Details and Rituals

I feel this urgency to remember all the details of life right now. This is reflected in the pages upon pages of journaling I've done for the past 6 months, in the Instagram posts I share but never as Stories (because I can't handle the idea of it being gone after 24 hours), and in the letters I write to my brother. I want to capture what life is like with 3 little kids. I want to capture the life of 3 little kids.

I feel like their lives and personalities right now are described less in events and more in rituals. How Joseph and Matthew hide under Joseph's blanket in Joseph's bed whenever it's time for a vitamin. How loud the static is and how flat their hair is after I pull the blanket off. How Matthew always insists on a red one. How I am trying to change this ritual so that he doesn't melt down if I give him the vitamin while he is hiding on Joseph's bed.

Then there's the cinnamon. Every morning they want cinnamon on their Cheerios. We are out of cinnamon yet again because Matthew just wants to dump and dump so much on every morning. Sometimes he eats it, sometimes he doesn't.

Then there are the clothes. All Matthew ever wants to wear is a Superman shirt or a blue striped shirt he calls Captain America shirt (because Joseph did). Sometimes I can convince him to try a different shirt in his drawer, but he is usually sad a while first. Joseph still has his pattern of superhero clothes he wears day in and day out. Today he added Bruce Banner to the mix, but he still wanted "Hulk" underwear so that meant he had to dig through the clean clothes that we put into the dryer last night.

There are the ways they get upset over both the predictable and unpredictable. There are the ways they magically stop being upset, and for a few moments they almost seem euphoric, as if they had been weighed down by a bad mood and are now lighter than air. Kevin and I laugh about how Matthew can cry and cry for a long time, and then after he's done his share of crying can suddenly remark, "I am happy now." On Tuesday Joseph got angry at me so I had him write a sentence 3 times about being calm. He wrote the sentence the first time in all caps, with the letters close together. Then each subsequent iteration used better and better handwriting, and as he wrote his mood also got better and better.

He asks good questions. He asked yesterday if we had to go to school after we are resurrected. He told us the story of Adam and Eve. He reads along in the Book of Mormon with us and gets most of the words, even ones like "exceedingly." He cannot watch any kids' shows right now with any degree of conflict or suspense because he understands it so much better than he used to. I am not ready for him to grow up.

And there's Jacob. Sweet Jacob who last week had to be held all the time and this week scoots around everywhere. He can't scoot forward yet, but he can rotate and scoot backwards and that gets him most everywhere he wants anyway. Sometimes he just sings loudly and you know it's because a burp is coming. He spent most of 6 months not caring about pacifiers and can now pick one up and put it in his mouth. He is more interested in the tags on a toy than the toy itself unless it goes in his mouth. He smiles so easily.

People sometimes like to say "You'll miss this stage." There is a lot I won't miss, but there is a lot that I absolutely love. And those parts that I absolutely love, I find myself missing even as I'm living them.

But at least I can try to remember them.