Don't Have Kids

In the height of wasting some time online the other night, I came across this gem, "28 Reasons You're Better off Never Having Kids".  [not rated G].

Allow me to get out my soapbox...

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...ok, here we go.

Now, I can fully grasp any number of serious reasons for not having children, and I can completely comprehend that a fulfilling life can be lead sans offspring, and I am well aware that some people are not ready, or not able to have children.

How-ever.

This piece, however playfully meant, does an injustice to parents and those without children alike.

It says to the childless: you can live as selfishly as possible.  You can sleep whenever you want. You can eat whatever you want. You can party, and have a cleaner home, and travel, and go to the bathroom alone, and have more money, and swear (yes, that was on the list...!) all on your own, as much as you would like, with no strings attached...just don't have kids.

And, just as callously, it says to the parents: your life sucks.

just your basic poster-children parents, right here...
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They are wrong, and they are wrong on both counts.  To be childless does not mean that you have any right to be a selfish, self-centered person with nothing better to do than take naps.  To be a parent does not mean that you have no enjoyments in life, and have given up on any indulgences, and all sleep or health. These things have more truism than truth to them.

I would argue, that the strings that children attach to us (heart-strings, if you will, as I'm trying to be dramatic...), are entirely worth it.  Children are everything that that silly internet fodder meme-list is saying they are. Children are annoying, they are messy, they are enormously inconvenient. They take up enormous, and often baffling amounts of time, energy, and money.

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And yet, that is the point.  The demands that our children make upon us take us outside of ourselves, and draw us closer to Heaven. 

heart-strings...

On the flip-side, it is offensive to think that folks with no kids are as shallow as that piece makes them out to be. The people in my life who are childless are in fact extremely generous souls.  One of my dearest friends has no children, and is one of the most mother-ly women I know, caring for her family, friends and community in countless ways.  Another childless friend pours what seems to be every waking minute into caring for those in medical crisis. Those without children are called to live selflessly in other ways, to highlight and bring about the good, the true, and the beautiful with the time, energy, and strength that we parents lack.

source/Shel Silverstein

God calls each person or couple to a certain life. He calls some to have 7 children. He calls some to have no children.  He calls no one to live for the self.  Each of us must pour out our lives, must lay down our selfishness, to make any progress.  It truly is "in giving that we receive, in dying that we are born to eternal life".  The death that St. Francis speaks of in that prayer must for certain be our death to self, for that is what Christ did for us.

Completely Pathetic

There are those days when you haven't gotten enough sleep, and your children haven't gotten enough sleep, and you have already gone *way* way over your imaginary quota of how much TV they will watch, and it's not even 11:30 am yet.  

Those days when you realize that your kids really have needed *constant* redirection, but you really just don't want to have to be nice any dang more times.

Thoughts run through your head like, "Can't you please just have one rational thought, you 3-year-old, you?!" Who am I kidding?  You start saying things like that to your children.

Le great big sigh.  Poor you.

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I got some pretty simple, yet really sound advice from a mom-friend of mine the other day. She says that sometimes she tries to see her kids in the same light as God sees us.  Our children are pretty pathetic sometimes.  They can't negotiate going to the bathroom without serious fanfare and intervention, let alone the intricate delicacies of getting a younger brother to let go of their hair or to give back a treasured (aka ALL of them) toy.  Pathetic. 

Yet, take a step back, and we're just as feeble.  We can't cope with disasters, we can't relate properly with people, we fall apart when we fail--we are pitiful little creatures, aren't we?

This outlook has helped me immensely, though.  Even in the heat of the 78th "let-go-of-your-brother's-hair" moment, I can remember that I myself am so very small, and need so much direction too.  I need constant reminding, and poking, and prodding to stay on the right track, to choose the good, and to draw closer to holiness.

Putting it this way helps me to have a little more patience, to move with a little more grace, with the meager everyday efforts of my small ones.  I myself need such mercy, as He's reminding me all the time.

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor.12:9)

{FF} Toddler Tips Edition

Linking it up with Hallie again!
Make sure to head back over there for the better bloggers ;)

and now...

{Five Favorite Tips for Dealing with Toddlers}

1. Use a Timer. 

No joke, this trick is miraculous. Brothers are fighting over a toy? No problem:
Mom: "It's Daniel's turn, Leo, I'll set the timer, and then it will be your turn!"
Leo: "Awright!"

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I credit my friend Kaylinne for this one. She works at a daycare, and uses her watch all day long to give kids turns. The day she came over and showed me this one, Leo and Gabriella kept taking turns holding a toy. Long after they weren't even playing with it, they kept passing it back and forth when the time was up! This works for everything. Nap-time, bath-time, time to go inside, taking turns etc. I don't even have to have a timer, Leo buys it when I tell him I have a timer in my head and then say "beep-beep! Timer's up!".

2. Bedtime Picture Book.

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Leo was being, shall we say, difficult for bedtimes. My awesome Mom-Mentor friend Ellie gave me this great trick. I made a little picture book from photos I took and a cheap plastic soft photo album. The pictures are of Leo going through the steps of getting ready for bed and being asleep in bed. At the end of the book, it describes how Leo gets stickers for a good bedtime. It took a few days of no stickers, then Leo had the hang of it, and behaved beautifully at bedtime. He's not always peachy, but usually he is brought around by "...oh, I guess you aren't getting a sticker in the morning for a good bedtime...". I don't even have to read the book with him before bedtime anymore...but I have it in case!

3. "When" consequences.

This is another tip that I learned from Ellie way early on, and I love using it. Instead of saying "IF YOU HIT YOUR BROTHER ONE MORE TIME YOU ARE GOING TO TIME OUT!!!", you say "WHEN you hit your brother, you sit on the stairs." It sounds the same at first, but it's ever so subtly different. In fact, instead of threatening your children, you are teaching them that there are consequences to their actions. The results of their behavior are up to them, then, not you. They choose to behave poorly, they get to sit on the stairs, and so on. Also, you aren't threatening them all the time. That is nice too. 

4. Say what you mean.

This one can be summed up b-e-a-utifully by Kendra over @ Catholic All Year in this post. Basically, parenting with authority so that your kids listen and do what you say can be summed up by that one phrase: say what you mean. Always. When kids grow up understanding that you always say what you mean, they understand that you aren't budging, there will be consequences...ba-da-bing, they stop pushing against you (in a perfect world, of course, but hey--this works pretty well;))

5. You don't always have to say no.

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Sometimes we get caught up in saying no. We have to say it A LOT throughout the day, mostly so that our children don't involve themselves in life-threatening experiments with the world around them (no, you may not use that knife; no, you may not run into traffic; no, you may not eat all of the cookie dough...). But I think that we get caught up in saying no so often that we forget it's not going to kill us to say yes sometimes...when he asks you to build him a train track, or to play outside, or to read one more story at bedtime. Don't cave into being the yes-man-mom, but know that you can say yes in a lot of situations, and it just might be easier to play outside for 15 minutes, and have a happier kiddo, than to say no and have to deal with the fuss-fest.

There you have it! Now, head back on over to Hallie's to join in the favorites fun! :0)

Late for the Party but Wearing my Boots...

{Five Favorites}
linking up with Grace for Hallie's FF
AND
joining Jen for day #3 of the blog challenge}
shhhhh...this is yesterday's post...

So...Five Favorites...I thought about doing an un-Favorites post, since this is a day late and a dollar short, as it were, but since that's basically what I gave you last week...here we go with the realsies!

>>(only) Five Favorite Children's Books<<
Wherein I hold with my trend of pretending to be an actual blogger (see here and here).
Today's version: books!
(For actual book-blogging, check out Julie over @ Julie's World...
She's a book reviewer AND an author!)

I really do love books. I have recently been pretty strict about having fewer toys in the house (because they just make big messes...and who needs toys when you can just spill an entire box of cereal onto the kitchen floor and then smash it into dust, just for fun?), but I don't apply the same rules to books. I'll need to start being more creative about protecting them from small ones (Daniel soaked one in a sink-ful of water and schmeared another with yogurt in the span of about 20 minutes the other day...), but books are welcome here.

Here's a few of our favorites...

1. Rumplestilskin retold and illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky

Great pictures, clever Momma. Good one.

 2. Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears by Verna Aardema, picures by Leo and Diane Dillon

African folk tale wherein the Mosquito gets it. 

I remember this one from my school days at St. Patrick's...was it during the unit we did in second grade on Africa? We built huts and dressed in colorful wrap dresses (over top of our lovely green plaid jumpers and yellow blouses or dark blue pants w/ light blue shirts and green plaid ties, of course). 

 3. Anything by Robert McCloskey

We've been reading One Morning in Maine for a while now (aka "The Sal One"),

but I just found Make Way For Ducklings at Ollie's for $2.29. Yes please.

4. Llama Llama Red Pajama, story and pictures by Anna Dewdney

A present from Tia Lizzie Wilber :0)

We love Llama Llama. Anyone who puts "please stop all this llama drama" in a sentence has my vote for sure.

 5. Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard

With the Ernest Shepard illustrations only please. 

Classic Eddy-kids bedtime story with Dad. With all the voices, of course.

So, what are some of your favorites? 

No good thing

Joining Jen @ Conversion Diaries for THE 7-day Challenge :0)

Reflection on Psalm 84:10-12

"For a day in thy courts is better    than a thousand elsewhere.I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God    than dwell in the tents of wickedness.For the Lord God is a sun and shield;    he bestows favor and honor.No good thing does the Lord withhold
    from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts,    blessed is the man who trusts in thee!"

-Psalm 84:10-12

We all have *those* days. Those pull your hair out I don't wanna be here anymore kind of days. Great big LE SIGH kind of days. Mom of toddlers have these days all the dang time, it seems. This being said, I truly believe that I am getting better at this game...that perhaps I won't have to wait until Leo is ten (approx. 2,602 more days: OH. MY. LORD.) to have more peaceful days.

I see a face like this one:

this boy. those eyes. those vampiric teethers.

...and I realize that the answer lies somewhere among the cliches about changing my attitude, appreciating the small moments/teensy successes, and the proverbial dirty diapers. My blessings are here already.

Leo took these shots :0)

melt.

 

too dang cute.