So Much to Celebrate!

Do you remember the Arthur Episode "The Long, Dull Winter"? Where they make up lame holidays to celebrate because they can't think of anything worth celebrating?

Well, that's not how we roll around here. We have filled the past few weeks of winter with totally legitimate holidays. For example:

1. Half Birthday Season: At some point in the past several weeks, Matthew and Jacob had half birthdays! I celebrated by making a white board that announced it. Matthew said repeatedly that he wanted a building cake, but so far we haven't made one.

I love him.

And him.

2. 333 month-day: At the end of January, I was 333 months old, which I thought was a cool number. I celebrated by telling my mom, and she congratulated me back.

3. Moon Day! This one was pretty exciting for the Moon-Moon clan. I mean, it had been more than 150 years since the last blue blood supermoon, so this was a really special event. Here's what we did to celebrate:

• The night before, we made pancakes that were red and blue to symbolize the blood moon and blue moon. Only, I had lent out my blue food coloring and couldn't remember who had it, so we went with green. 

• The next morning, Kevin and I went to an intersection by our home where there weren't so many trees so we could see the lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, the moon set when it was about the size of a thick big toe toenail, so we didn't see it when it was cool and red. I just had to remember how it looked back in September 2015.

We didn't end up walking to the divinity school to see the eclipse, but we were glad we scouted it out because it was really cool.

• Jacob and Matthew had checkups so we went to the doctor. Jacob got shots and bled a little, so he became my blood Moon. Matthew was a blue Moon when they weighed him because for some reason that terrifies him. But they were both super cute Moons as usual.
• Joseph had early dismissal so we got to do lots of attempts at Super Blue Blood Moon pictures

Blood Moon bandaid

• I couldn't figure out how to make origami cows so we made lots of origami frogs and pretended they were cows. And they jumped over the moon. But actually they still looked like frogs, and the moon Joseph made looked more like a lake. 

• I recently bought cotton balls and they got scattered around. So we pretended they were moon rocks and they were astronauts collecting them. (Side note: Both Joseph and Matthew wanted to wear different shirts than the ones I had asked them to, so as soon as my photo shoot was done they were back in their other Moon shirts.) (Other side note: Matthew calls them snowballs now, which I love.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I decorated with some moon books.

  

  The dog was assigned some clothing too -- a Moon Dog shirt. Not to be confused with the Moon Moon Dog, which of course offends me.

• For dinner we had pizza . . . because pizza is round. When we said we were having a moon party, Matthew called it a spaghetti party. Maybe he was thinking of the Aikendrum song, since there was a man who lived in the moon whose hair was made of spaghetti in that song. But at least we got it right with the pizza since his face was made of pizza.
• For snack I found star crunch treats at the store. Never found Moon Pies.
• I had sort of wanted to make traditional Moon Cakes, but it looked complicated. But a treat we typically call giant eclair is also called Moon Cake. So we made that.



Matthew called it Wonder Woman cake.


• Oh. And we found moon music and danced to it on the trampoline. Like this:

4. Groundhog's Day: Celebrated by having colds and by dealing with cold weather. Still. Joseph might have done something at school.

5. e day! So, e is approximately 2.7182818, and so 2/7/18 was a great day to celebrate it! We went all out for it! (Minus the fact that we never went out, except Kevin who drove to the airport for a job interview.)

• Joseph had a snow day, so we all went for a natural look.
• E is for eye and ear, and I worried about both for Jacob. He woke up with goopy, pink, swollen eyes. Since his eardrum had been slightly red at his appointment the week before, I was afraid that this had suddenly turned into an infection. Ear, eye, sinus, who knew? With Kevin leaving and snow and freezing rain threatening to come later, e was for feeling on edge much of the day. (Turns out my phone's voice mail wasn't working right and I didn't have service for some reason, so I waited and waited for them to call back for a long time. Also, they called Kevin who was on an airplane, so that didn't help either.) But luckily we didn't have to go in, and it wasn't an infection.
• We had cinnamon rolls. Not quite logarithmic, but who can ever refuse a reason for cinnamon rolls?
• E is for eggs, so we had eggs for lunch.
• Since is Euler's number, we had oil on sweet potatoes and roasted them.
• We celebrated Phi Day (1.618) a month late since it has spirals too. We made Archimedes spirals, logarithmic spirals, and Fibonacci spirals with the awesome quilt my aunt made for us.
  
  
  
  
  

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• Then after learning about caternary shapes (they were the illustration in The Math Book for e), we found other pages and drew pictures of them. Like Pascal's triangle.

• We made e's out of pipe cleaners. E is for emotions, of which there are always plenty, especially when little ones have colds. E is for elephant and Eeyore, which watched us on the stairs all day. E is for environment, which had lots of freezing rain.
  

  

  
  
  

  

  
  

• My brother on his mission joined in on the celebration, too.
   



get it?

Overall, it was a lot of fun, especially the parts where we ate cinnamon rolls!

6. 100th day of school.

• Considered checking out Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten from the library, but didn't.
• Helped Joseph dress up like a kid in 1918 or a 100 year old man.
  
  
  
  

  

  Most dentures are probably better than these.

7. Super Bowl.

• Celebrated by not watching.
• I was slow leaving Sunday School, so priesthood was already starting. They were singing America the Beautiful, 4th verse. I left before I found out why. I mean, Lincoln's birthday was the next day, but that didn't seem like a normal reason to sing it. Later I found out. "Oh beautiful for patriot's dream." Groannnnnnnnnnn.

8. Chinese New Year

• Our neighbors gave us Red Bean Buns.
• Ate potstickers and fried rice at some point in the last fortnight.
• Didn't go to an activity at the school because people felt sick.

9. Valentine's Day

• Bought myself chocolate and shared some with Kevin
• Got a funny poem from Kevin which included lines about space heaters that melt the electrical outlet even though they're not on that much. Because that also happened on Valentine's Day. Don't leave it plugged in. Don't turn your space heater on, period, for that matter.
• Helped Joseph write his classmates' names on PJ Masks Valentines and died a slow death in the process. Made the mistake of putting the stickers in the little slots too.
• Steak was on sale a little while ago so we thawed it and cooked it and ate it. Had to break it to our kids that they can't eat steak every day now even though they want to.
• Celebrated the fact that 2+14+2+0=18 on 2/14/2018.

10. Everyone's Feeling Better Day

• Celebrated by not wiping any noses for the first time in about a month. It was magical. Best holiday ever.

11. President's Day

• Celebrated by making a dessert with cherries in it. Made it up as I went along. My kids were happy to eat the marshmallows that didn't touch any cherries.
• Reassured myself that most US presidents haven't been that great. Chester A. Arthur is underrated.

12. Square Root of 5 day (2/23)

• Celebrated by remembering all the great celebrations we've had this last month! Every day is worth celebrating with these cute kids!

Magical Two and a Half

Matthew made it to two and a half! Different kids have different sweet spots, but so far for Joseph and Matthew 2 1/2 has been pretty good.

It wasn't easy getting here. The last 9 or so months felt like a blur of motion, meltdowns, and messes, and once Jacob was born the craziness went into overdrive.

But gradually, with each subsequent molar cutting through (just two more to go, and they're already partially erupted!), Matthew has become more and more mellow and even more delightful.

So, here are some cute and funny facts about our wonderful little boy. 

• He loves to do whatever Joseph is doing. This is especially true for school stuff. He was so sad when he didn't get to stay with Joseph when we dropped him off after an eye doctor appointment in the morning. He had even started taking his coat off and putting it in a cubby
• He also really likes whatever Joseph brings home with him from school. Most of the sight words worksheets are immediately commandeered by Matthew and he starts to color them. He has watched Joseph color enough that he is actually pretty good at coloring in the lines too.

They can get so focused!

My grandma might appreciate that this has been christened his Bird Superman shirt.

• He is gradually moving away from "Let's Go Fly a Kite" and "You're Welcome" (I asked him once what Maui's name was, and he said Welcome!), but unfortunately his replacement song is much worse. It's this Studio C Avengers song that is no longer funny at all. I have been doing everything I can to distract him whenever he wants to watch it or sing it. Hopefully it's short-lived.
• His other fixation is his Superman shirt. Joseph wore it 3/5 days for like 20 months so I am pretty sick of it. Sometimes it works to hide it, but sometimes I accidentally find it right when he walks into the room. Oops. Last week he cried for a lot of the morning because his mouth hurt but the object of his sadness was the shirt that he couldn't wear because it needed a day off. At one point I calmed him down by singing "Down By the Bay." When I asked for him to suggest an animal, he said "Superman" and started crying again for like another half hour. Whew. Good to know kids usually grow out of this.
• He loves to sing. He of course can belt out "Let's Go Fly a Kite" like nobody's business or the occasional line in the Avengers song, but he also makes up his own songs or own words to songs. For example, one day he was listing every single letter he could find on the Cheerios box and singing "these are the letters in our town." Other favorites include "Go Go Go Joseph," "You're Welcome," "Baa Baa Black Sheep" (he changes the words a lot for that), and "Marching Marching Hop hop hop." He manages to insert the word Superman or Captain America in lots of places. My favorites are when he sings the "I love you" songs I sing to Jacob.
• He loves trains so much. He loves building train tracks until it gets frustrating and he loves having the trains interact with each other. They have even acted out parts of "Caps for Sale." Today I told the boys to play upstairs while I tidied up a bit, and I heard Matthew ordering Joseph "Play trains with me! 1, 2, 3, trains!" with the same warning voice I use with him when I count to three. He also loves Magna Tiles, Legos, puzzles, and transformers. 

  

  And stickers. He sometimes sports like 20 at a time. 

• The other day he was having Jenga blocks interact with each other as they were heading off to school and work. "Bye, have a great day! Wait, where are my keys?" Not sure how he ever heard that phrase . . .

  

  He isn't a huge fan of the cold, so our trips outside are often short.

• He is at a fun stage where he picks up phrases and uses them slightly incorrectly. For example, he said, "Sometimes I wake up, just in case." It's a little bit like Engrish. He calls Kleenexes "nose wipes" because sometimes we have said "you need a nose wipe!" when he needs his nose wiped. It's all totally logical and yet just a little off. I once set up an obstacle course and he told Kevin that we had an octopus horse downstairs. We were talking about body parts and I pointed to his rib cage. He kept asking where his rib cage was and finally went upstairs to get it. He meant red cape.

  

  He handed these to me and said, "Here you go! Don't eat them!"

• Whenever I read a book to him, he reads along with me, even if he doesn't know the words at all. So I just get this cute mumbling echo the whole time. But then later, it's fun to hear him repeat the story to himself with a few of the right words here and there.
  
  
• He gives a lot of funny answers to our questions. Kevin asked "Name someone who loves you" with the correct answer being Heavenly Father or Jesus. Matthew said, "Superman!" Sometimes I ask how old someone is and he usually says 25. Last night I asked what Jesus' last name is and he said Sunbeam! He also announced during bedtime that Jesus got married. Joseph said, "No he didn't! Everyone gets married instead of Jesus." I've never read The da Vinci code but I think I'm living it.
• He's pretty smiley, especially out and about. The other night I sneaked into their room and he was just lying there grinning at me. I would have preferred him to be asleep, but man, that huge smile was a close second. When he's in a good mood he's so polite, helpful, and fun. (And when he's not . . . well, we survive.)

  

  He's figured out his food pretty well. Bananas should always have sprinkles. Trips to the store should always include apples. TV shows should always have carrots. Lunches should always include peanut butter sandwiches.

• He loves Jacob a lot. He likes to tell him that he can't put things in his mouth and always wants to hold him. It's still a good thing that Jacob is a sturdy little baby because Matthew sometimes wants to squish him just a little bit.
  

  

  This was short-lived, but since Jacob didn't mind we took a quick picture.

  
  

  

  Jacob could hold him!

  
  

  

  Three cute boys!

• And oh, does he loves to dance. It's the best.
  
  
  (I've been trying to get this video for like a year. He used to wiggle standing up, but I guess he knows that puppies are on all fours.)
  
  
  Such a funny kid.

We sure like this age, and we sure like this boy!

People vs. Objects

When I read Anatomy of Peace 5 years ago, what stuck with me most was the idea of seeing people as people rather than objects.

For instance, a microwave is an object. You use it to warm your food. If it doesn't work, you can get rid of it.
A phone is an object. You can use it to call people, check the weather, keep a schedule, and find out all the information available on the Internet. If it stops doing that, you get a new phone.

People are not objects. People can have tasks assigned to them, but they are not the tasks themselves. People can do things for you to be kind, but they are more than the kind actions done to you.

So, just as a reminder . . .
1. If you are not attracted to your spouse because their appearance changed somehow (weight, wrinkles, haircut, etc.), then you do not see your spouse as a person, just a body.
2. If you are unkind to your spouse because they do not do something around the house, then you do not see them as a spouse but as a robot. (You never have to be unkind even when someone doesn't follow through.)
3. If you are an aspiring politician in DC and you abuse your wife/wives, you do not see them as people but as puppets that are supposed to agree with you or you will lash out.
4. If you are an aged politician in DC that assumes that allegations can only come from "character assassins," then you do not see those people as people but just as impediments to your agenda.
5. If you are a bishop who hears from a woman that her spouse is abusing her and then checks with the spouse to be sure, then you do not see her as a self-actualized person but just as property of her husband.

People are not objects in any way. People are people. Women are people. Men are people. Children are people.

And there is no excuse to ever abuse another human being.

Faith, feelings, and parenting

I feel like the last few months have been a crash course in not just parenting but in relationships in general, and I have definitely learned a lot.

A lot of what I've learned can be summed up in these articles I've read in the past few days:

Indulgent Suffering -- I liked this because it reminded me that I have nothing to prove. I am not owed anything for the amount of suffering I endure, so there's no reason to put up with any kind of suffering. And that includes suffering associated with parenting.

How I Turned a Difficult Child Around By Turning Myself Around -- I think this sums up a lot of what I've learned the past few months. Just decide to be calm, and if that doesn't work figure out what's preventing you from staying calm. I don't always succeed, but my kids are definitely calmer if I've stayed consistently calm for a few days.

What's on Your Mind? - - Anger -- Joseph and I read this today and it had a lot of great ideas. A few hours later, he got upset and I suggested the poses in there. "I know what they are, I just don't want to do them!"
"Do you want to be happy or mad right now?" I asked.
He paused for a moment. "Mad!"
"Okay. It's okay to be mad for a little while," I said.
That's honestly the last thing I remember about it, and the next thing I knew he was fine again. It doesn't always work like that, but maybe today was better because we had tons of quality time all afternoon.

Two other ideas have helped me when I apply them. (Kevin and my mom can attest that I don't always apply them, and sometimes I get super angsty. But at least I have the tools now!)

1. The first is something I talked about with Joseph today. He was feeling really guilty because he had knocked a corner of a quilt down off the wall and couldn't fix it. It took me all of 5 seconds to fix it, but I could tell he was still upset.
"I learned something this year," I told him. "When you feel guilty or scared or anxious or angry, it's okay to sit with those for a minute. It's okay to sit and feel guilty for a little while. Then you can ask the guilty feelings if they're ready to go away. And usually, they are."
This didn't really make sense to him, which is okay. But it's been helpful for me. I know I blame myself for things that aren't my fault sometimes and the temptation is to talk myself out of it rationally. That's definitely the right destination, but sometimes I can't get there just by thinking. But if I let myself think, "I did something a little wrong and it indirectly might have done something that affected someone else," and just be mindful of the guilty swirlings inside of me and heat in my face, then I can let go of those emotions a lot faster.
I think it's okay to feel guilty about things -- too much time on your phone, not praying, thinking unkindly, eating too much junk, etc. We worry about wallowing in mom guilt so we try to avoid it, but really the best thing to do is to approach the feelings gently, sit with them, and then set them down as tenderly as you would a newborn.

2. The second idea is to put yourself a few hours in the future when you're in a stressful moment.
Let's take this morning for example. A lot of things went right -- the boys played together reasonably well, Jacob slept for 7 hours, and there were cinnamon rolls waiting for me that I had made last night -- but oh, there was a lot stressing me. I didn't want to leave the house at all because I was so sick of new germs making my kids sick. When I got Jacob I saw that his eyes were crusted over. I was supposed to unlock the church for playgroup. Matthew ate only frosting off a cinnamon roll for breakfast and was having meltdown after meltdown. Three kids were crying at once. Kevin was leaving for the airport. School was canceled. Snow and freezing rain were imminent. Kevin's flight was delayed, and he didn't think he'd make his connection. I called the doctor and they never called back, which made me worry that by the time they told me to come in, I'd have to drive in worse conditions. A few different friends invited our kids to play. I definitely had a moment where I sat hunched over on the bed, knees up to my chest, muttering to myself, "I hate everything."

But I just had to imagine what life could be like at the end of the day. Maybe the day would go that I would make it safely to the doctor's office and back and Jacob would get the medicine he needed and my kids would get to play with their friends in the meantime. Maybe the doctor would call and say we could take care of things at home. Somehow Kevin would get to his interview. Maybe my kids would get along pretty well. Maybe I would never have to leave the house.

As it turned out, many of my wishes ended up happening. Someone else unlocked the church for playgroup. Joseph got to play in the snow. Matthew took a nap. Joseph and I had a lot of fun with e day crafts (more on that later). Eventually I heard back from the doctor's office that home care was fine. My friends were patient and accommodating as I changed plans two or three times. Kevin's connecting flight was delayed so he got where he needed to (albeit with no gloves). Jacob was cute and sweet all day even with eyes that reminded me of the time I gave myself two black eyes on the playground just days before my sophomore school pictures and I looked so bad for the pictures that my best friend burst into laughter when she saw me (they ended up doctoring the picture into my favorite school picture ever). Overall, most of the day was smooth sailing. (We're not out of stormy waters yet since his eyes aren't better, but it will be easier to drive to the doctor's office other times this week if we need to.)

So yeah. Moments that feel like two black eyes might really just result in days that are picture perfect. The trick is just to have faith.