Top 7 Things About Attending the Natural History Museum Today

7.  Parallel Parking Downtown. - No, I am not being sarcastic.  Let me just say this: there are few things in life that I can actually call a talent without knowing there are a zillion people out there who can do it much, much, much better than me.  Parallel parking?  Oh yes, I have that down.  (I know, the talents I brought with me!)  This is due to the following reasons:  1) during my years living off campus at BYU, I owned an old school - translate HUGE - orange/red Thunderbird, and 2) I was trained by the amazing Julia Jorgenson to park the Beast.  While I may have driven on the curb more than once while parking during my 16-year-old driving test, I have come a long way from those pansy parking days.  Once - in the middle of LA - Justin could not get our rental car parked near a very yummy pizza restaurant.  I threw out a comment about my parking prowess and he dared to dare me to a challenge.  Let's just say I pulled that one off too.  (Insert maniac laughter)  And so, after successfully parking my big red family travelling van, I already had a high from accomplishing great things.  (Yes - little things excite me.)

6.  Watching M traverse the dead worm littered sidewalk. - I tried to get a video of this, (I forgot and shot it sideways) but I don't think I really "caught" the hilariousness of it.  M, apparently, does not like worms.  (Later she asked me if they hissed and were they biting her... maybe she thought they were snakes?)  First, she whined to ride in the stroller.  When that got a negative, she resorted to tiptoes and muttering.  Those worms are scary I tell you.

5.  Answering the following questions for EVERY SINGLE taxidermied animal in sight:

"Are those real animals?"
Yes.
"Are they dead?"
Yes.

And since this was a Natural History museum, you can imagine the amount of animals that necessitated this important exchange.  Finally, after one whole floor of "dead" questions I said:

"Everything here is real.  And everything here is dead. Okay????"

Then we went through the Native American exhibit.  You know, where they have life-size dioramas of Native American villages?  With people in them?

So yes... I had to eat those words.  Because as E put it:  "It is not nice to kill people, and put them in museums."

4.  The fact that GQ regularly left our family to join other families enjoying the museum.  Or how he fell backwards off of a chair onto one mother's lap.  Yep.  I'm tending my children.  Can't you tell?

3.  How when we discovered an auditorium and stage in the middle of the museum, my girls were just as entranced as I was.  I could barely drag them past it, they wanted to go dance on it so much.  And guess what?  I felt the same way.  I may be shy, but - once a performer, always a performer.  The stage is a wonderful place.

2.  Watching Justin dance with E on the sidewalk outside the museum.  Because the museum was across the street from Justin's office, he came out to eat a little snack with us.  Then he and E danced around the worms.  I watched one young co-ed smile as she walked by, and I thought - "Yes.  That's what you want.  A nice husband who will dance like a maniac in the middle of the street with his children.  Definitely a worthwhile goal in life.  Definitely a good thing."

1.  Not having to fold laundry because - sigh - I wasn't home.  I think that one is self-explanatory.  (This may or may not have been a major deciding factor as to whether we went to the museum or not.)

"Dolly"

E received an American Girl Doll two Christmases ago from her Grandma Christensen.

Lately she is obsessed with it.

She changes its clothes for bed-time, has moved a crib into their room, and even lets the doll sleep with her own precious pink blanky.

Last night it all came to a head.

Justin called for us to pick him up from school and I said we needed to leave right away rather than

"change the doll's clothes."

Not only was I wrong about my priorities, but I also called Felicity a D-O-L-L. 

How dare I?

I'm all for living in the imagination of a little girl's world and everything, but if I'm not allowed to call the doll a a doll, and if the doll gets to be taken care of before - I don't know - actual people... then I see this as a problem.

So, I said:  "E, I am sorry, but this a doll, and so we do have to take care of Daddy first.  He is waiting for us, and he is our Daddy. 

Says E:  "DOONNNN'TTTT CAAALLLLL HEEEERRRRR A DOOOLLLLL!!!!

Frankly, I find this a little unreasonable since usually I call her "Meee, I mean My Ellie", and Meg ..... "Eeee breath Meg."

Now I have to remember Felicity too?????  Even if I wanted to agree, I don't honestly think I could comply.

Anyway, we did work it all out without too much weeping and wailing, and we did pick up Daddy from school.

My favorite though, was at the very end of the conversation when I said:

"Are you going to be angry at all of us, and have to put Felicity (I said Felicity) away so we can be a happy family?  Or are you going to be happy now so you can keep her with you."

Said E:

"I want to keep my dolly."

I contained myself and did not point out her improper use of the word "dolly." 

That would have been very un-motherlike.  Although it might have been funny too.

I found this today when I was going through pictures...

... and it was just really funny to me.  Andy and GQ look so pleased, and Samson looks like he's just ready to get out of there.

What to say???

Conference today resulted in many things.  One of which included the following:

Of course, that was just the first session.  The second session resulted in this:

It looks so much better (meaning worse - very dark black marker all over their faces) in person.

And yes, GQ has started the squinty eye smile.

Priorities

So, I left my purse at a friend's house where we had lunch today.  I didn't realize until the kids were asleep for their naps... but I wasn't too worried.  It does have my phone in it, but since I answer the phone - um never - this was not a big deal.

But just now I realized my book is in it too.

Now that is grounds to wake everyone up and drag 'em to the car!  I HATE not having my book.

It's as bad as having my phone in the house with the ringer on.



***In answer to questions, the book is "Raising Your Child Not By Force But By Love."  Disclaimer wise, I think he gets a little kooky and "the end of the world is coming" in some parts, but his basic principles I enjoy:

1.  The Golden Rule
2. Have faith in the basic goodness of the individual (despite behavior).
3.  Forgive without limit.
4.  Repay anger and irrationality with kindness.
5.  Be generous.

Don't they look Angelic?

I may or may not have just put my children to bed one hour earlier than their normal bedtime. And this may or may not be the second week in a row I have done this when Justin went to his Wednesday meetings. (Survival, folks, survival.)

Since I have not taught E to tell time well enough to understand how time relates to the day (she does know she gets to wake up at 7:00 am, but that's about the extent of it) and since I have given the "in the summer we go to bed when it's lighter outside" speech, they are really none the wiser.

(Yet another reason to avoid kindergarten - E might learn that 6:30 pm is quite a bit earlier than 7:30 pm. Bad idea.)

So, why to bed so early? Because I did not want to spend the rest of the evening yelling at them, my exhaustion - not theirs - being the deciding factor. You see, I knew I could not behave for another hour.

I actually have done really well this week with the yelling thing. I have been reading a parenting book that I've read before. (It's the only parenting book I've ever read. I don't do well with people telling me what to do, and I generally avoid parenting literature. It just plain irritates me.) But this book only talks about being kind and generous and using the Golden Rule in your home. These are things I believe in already - so I don't mind the book bossing me about it - but I often don't find the strength to really do them. Still, I find that if I read just a little of this book each day I see more meaning behind the struggle to not flip out when M asks me for the 80 billionth time if she can have a cookie, jump on the table, lick the windows, or flood the toilet.

For fun, Mom, for fun.

But it is harder to be generous than to yell. It is harder to help than to delegate or order. It is harder to hug when I'm yelled at then to send someone to their room. And by 6:30, I am worn out with keeping my cool and trying to - as one Church leader put it - "be the saint."

(Full quote: "If there be need of a Saint, be that Saint." Not that I consider myself anywhere near a saint. We're talking yelling reduction here, the day I accomplish yelling deletion will be a total miracle.)

I knew that I was past my point of no return when I had to say to the girls - I did say it C - A - L - M - L - Y, (between gritted teeth) - "Mommy needs a rest, so you need to sit on those chairs in the kitchen while I make dinner."

This was so I would know that M was not swinging the pictures off of their nails downstairs, that E was not putting every toy in her corner and assigning it a task that no other child could interfere with, or that GQ was not using any leftover toy as a temporary baseball bat (his sisters' heads being the balls).

Strangely enough, considering the screaming banshees they'd been moments before, E and M sat down - E sullen, M happily eyeing the pictures on the kitchen walls - they might swing too, you know.

I left the room for a minute, and when I came back I realized how ridiculous my "sit and face the wall" edict had been. For there - copying his sisters as closely as possible, was GQ.

He had gotten out his own chair, drug it to the wall, and sat down on it dutifully. Then he turned around and giggled at his sisters. As though to say: "Mommy's crazy, but whatever... I'll do it too."

In my defense - is my position defensible? - we are suffering from "almost two-years-old" syndrome here.

You know: screaming, hitting, swearing in baby language, whining and other such fun two-year-old antics.

As an added bonus, E and M have decided that if GQ can get away with screaming in the middle of the kitchen floor they might as well try it too. Why not?

I'll tell you why not.... because you are all driving your mother I-N-S-A-N-E.

(Although you are all very cute after you fall asleep, when I look at you in your baby pictures, and... and... and... when you give me hugs, yes that too.)

See, they are cute.  Really, they are.

Anyway, after getting off our chairs and having dinner, and despite GQ's attempted intervention, crazy Mommy sent them all to bed.

Don't worry. They are happily listening to a book on tape, convinced it is bedtime.

And I am hiding. Confession: I already feel better.

And honestly, an early bedtime never hurt anyone, did it?

Just don't tell the kids that when I shut their window I spied some neighbor kids outside playing games together.

Seriously...

... what is up with blogger not putting spaces between my paragraphs? Because I can not publish without spaces between my paragraphs. Usually I solve this by uploading a picture - I don't know why this fixes it - but right now it won't even upload pictures. So, can someone smarter than me tell me what's wrong with my Html code?

*****Okay... I just switched to the new editor and it fixed all my above problems.  Yes, Justin, sometimes updates are good.

Conversation

M: Princesses fall in love with Princes.

E: But they don't really fall.

M: No, if they really fell they would bonk their heads.