family life – Page 22 – little thoughts

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – a warm spell

Posted on 2016-02-112016-02-11 by kristinabean

After an exceptionally cold January, we seem to be having a record-breakingly warm February – which means the weather has been absolutely perfect for enjoying our cool and shady little backyard and patio again! The main disadvantage of the backyard is that there isn’t enough space for the boys to actually run; the two main advantages are that it is completely child-safe so my baby can play without feeling the need to constantly test the limits, and that I can slip into the house to do dishes or dinner prep if necessary (the kitchen window opens right onto the patio).

{pretty}

Look at those eyes. Oh my goodness. He’s so beautiful… and at the same time so mischievous! He takes delight in crossing boundaries in a way my firstborn never did – but he is also far more bold and adventurous. He’s at least six months younger than Rondel was when he finally became comfortable on a slide, for example, and he’ll go up and down time and time again, even on the tall slides at the playground.

The white stuff all over him is cloud dough; the back patio is the perfect place for messy play like that, and I let the boys migrate to the yard to play more before bringing them in for a bath.

{happy}

One of Rondel’s most-loved Christmas presents (which we actually opened nearer to Epiphany) was this set of construction trucks from my parents, supplemented with another construction set my in-laws had found for him over a year ago. These trucks live in a special spot in the garden, where I had a summer crop planted but then left empty for the sake of these trucks. Rondel spends so much time here digging with the trucks and telling me what they are building and doing, and I love watching him!

{funny}

He asked me to take a picture of him eating a leaf and this is the best I got because he wouldn’t look at me! In Arizona, early spring is one of the most fruitful times of year because all the winter crops are flourishing as the few night freezes fade and are forgotten. Right now we have four types of lettuce, arugula, kale, cilantro, oregano, and mint in our main garden, and English peas growing around the trellised garden by the walls (Yes! They can grow out here in the low desert! They just need the right microenvironment, which our tiny yard happens to provide.) Rondel, in his typical information-accumulating way, can identify all the different plants that we have, and enjoys snacking on them while playing outside. The arugula is apparently a bit too “spicy” for his taste, though 🙂

{real}

Limerick wants to do everything his big brother does, but Rondel isn’t always happy about having a small interfering shadow. I’m discovering that if I try to persuade Rondel to accept Limerick’s presence, he usually refuses outright, but if I redirect Limerick or let them drift together slowly, Rondel will make space for his brother to join him, and include him in his games. This was a rare moment where they were playing happily next to each other without Limerick destroying Rondel’s creations in his attempt to be like and play with the brother he adores.

Don’t forget to join the link-up today at Like Mother, Like Daughter!

family life

a listening story

Posted on 2016-02-082016-03-17 by kristinabean

I often struggle with stepping back and accepting other people’s emotions, to simply listen and seek to understand, because I tend to take their emotions personally and become defensive. As a result of this sense of personal involvement, strong or negative emotions in other people make me incredibly uncomfortable, and my default response is anger and anxiety.

While learning about child development and respectful parenting has helped me a lot with distancing my emotional state from my children’s emotions (without distancing myself from them), it’s still a huge challenge for me with adults, especially in my family. So when I have even a small success – when I can remember that their emotions are not a personal attack before letting loose with angry words or falling into a panicky state – it is pretty exciting!

Yesterday my husband seemed to be upset; he was silent, morose, and sharp. My unthinking response was to wonder what I had done wrong to make him upset, and then to be angry at him for being upset about things that he hadn’t established expectations for (like our schedule for the afternoon, which I thought might be the cause of his stress or irritation). So I was avoiding him, not talking to him, not making eye contact, etc. – all the things I do to keep myself from saying something in anger. But as we sat in the car together I suddenly thought, yelling at him or prodding him to talk about things isn’t going to help me find out what’s wrong or make him feel better. It’s just going to bring us both down and make us angrier. I remembered all those parenting blogs that said, over and over again, to simply observe and offer presence. So all I said was, “it seems like you’re really upset about something.” I tried to say it in a way that would let him know he didn’t have to provide any information – I wanted to be non-confrontational and non-interrogative (not sure how that worked haha).

Maybe it was just because he saw that I wasn’t going to be mad at him, but he then opened up and told me all the things that were worrying him (none of which were about me, showing me just how unreasonable my initial reaction was), with a depth of connection that wouldn’t have been possible if he’d been saying things just to get me to leave him alone or stop being angry.

So I am now an even bigger fan of respectful parenting! This posture of respectful listening – of noticing negative emotion in the people I love without letting it unravel me or hurt our relationship – is something I want to cultivate more and more, now that I see how it benefits my adult relationships as well as my relationship with my kids. And it helps me stay far more relaxed and positive myself, which is never a bad thing.

family life, musings

a day when I fell apart

Posted on 2016-02-03 by kristinabean

This weekend I had one of those days, as a parent, that I wish had never happened. I’m not sure what triggered it – maybe hormones, or sleep-deprivation, or the chronic stress of having been sick with sick kids for the whole month of January – but I felt like I’ve felt in the midst of a depressive episode. In other words, I had no energy or motivation, I cried at the drop of a hat, I kept fighting back irrational waves of panic, and I was incredibly, explosively, angry. Not a good set of emotions with which to set about being with two toddlers…

The worst moment came after I’d been trying to get Limerick to take a nap since he was completely exhausted, failed once because Rondel came in with his own set of needs (to which I responded horribly), and had just given up for the second time because Limerick didn’t want to stop nursing and I felt like I couldn’t handle it any more. I came down the stairs yelling, pouring all my frustration out verbally, and then burst into uncontrollable tears. My husband took in everything at a glance, took Limerick up for a nap, and left me with Rondel. And my little boy just looked at me with these big eyes and asked, “type of thing Mommy sad about?”

So I sat down with him and told him how wonderful he was, and how much I loved him, and how I was just having a really bad day and felt awful and didn’t know why. I don’t think he understood, but he snuggled up to me and gave me a hug. I told him that I shouldn’t have yelled at him earlier, that he hadn’t done anything wrong, and asked him if he would forgive me, and he stopped nursing, looked up at me with the sweetest smile on his face, and said that he would. Then he resumed nursing and snuggling.

The whole episode made me realize how much my emotions affect my children: the next day, while I was sleeping in with Limerick, Rondel apparently asked my husband to sing songs about being sad, and all the different reasons people would be sad, and for the next several days he continued to talk a lot about sadness. It had to have been unsettling for him to see that kind of raw emotion in one of the people he counts on to keep his world stable and safe (obviously he’s used to seeing Limerick upset 🙂 ), and he’s had to process that in his own way in the days since. I don’t really know what to think about that except that I’m so happy he can process it verbally and relationally with us instead of holding it in or expressing his discomfort with testing behaviors. He is an extremely emotionally sensitive and mature toddler, and I’m really grateful for that.

Because we’ve been through this before, my husband and I made sure that I took care of some basic things that night and the next day to try to prevent the emotions from getting worse or forming a mental habit: I went to bed early and slept late, I took my vitamins, and I took a couple naps with the babies the next day. It was a sacrifice for him of study time and family time, and it felt pretty selfish for me on one level – but on the other hand, it pushed away the unmanageable emotions, or at least reduced them to something I could handle while still being the gentle and respectful parent I am trying to be. It is amazing to me how much something so simple as sleep can affect my mood and my ability to cope with life – but it was a reminder to me of the importance of self-care, and a reminder that the good emotional weather I’ve been having since my pregnancy with Limerick isn’t something I should take for granted. Storms may yet arise.

Have any of you other moms dealt with depression, anxiety, or anger? This is really the first time it’s hit me since my first was a baby (so, the first time he’s old enough to perceive what’s happening), and it makes the experience – and the urgency I feel about remedying it – very different. So if you have any tips or advice for handling those things in the midst of motherhood, I’m all ears! I don’t want to be caught unawares and unprepared again.

family life

Limerick and Rondel together

Posted on 2016-01-302016-01-28 by kristinabean

Limerick has very little patience with adults trying to make him do something off his agenda, like dress him, change his diaper, hold him still, keep him away from forbidden or unsafe objects, and so on. To my mind this is completely reasonable toddler behavior and it doesn’t bother me at all. What interests me, though, is how incredibly patient he is with Rondel whenever Rondel decides to do something to him.

Limerick may be walking or crawling or climbing somewhere and Rondel will randomly grab him into a hug; Limerick just stops, rests his head against Rondel, and waits until the hug is done before proceeding with his activity. If Rondel pats Limerick’s head or squeezes his knee, Limerick just watches him curiously and doesn’t try to move away. And at the park, when Rondel decided to pour sand over Limerick’s head, he didn’t seem to mind at all:

just ignore Rondel’s very long and messy hair… I know we need to get it cut 🙂

Something about his big brother is unendingly and endearingly fascinating for Limerick, to the point where he’ll set aside almost anything else to put up with Rondel’s affection and attention, or follow him around the house to investigate what he’s doing. It’s not always rainbows and roses, of course: Limerick’s interest often leads to conflict with Rondel’s plans, and his still-developing coordination often causes unintentional bumps and broken constructions. But those moments of togetherness – whether they’re sweet and silly or rife with conflict and stress – are building their relationship and helping them to learn what friendship and family are all about.

family life, musings

why I’m not cut out to be a parent (and neither are you)

Posted on 2016-01-292016-01-27 by kristinabean

I’ve heard many people say to me that they just aren’t cut out to be a parent, or that they aren’t ready to be a parent. I’ve thought it many times myself, especially on particularly trying days! And while I used to try to convince people that they could handle being a parent (with the corollary that they should be open to life), I think I’m changing my mind. They’re not cut out to be parents. I have two kids, and I’m not cut out to be a parent either.

How did I come to this conclusion, you ask? I took stock one evening of all the things that being a parent was requiring of me:

Love: my babies need me to love them consistently, unconditionally, and more than I love myself. You try doing that when your nose is runny, your head hurts, and you just want to take a shower and a nap, while the kids still need to be fed, changed, and cared for. Love feels easy when you’re watching those babies sleep and your heart is melting, but sometimes the self-denial required is significantly beyond my ability.

Joy: adding insult to injury, being a parent means that I can’t simply feed and dress my kids with an underlying attitude of resentment, anger, or bitterness. For them to feel loved, they need to know that I enjoy being with them. Unfortunately, small children are not always innately enjoyable. My joy, therefore, has to come from something other than them (and, incidentally, what a burden it would be for a child to know that their parent’s joy and happiness was in their small and inexperienced hands!), which means I have to either be one of those irritatingly cheerful people who always seem to be happy, or that I have to find some source of authentic joy outside of myself. On my own, I don’t have the joy needed to be a great parent.

Peace: when my two-year-old is whining at supersonically high frequencies for a never-ending litany of reasons and my one-year-old is climbing on top of everything in sight (including my head and the two-year-old’s plate of half-eaten food), it is not humanly possible to keep myself from being irritated and annoyed (at least not for me!). I will lose my cool, at least once every day. Probably more than that on the days I don’t get out of the chaos by going to work, honestly. I have lost count of the number of times I’ve prayed for peace and asked Mary (one of whose titles is the Queen of Peace) to pray for me to have peace as well.

Patience: this one needs no explanation. Everyone knows you have to have patience with a toddler – and everyone knows that they don’t have as much patience as said toddler demands of them every day.

Kindness: because the tone of my voice matters. My body language matters. The extra activities and snuggles and treats we enjoy together, for no reason at all, matter. The little kindnesses I can do, the general demeanor of kindness and caring I can maintain, convey to my children that they matter – to me, to the family, to the community, and ultimately to God.

Goodness: as a parent, I’m my babies’ model of who God is and what basic moral standards are. My righteousness or lack thereof informs their developing consciences. So hmm, maybe my self-absorption, sloth, lack of compassion, and pride are things I should work on if I really want to ace this parenting thing…

Faithfulness: as every parent knows, one of the hardest parts of the gig is that there are seldom any breaks. The job is 24/7 for years – and two of the requirements is consistency and commitment. I can’t just take off for a year to develop different interests or explore a different side of myself; I’m in this for life. I think this is one of the biggest reasons why people in this culture don’t feel ready for parenthood! We are frightened of commitment – because it ties us down, but also because we’re afraid we’ll fail.

Gentleness: I’m trying to raise my children with courtesy and respect – to model for them the character I want them to have as adults. So when my temper flares, I can’t let it out with a smack or a yell. Maybe I can vent later to my husband or my journal; maybe I’ll just have to talk myself down from that emotional cliff. Most days I try to work at prevention, by being gentle and patient with myself and my boys so the anger doesn’t have an opening. But there are still times when I speak harshly and move roughly, my anger overcoming my kindness, abrasively damaging my connection with my children instead of building it up, and from what I read and hear and see, I’m far from alone.

Self-Control: ok, we all have that stash of chocolate we hide in the pantry and don’t share with the kids. We all have our favorite TV shows or books that we binge on to get our heads out of our reality. But as a parent, we have to be able to hold ourselves together as long as our kids need us. If our baby wakes up in the middle of our time alone in the evening, we still have to respond with kindness and love. The thoughts and desires we have need to come second to our responsibilities – and I’m not saying to take care of ourselves, but even with adequate self-care that can be pretty hard sometimes!

Hmm, does that list look familiar to you? That’s right – it’s the fruit of the spirit (from Galatians 5). No wonder I don’t feel ready for parenthood, or cut out to be a parent: I’m not. That fruit has not reached maturity in my life yet. Parenthood, to put it briefly, demands holiness. Holiness is not something I can live out, no matter how much I try; my old sinful tendencies still need to be put off and set aside. My prayer is that parenthood will at least hasten the process of sanctification in my life, as the refining fire or sculpting chisel in God’s hand.

family life

climbing ladders

Posted on 2016-01-21 by kristinabean

Someone learned how to climb the ladder at the park this week!

My policy with the kids at the park is that I’ll let them try anything they want to try, but I won’t help them except for spotting them on the first few attempts. I don’t want them to become dependent on my help to play, or to feel like they can’t accomplish hard things on their own. (And honestly, with two little ones I’m not able to hold both of their hands for whatever they might want to do!)

Rondel has always been a cautious baby, but lately I’ve seen him challenging himself and taking on new adventures, and seeming to enjoy the adrenaline rush and the feeling of accomplishment. It’s been really fascinating to watch him grow in that way! However, it was a bit of a surprise for me when he ran up and said he wanted to climb the ladder. Honestly, I didn’t think he’d be able to do it, and I was afraid he’d hurt himself, but I didn’t want him to catch my anxiety so I told him to go for it, and that I’d be right there behind him to make sure he didn’t fall. And he did it! I hung out near the ladder a few more times and then I could tell that he’d mastered it – he was going up and down with surprising dexterity given that he’d never tried it before that day.

In typical Rondel fashion, though, he managed to insert some theatrics into each trip up and down the ladder 🙂 He’s totally pretending to be stuck and need help… he finished going up about 10 seconds after I got this shot, though 🙂

Congratulations, big boy 🙂 You haven’t just conquered the ladder at the park – you’re learning how to conquer your fears and hurdle the obstacles in your path.

family life, musings

family and friends

Posted on 2016-01-162016-01-16 by kristinabean

What would my babies do without their grandma?

Even his toes are curled up in concentration!

The isolation of the nuclear family leads to an impoverishment of relationship and community life, and although relationships (especially family relationships!) bring their own tensions, I find that their value and beauty far outweighs the occasional argument, misunderstanding, or hurt feelings. Knowing that another person will be there for you when you need help, share the joys and pains of life with you, and pray for you consistently is an amazing thing. Being able to do that for them in return is equally amazing!

Now if only I could find a few good friends to build those deep relationships with… with family I know they’re worth the effort of relationship-building because they’re not going away, but with potential friends the future is a lot less clear. And yet I want friends who live close by, who have kids that my boys can grow up with. Whoever called this process “mom dating” knew what they were talking about 😉 and I’m just as scared of the social minutiae and tiny rejections as I ever was when I was single!

So what is my first step going to be? I am going to pray. With all the crazy things going on in the world it feels trivial and self-centered to pray for friends and community, but the slow development of trust and love has to begin somewhere small before it can grow to reach all the corners of the earth. And surely the God who made and sees all hearts can orchestrate a simple meeting of 2-3 women who need each other to grow with.

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – Christmas cookies!

Posted on 2016-01-07 by kristinabean

One of my family’s cherished traditions is the annual Christmas cookie bake. Now, we make many different types of cookies for Christmas, but this tradition centers solely on the rolled and cut frosted sugar cookies, because it is such a monumental group effort to bake and decorate them all. This year my mom, my sister, and I rolled and cut the cookies, and then everyone pitched in to decorate some later in the day. Unfortunately I forgot to get any pictures of the decorating or the finished products… you’ll just have to take my work about the heights of our decorating abilities! 😉

{pretty}

My lovely sister (and my mom lurking in the background).

{happy}

Two of my favorite women – so happy to be laughing and doing life together over the Christmas season.

{funny}

His little jammies are just a bit small for him, and he doesn’t like to stay still, so diaper changes usually end with him running away with the legs unsnapped, like a little skirt. Even when I do get them snapped, the two snaps right by the diaper usually pop open after he crawls or climbs around for a while… drawbacks of using cloth diapers, I suppose!

{real}

I suppose my {real} is that this is as far into the process as I remembered to take pictures! Also I suppose the fact that it’s a secret family recipe so I won’t be sharing it with you 😉

Do any of you have fun family-specific traditions like this? I feel like it adds so much happiness to Christmas to have things to look forward to every year – things that are always the same through all the other things that change, pieces of familiarity and festivity that endure as time passes. They help bind us together with both shared memories and shared expectations.

Don’t forget to head over to the link up today at Like Mother, Like Daughter!

family life

before Christmas is totally gone…

Posted on 2016-01-04 by kristinabean

…I’d like to share some of our pictures from the season! (And knowing me, probably some random meditative thoughts as well…)

I had wanted to find a tabletop-sized tree for our home this Christmas, but it didn’t end up happening. However, the city generously provided us with a Christmas tree by putting one up in the center of downtown – conveniently located about two blocks away from our house 😉

It is, I suppose, the urban child’s equivalent of a tree out in the woods, uncut, decorated with a single candle perhaps, and ribbons, and cookies and popcorn for the birds – the sort of tree described in Temple Bailey’s exquisite Christmas story The Candle in the Forest. It is what we have, beautiful and special, and we make it meaningful by sharing our delight in it together.

(If you haven’t read The Candle in the Forest, you should remedy that as soon as you can. It is one of my favorite Christmas stories of all times, for how well it captures the beauty of simple traditions and family love and doing the best with what one has; I have never read it without tears.)

Even Limerick was sufficiently entranced by the lights and ornaments to cease his endless running (usually into the road) and examine the tree! And Rondel couldn’t get enough of it – he asked to see the tree everyday for at least two weeks after the city put it up.

The specialness, the difference, of the Christmas season stood out to him for the first time this year – for some reason everyone was making everything more beautiful, and baking special treats more often, and lighting different candles, and secretly collecting gifts to give. We read the Christmas story to him over and over again, revealing more of the story as the day grew nearer, and he delighted with us in the coming Baby because of whom all the celebration was taking place.

Babies are very precious things in the minds of toddlers – they are just about the only people smaller than toddlers, and so I think they evoke feelings of responsibility, power, and protective love: essentially, they give the toddler a foretaste of being an adult and specifically a parent, and the toddler finds it quite an exciting experience. Not that they could bear that responsibility for long, of course, and they don’t try to – but when you’re always the small and the weak, who needs to be helped and taught and directed and cared for, it’s nice to find someone even smaller and weaker whom you can help teach and take care of. Babies bring that gift, the opportunity to serve and be a blessing to someone else, to even the smallest children – and in becoming a baby, God reminds us of the importance of that gift. For He did not come to be served, although as a human baby He was helpless and needy; rather He came to serve us, with His life, with His death, and with His intercession for us before the throne of the Father for all eternity.

(more pictures to come in a few days!)

family life

messy play

Posted on 2015-12-182015-12-17 by kristinabean

Sometimes I hate messy play because I’m the one who has to clean it up afterwards. Usually, though, I think it is the best – it engages the boys’ tactile systems in unusual ways, gives them a new or uncommon activity to delve into, and provides them an opportunity to create and imagine with different raw material then they’re used to.

Baking is one of my favorite messy plays because it’s highly edible and somewhat productive as well as being a lot to clean up, but outdoors messy play is also nice – not so tasty, but less work for me at the end.

One of our favorites around here is cloud dough (8 parts flour to 1 part coconut oil), which feels like soft, crumbly, slightly moist, moldable sand. I keep it in a box with a few different types of toys: spoons and cups for scooping and dumping, cookie cutters for molding, and a bulldozer for building. Then I set the box on the back patio (I’ve found there are too many distractions out front) and let the boys explore freely.

They typically play together well – Rondel is fairly good-natured about letting Limerick investigate everything he’s doing, and Limerick isn’t particularly aggressive about it. I think it helps with the cloud dough and similar activities that they don’t have a routine in which some toys are the sole possession of one boy or the other. It is always a joint affair.

And, ultimately, while Rondel is busy using the spoon or the bulldozer shovel to scoop cloud dough into the small buckets and cups, Limerick ends up just eating handfuls of it. (That, incidentally, is why I use an edible oil like coconut oil instead of mineral oil or baby oil like many cloud dough recipes call for. It’s also why I don’t use tempura paint to color it like I might when they are older…)

By the end, the cloud dough was everywhere – in their clothes, in their hair, all over the patio – but they were incredibly happy and so was I. The spilled cloud dough had become an opportunity for the bulldozer to build roads, and I was commissioned to bring out one of the HotWheels cars to drive on said roads. The boy who had been wiping off his fingers every few minutes at the beginning of the activity had cloud dough completely covering his legs and arms and was utterly disregarding it 🙂 So, all in all, a great success!