for his birthday and he said, "Me want a 'un, no 'ullets." In other words he a wants a gun with no bullets. He likes to leave off initial consonants. Too bad his mom won't buy a gun for him. For me, water guns are OK, becasue you are not pretending to shoot someone with bullets to kill them, you are actually shooting water at someone to get them wet. It's the intention.

Alice laughing as Nikolay relaxes on the floor with her.
A goose on our roof. Sounds like the title of a phonics book to learn the double "o" sound. It stayed there for about 30 minutes. It started out honking really loud and got softer and softer at regular intervals, until it stopped. Then it just sat there.
Alice hasn't worn many short sleeved outfits, and I am always surprised by her chubby arms when I see them. I had to get a picture of them the other day. Don't her toes just look scrumptious?
Ariel turned 9 last week. I took her roller skating with her friends then we came back home for cake and ice cream. It was a lot of fun!

Alice talking

Alice is very talkative for a two-month old. Ariel and Adriana have whole conversations with her and then tell me all the amazing things she says. Like, "Ariel, I like you." and "Want some?"

Growth

Isn't Springtime just miraculous? This picture was taken on Friday. Notice there are no red tulips?

This picture was taken Tuesday. What a difference 4 days make under the right circumstances.

I started to reflect on time and what a gift it is in our lives, and it is up to us what we do with it.

Sunday was an eventful and exhausting day. Partly exhausting because of the events of Saturday night, and my not getting to bed until late, the other part was that we had an early morning Easter egg hunt in our living room, followed by a day of recuperating from massive sugar overloads and processing the messages from conference. I felt like almost every talk (not the one on lust) was specifically given for me. I do not remember hearing so many talks on parenthood and motherhood in conference before. For a few years now I have been saying, "I wish someone would tell me how to be a better parent." And after eight hours of talks, I came away with a new directive. It seems so obvious, but I think I finally get it. Live as an example of Christ's teachings. That means that it is not OK to loose my temper when I am under a lot of stress, and that it is up me to be to allow the Spirit to guide me. Instead of feeling guilty for my failings as a parent, I feel empowered to take control of my actions and let the Lord be my guide and my support. I finally "get" how to apply the Gospel to being a parent the way I did as a missionary, now it is just a matter of putting it into practice. I must be more patient with my children, allowing them to make their own choices, while helping them learn from those choices. Christ told us to be forgiving, and now I see that forgiveness can lead my everyday actions, not just the "big" offenses. I feel more love toward all members of my family, and I feel a new sense of purpose. Patience, forgiveness, love, self-discipline, and increasing my gospel knowledge. I feel inspired to really get to know the teachings of Christ and make them a daily part of my family's life. This is an important moment in my life and it corresponds so well with spring, a time of renewal and rebirth.

Here are some early Easter morning pictures. If the weather is this great next year, I would like to have and outdoor Easter egg hunt. I love our "red room, " but the red and brown color scheme seems more wintery than springy.


Annika named her penguin and piggy Snowey and Muddy, respectively. They got married later that same day.
Everyone knows I have a soft spot for chocolate, so maybe that's why these big brown eyes constantly melt my heart.
That is Ariel's hand showing Alice her Easter stash.
It may look like she is crying but she is actually laughing hilariously. Some of the funniest comments of the day came from Nikolay saying, "Don't get the eggs out of the fireplace!," where he had hid them the night before, and,"Don't eat the candy from those eggs!" I try to be supportive, but not letting kids eat candy on Easter morning, that is just laughable, which we did. I hope some day he can too.

Tuesday, I built a rabbit proof fence around our raised bed vegetable garden and planted these cucumber seedlings in the ground, as well as peas, zuchinni, and sunflowers. Next up is watermelon and 5 different varieties of tomatoes. Now that I have freed up some pots I plan on starting peppers and pumpkins.


Here are some more flower pictures. I am so excited that the sun is out again so that I can take some pictures in the M mode instead of just automatic, becasue it is cool how focused the pictures can be, and with five kids, vegetable and flowere gardens, I have plenty of subjects. I am on a springtime high and my life is becoming so vibrant and focused.

Pictures on Good Friday

We were all derssed up to go to a party on Friday, so we took some pictures in front of the daffodils and hyacinths.


This was earlier that day and Alice was doing her open-mouth smile that she does right before she starts coo-ing.

I have been trying to listen for funny things that my kids say, because they do, constantly. I love it when they are knowledgeable about something and share their knowledge in an expert way. On our way to the pool yesterday, I over heard Ariel explaining to her younger siblings about chlorine. "Public pools have chlorine in them, but if you have a blow-up pool in your backyard, you don't have to put chlorine in it," Then Adriana, very interested asked, "Why not?" Then Ariel, thoughtfully, "I don't know."

Then Annika exclaimed, pointing to a bird sitting on a telephone wire, "I didn't know a bird could sit up there!" Then Adriana explained in an expert voice, "Yes, they can because their feet are very strong."
Annika "Oh, they just sit on their little feet."
Adriana, "And they hold on to the wire with their feet."


Sometimes they say things to me that I just don't know how to respond to at all. Like at dinner yesterday Adriana asked me if you can eat a drink.. The best I could come up with was that you could if it was frozen.
Then Annika said, "Mom, I know a good rule we could have. Don't chop Tazie's head off." Tazie is our cat, so, a little perplexed I said, "Yes that is a good rule."

Whenever we ask Annika to say the blessing on the food she says this line, "Thank you that you could BLESS the food." Because for a while she would just say thank you for the food and we would try to emphasis that we need to ask Him to BLESS the food, so that is how she prays now. Yesterday, Ariel tried to correct her (for the 100th time) so I said to Ariel that we should probably just wait until she is older and understands better, to which Annika said, "Yeah like 78." She has been so cute with numbers lately.

Dallin (2) still needs help with prayers, but the other day he tried to help Adriana (6) when she paused to think of what to say next, he said in a helpful voice, "In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." As if she had forgotten how to end her prayer.
It made us all giggle.

Another blah blah blah post

If I didn't scare you away yesterday, I just may do so now. I need to think out loud, or I guess in print, and since, thanks to blogging, I never have to dream about one day writing a book, which would never happen, because I am not really writer, I can just type all the crazy thoughts in my head here and some of you kind souls might give me your two cents, which I really do cherish.
This is it: something has been bugging me, OK this is really it: a few weeks ago I read a blog post of a really funny blogger who also happens to be LDS and lives in PA, and is becoming a "famous" blogger and even has enough readers to (BTW reading the Guernesy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society," really makes me want to think out loud in print and pretend like I am writing letters to really close people who understand me to death) actually put advertisemnts on her blog and make real money from them, something that I would only want to do because of the extra cash would be nice but I would feel like I was "selling out" if I really did, no offense to those of my blog friends who do it, good for you, you don't have as many crazy hang-ups as I do. Anyway, the thing that has really been bugging me, and used to bug me back before blogging existed and I wanted to write a book, just to leave a legacy of my life experience, or share it, even if it was fictionalized, is that I don't think I could write about my life without the church being a huge part of it, but I wouldn't want to be writing about being a member of the church. One of my book club friends in Utah told me that it can be done, like in My Name is Asher Lev how he is Jewish, but the book isn't about being Jewish, although reading it you do learn a lot about the Jewish immigrant community in New York. So the thing that that famous funny LDS blogger lady said that has been getting to me is that she didn't feel like she should talk about the church on her blog and that she thought that buttons with links to the Church's website were hokey. As you can probably guess, my problem with that is that I do have one of those buttons, and I do like to write about churchy stuff.
I may not be as deep as Kazzy, or as eloquent as Michelle, who are my blog-heroines, both able to easily talk about their beliefs without being hokey at all or it feeling forced, and finding meaning and perspective in life's ups and downs, but I do like to write about what I believe. Reading their excellent posts uplifts me, like when I am sitting at the computer (nursing Alice usually) and trying to deal with (escape, see yesterday's post) the seeming mundanity of my life at the moment. By the way, thanks for the encouragement of run-on sentences yesterday, I like how obnoxious they feel.
So not only do I like to write about churchy stuff, I find meaning and view my life through a "churchy" lens, and I don't feel like fighting it, or pretending like I don't. So there! It isn't going to bug me anymore. Because like this Dr. Mehl said:

“By engaging in meaningful conversations, we manage to impose meaning on an otherwise pretty chaotic world,” Dr. Mehl said. “And interpersonally, as you find this meaning, you bond with your interactive partner, and we know that interpersonal connection and integration is a core fundamental foundation of happiness.”

Not that I consider your kind comments left on my blog as qualifying as the "interpersonal connection" that forms the foundation of my happiness, although it does greatly add to it, and have kept me afloat while I am trying to make real-life friends in this new place, but by writing about my life through the "churchy lens" I am "imposing meaning on an otherwise pretty chaotic world." So I hope that when I do, I don't come across too much as one of those "seriously so blessed"-type mormon mommy bloggers.
An older and wiser lady in my ward in Holladay gave me some CDs to listen to about building a happy marriage by John Lund. One example that really stuck out was about a couple that was considering divorce. The husband just couldn't take the wife's constant criticism of everything and everyone anymore. The counselor told the wife that if she wanted to save her marriage the first step was to not say anything that criticized anyone or thing for a whole week. When they came back the next week he asked the family how it was. The wife was successful in not criticizing, but the surprising thing was that she was just quiet the whole week. She didn't know what else to say. She actually had to learn how to say positive, optimistic things. I find myself in her situation often, though not so extreme. So sometimes when I feel like writing about negative stuff, I force myself to look for the positive, and I think that is what some of those sickeningly sweet bloggers might be doing too, making lemonade, all the time.
For those of you who would rather see cute pictures of my kids and read the funny things they say, if the weather is nice again tomorrow, I am going to take some pictures of them, and I will try to remember all of the amazingly cute and innocently insightful things they say, but then again, you probably haven't gotten this far in this post if that is what you were looking for.