Life from Samuel’s perspective

Credit for this blog post goes to my dear hubby, who made some observations the other day about how Samuel has learned to cope in this family. Give a baby 14 months, and he will learn some pretty advanced skills for surviving in the family in which God has placed him. Here is some of what Samuel has learned:

* If you drop something, go ahead and say “No-no” because that is what someone is about to say to you.

* If Elisabeth comes anywhere near you, just go on and start crying to save time.

* If someone is trying to dress you, hug you, or otherwise bother you, start saying “Owwww, owwwww” over and over until they stop.

* If your mom lays you down for a nap, and you don’t want to take a nap, but she just keeps coming in to lay you down again, go on and fill up your diaper, forcing her to release you from your prison-crib for at least a few minutes.

* After your diaper is changed, if she insists on laying you back down, stand up in your crib and start banging on the wall. She’ll be in there in a flash because she’ll be afraid you’ll wake up your sister who is napping in the adjoining room.

* The proper response to the smiling, hug-giving parent who comes to get you after you wake up is to point at your toys and demand, “Ball!”

* You do not have to walk. You can get anywhere you want by crawling like the wind, or climbing on every available surface. If either of these fails you, don’t worry. Someone will just pick you up and carry you.

* If you’re whining and being ignored, simply bang your head on the floor. Yes, it will hurt, but at least it will upgrade your whine to a real cry and you will finally get picked up, which is what you wanted all along.

* If you don’t like your supper, simply throw every piece into the floor. Your parents will get so desperate for you to just eat something, that they’ll eventually start bringing out the good stuff because they know you’ll eat it. That way, you can end up eating cheese, yogurt, bananas, or goldfish at every meal if you want.

* When you’re told to tell someone night-night, this means you may as well go on and start leaning toward them because they’re going to ask for a kiss next.

* When your sisters work hard at putting all their princess toys and Littlest Pet Shop toys and dollhouse toys and My Little Pony toys into their separate baskets, they are doing this so that as soon as their done, you can go behind them and throw every one of them back out into the floor.

* If your sisters then insist on playing at the table with their toys, supposedly so that you can’t reach them, you can show them who’s boss by figuring out how to climb up into a chair, giving you easy access to climb up onto the table and then the loot is all yours.

* And finally, when your sisters continuously torment you by putting pink necklaces on you and giving you baby dolls and trying to otherwise feminize you, just act like you enjoy it. After all, you already weigh as much as one sister, and the time will come when you can just flatten them all.

Let’s finish playing.

My girls live in a dream world most of the time.  From the time Abigail and Catherine were old enough to play together, it’s been apparent to us that any time they are asked to spend with us is just an interruption of their playtime.  Their playtime has always found them in another reality, being other people and using different voices.  Most of the time they don’t need any props besides a baby doll or two, but even if they actually sit down and play with other toys, they are never Abigail or Catherine.

Their alternate personalities have morphed over the years, beginning when Abigail was still playing by herself and she was Peter Pan and Wendy, switching voices as she switched roles.  They have played with Billy and Sally and Molly, their other “siblings.”  They have been every member of the Brady family–all at the same time.  They have been Chelsey, Charlie, Ella, and Kelly.  They have days when they are every other kid at church.  They become their cousins on a regular basis.  Sometimes, they even play Abigail, Catherine, and Elisabeth–that one confuses me because even though they are being Abigail, Catherine, and Elisabeth, they are not being themselves.  Throughout all the name changes and voice changes and personality changes, though, one thing has become a constant over the past year or so:  “Let’s finish playing.”

This is the phrase we began hearing when they would be released from the required time at the dinner table or in conversation with Mom and Dad, or even upon waking up from the interruption that sleep brings in playtime.  One would look at the other and say, “Let’s finish playing.”  I don’t know who started it, or exactly when it began, but I hear that phrase twenty times a day now.  And the conversations that follow this phrase are always interesting, if I’m privileged enough to be able to hear snatches of them.

The appropriate answer to “Let’s finish playing” is “Yeah.”  What follows is usually a narration of the next scenario in their world.  For example:  “Let’s finish playing.”  “Yeah, and now Molly is going to church.”  “Yeah, and she’s shy of all the kids.”  “Yeah, and her sister is going to go in her class with her.”  “Yeah, and she’s wearing a purple dress.”  “Yeah, and the other kids all like her dress.”  “Yeah.”  Now, sometimes, one of them will automatically say “Yeah” and then realize they don’t really agree with that particular direction of play, and I’ll hear, usually in a disgusted voice, “Catherine, her dress wasn’t purple.  She doesn’t even like purple.  Her dress was blue.”  Depending on the mood of the corrected child, this can be just a blip that they move past quickly, or this can be the end of the play, since the corrected child is now so offended that her idea was vetoed that she needs to come wailing to Mommy that “she won’t let Molly’s dress be purple!”  This is where common phrases such as, “Then I’m not going to play!” or even “I’m never playing with you again!” are heard.  But, if I just hold my breath and wait very quietly after sending them to work it out on their own, about 80% of the time, after about three minutes of sulking and glaring at each other, I’ll hear one of them finally say, “Well, let’s finish playing.”  The response?  “Yeah.”

This phrase has become so much a part of our family’s vocabulary that we no longer even hear “I’m playing.”  This phrase has become, “I’m finishing playing.”  When they tell me about something funny that happened in their world, they’ll say, “Mom, when we were finishing playing, …”  Often, I’ll hear one of them call, “Mom!”  But when I answer, I hear an impatient voice call back, “No, Mommy.  Not you.  We were just finishing playing.”  And it’s now spreading to the youngest sister.  When Elisabeth, laying on her belly in the kitchen floor, yelled, “Help, me stuck!!”, I hurried to her, asking how she was stuck.  She looked up at me, quite exasperated to be interrupted, and said, “Mama, me not really stuck.  Me just ‘fishing paying.’”

One interesting aspect of this phrase is that, apparently, one child can finish playing even when the other doesn’t.  This is evidenced by the times that one sister will ask the other, “Are you finishing playing?”  Most of the time, even if the answer is no, the first sister will say, “Well, I’m finishing playing.” I guess in their world it doesn’t necessarily take two to tango.  But maybe sometimes it does, because I also often hear, “Mom, she won’t finish playing and she doesn’t even have a good reason!!”

Overall, this phrase has been both humbling and intriguing to me, personally.  It’s humbling because, with the speed that it comes out of their mouths as soon as dinner is finished or as soon as they think they’re free to leave our presence, it’s quite obvious that we are truly just an interruption to their private little world.  They spend the necessary time with us, but their thoughts are “finishing playing” the whole time.    And it’s intriguing because it’s like the book series that just keeps on pumping out title after title.  Because even though they’ve been “finishing playing” for months on end, they’ve never actually finished.  I write about it now, because I know one day down the road, I’ll think back and realize that they must have indeed finished playing, and that will be one of those phrases that we don’t hear echoing through our little house anymore.  But let’s not be melancholy.  Are you done now?  Good.  Let’s finish playing.

The kind of stuff that (thankfully) doesn’t happen every day

The other day I had one of those experiences that takes a few days to become funny.  The kind of experience that, in the midst of it, I can only endure patiently by imagining the blog I will get from it.

My day had been going pretty much according to normal, which around my house is still slightly different every day.  But there had been no major incidents to speak of, no spankings, no huge messes, nothing really remarkable.  It was almost 1:00, the magic naptime hour when I can lay three children down and do school with just Abigail.  At about 5 minutes before 1:00 (important so that you’ll know the following took place in only a three minute span), I made sure Samuel was not anywhere he shouldn’t be, and took myself to my bathroom for a minute.  I was in my bathroom and then my bedroom for three minutes.  (I know because I was on Facebook on my iPod and I noticed the time as 12:58 when I turned it off.)  Elisabeth came in crying for the hundredth time, clueing me in that it was indeed naptime.  So I ushered her out of my room to go round up the others for naptime.

My first clue that something was wrong was the fact that the duck bathroom door was open.  I’m trying to instill a new rule in my children to always close the bathroom door because Samuel has a fascination with Elisabeth’s potty, and even when it’s clean and empty, that’s just gross.  So the open door was potential for a tragedy.  Then next clue was Elisabeth, who was a few steps ahead of me, stopping when she reached the bathroom doorway and saying, “No, no buddy.”  Okay, so that confirmed that Samuel was in the bathroom, but I still had hope that he hadn’t done any damage.  Hope was quickly dashed to pieces.

Apparently, before coming in and crying to me, Elisabeth had used the potty.  Big time.  Not just number one, either.  And not a nice, solid number two.  No, a nice, loose, runny number two.  And apparently she forgot to close the door.  And apparently Samuel had crawled into the room and headed straight for his favorite object.  And apparently he had managed to get the potty out of the stand and dump it.  And apparently it was the funnest thing ever, because he had a huge grin on his face.  He was splashing his hands in the puddle around him and having the time of his life.  (Remember the whole three minute span, okay?)  At first I was grossed out, but when I saw the–shall we call it “floaties” so as not to be too crude–I almost threw up.

Elisabeth was on the verge of stepping in, so I literally pushed her out of the room, cried “Stay out of here!” and slammed the door.  I took about a two second survey trying to decide what to do first, then swooped Samuel up and plopped him down in the empty bathtub, clothes and all.  I would deal with him in a minute.  First to clean the floor.  Elisabeth must have really downed the apple juice, because there was quite a lake.  I grabbed towels and started mopping up.  Disgusting.  I got the worst of it and got the towels out of the way.  While I was mopping, Samuel pulled up holding onto the faucet, slipped on the remaining drops from the previous night’s bath, and fell head first on the drain, which sticks up in our tub.  So he’s screaming now, but still incredibly gross because I haven’t stripped him yet.  I felt horrible but I was just not going to pick him up as gross as he was, so I just patted his little head and said soothing things to him, mopping the floor the whole time.  Abigail heard the screaming, and started to open the door when I screamed–over Samuel’s screaming– “No, no, no!!  Do not come in here!!”  She was then terrified.  Who knows what she thought was going on in there!

I finally got the floor walkable, stripped Samuel, added his clothes to my pile of nastiness, and started his bath water running.  (So much for a 1:00 naptime.)  While the water was running I called for Abigail to bring me the Lysol and paper towels.  She tentatively opened the door to hand them to me, and said, “But Mommy, what are you doing in there?”  I told her to wait a minute and shut the door in her face.  While Samuel soaked, I sprayed and cleaned the floor and potty.  I finally got my gross little dude washed and sanitary once again, and was able to proceed with naptime as usual.  I got him dried, redressed, and laid down (with a bruised bump on his forehead from the drain), and was in Abigail’s bed with Elisabeth by 1:18.  All that happened in twenty minutes.

These are the incidents that happen with small children, and you don’t even have to have a lot of kids to deal with things like that.  But thankfully, this is the kind of thing that only happens once–at least I hope so–and is not the stuff of everyday.  I told Clay that I must have seen some of those puppy dog tails that little boys are made of.  Samuel, Samuel.  You’ll lose your reputation with a few more times like that, boy!

Does a two-year-old really need to be able to recite the Lord’s Prayer?

We’ve been watching some home movies lately.  The girls love to watch themselves on tv.  As we’ve been watching them, I’ve been feeling really guilty.  Four-year-old Catherine is not up to the par that four-year-old Abigail was.  Two-year-old Elisabeth is not doing what two-year-old Abigail or Catherine either one did.  And 10-month-old Samuel is behind all three of his sisters when they were his age.  I started seriously beating myself up over this.  I was stressing out, thinking that I needed to start really working them hard to get them “caught up.”

Abigail started reading on her own at four; she knew all the sounds for all the letters at age three and just bridged the gap from there to reading all by herself.  Catherine, who just turned four last month, can recognize most of the letters when she sees them, but I don’t think she knows any sounds.  Have I failed her?

Two-year-old Abigail can be seen on video singing two verses of “Amazing Grace.”  Two-year-old Catherine can be seen on video singing “Twinkle Twinkle,” “You are my Sunshine,” and reciting the Lord’s Prayer with no prompting.  Two-year-old Elisabeth can’t even sing all of Jesus Loves Me, and when we pulled the camera out last night, the best I could get out of her, at least musically, was “La, la, la.”  After watching Catherine reciting the Lord’s Prayer, and realizing that she was younger then than Elisabeth is now, I started trying to get Elisabeth to say it with me, and she can’t even verbalize all the words yet.  Have I failed her?

At ten months, Abigail was saying “baby,” “bye-bye,” and “Abidee,” her version of her name.  She wasn’t walking yet, but she was waving and clapping.  At ten months, Catherine wasn’t talking much, but she had just started walking, and could do several little tricks.  Elisabeth at ten months was already a pro at walking, and can be seen on video clapping along with her silly sisters.  Samuel, at ten months, is crawling, pulling up, and smiling.  Refuses to stand on his own.  Laughs when you try to get him to wave or clap.  Repeats lots of babbling but not even close to talking for real.  Have I failed him?

Is it really necessary that Catherine already know all the sounds when she’s going to be doing kindergarten level phonics beginning in September, and the whole workbook focuses on learning the sounds of the letters and putting them together to form words?  Does she really need to know the sounds before she learns the sounds?  Is it really necessary that Elisabeth be able to recite the Lord’s Prayer at this young age when she is learning simple prayers for bedtime and mealtime?  Is it necessary for her to be able to sing whole songs, when she is showing more of a talent for physical feats than either one of her older sisters?  Is it really necessary for Samuel to be saying words and doing hand motions and walking at only ten months old just because his sisters did?

Each one of my children is, obviously, going to be different, with unique skills and abilities.  I want to expect as much out of them as they have to potential to achieve, at each stage of their life.  I want to always be teaching them and encouraging them on to new achievements, whether that means walking, learning a new word, learning the third verse to a hymn, or reading.  But, somehow, in the world of parenting, we (and I include myself in this) have gotten caught up in this competition-driven mindset of teaching our kids these “tricks” just for the sake of trotting them out to perform for everyone else (as evidenced by the fact that I have all these tricks on video, documented with the date and age of the child).  We want to impress everyone else with our brilliant kiddos, because somehow, our kids’ achievements put more notches in our own belts.

You can see this all the time.  All you have to do is ask what grade little Johnny is going into this fall.  His parent will tell you and then launch into a glowing monologue, informing you just how wonderful little Johnny is in the world of academics.  I’m not saying I’m not tempted to do the same.  As a home-schooling mom, I already feel like I’m on the defensive with most people and that I need to prove that my child is actually being educated, so it’s almost second-nature to start listing everything that she can do.

You see it when mommies talk about their babies, too.  “Is yours crawling yet?”  “Is she doing anything new this week?”  One of the funniest examples of this mindset to me has been with each one of my babies as they were getting their teeth.  My babies’ first teeth have come in as early as five months on the dot for Elisabeth, with the latest one being Abigail at just over six months.  Every time, there have been people who noticed their teeth, asked their age, and then said something like, “But my little (daughter, granddaughter, friend, so on) is already eight months old and hasn’t gotten a single tooth yet!  Yours already has three!”  Like I did something special, worked extra hard with my kids to get them to get their tooth earlier than the other kids.  We want our babies to be the best, and that can mean achieving things early, even when it’s something that no one but God controls.

But being on the receiving end of these monologues does not usually result in my feeling amazed at the accomplishments of little Johnny.  No, I’m usually just feeling weary, and often–I confess–wondering how much of it is exaggeration and how much is actually accurate.  Has Johnny really already mastered his multiplication tables in preschool?  Did your six-month-old baby really say “Thank you” when you gave her her dinner last night?  And even if they did, so what?  Is that really going to help them out when they get out of college?

So what’s my point?  Well, this was partly a rambling venting sort of blog, but there are two resolutions I’d like to make publicly.  Number one:  I resolve to not teach my children “tricks” for the sole sake of impressing others.  This gets sticky, because–and let me not be misunderstood–I do think that it is very important to constantly be expecting great things from my children. I expect them to memorize Bible verses, we teach them hymns, I make Abigail pick out chapter books along with her storybooks at the library, I try everyday to get Samuel to stand on his own.  It’s not that I won’t try to teach them these things; rather, I’ll try not to do it so that they have a new repertoire of performance possibilities.  Number two:  I resolve to not get caught up in the one-upping conversations of whose kid has done what.  As tempting as it is when someone is telling me what level their kid is on in whatever activity, I will try to just ooh and aah over their kid and leave mine out of it.  What difference does it make if they know that my kid is ahead of theirs?  Am I teaching my children just to impress the other mothers?  It’s okay if my kid is advanced and no one else knows about it.  On the flip side, it’s also okay if my child is behind the other kid.  Parenting is not a competition.  I have not failed my younger children simply because they don’t know as many tricks as their older siblings.  They’ll learn what they need to learn when they need to learn it, and they’ll be fine.

So, confession time:  many people reading this blog are probably thinking back just a couple of weeks ago to Abigail’s kindergarten graduation, where I stood her up in front of all her family and had her recite the 26 Scripture verses she had memorized over the course of the year.  Now how do I justify that in light of this post?  Well, here’s the honest truth.  When I planned that program, I had several motivations.  One was simply to share with our loved ones what we had been doing.  There have been mixed reactions to our homeschooling choice, and I felt like this would be a good opportunity to open a window to our world.  Now they could see that we did in fact learn things, and cover good old subject matter like addition, subtraction, and Peter Rabbit.  Another was for Abigail to have the opportunity to receive affirmation from someone besides Mom and Dad.  She doesn’t have outside teachers to encourage her, so I thought it would be good for her to have this time to be encouraged by her family.  And, yes, being completely honest, I was proud of her and wanted to show off what she had done.

So I’m not saying I’ve accomplished these resolutions.  I’m just saying I’m going to work hard on them.  Feel free to point out when I’m bragging for bragging’s sake.

Overheard

I hear many words each day.  (I am raising three girls, after all.)  There are the mundane, necessary words that must be spoken to get things accomplished:  “Peanut butter or bologna?”  “Do you need to go potty?”  “Come on, let’s brush your teeth.”  There are the typical preschooler, sibling rivalry words that every parent hears:  “She hit me!”  “I had that first!”  “If you won’t play my way, I’m not playing!”  There are the spontaneous sweet words that keep me going throughout the day:  “My mommy’s the best mommy!”  “Me yuv-oo Momma!”  “Mommy, Catherine is my best friend!”

But then, there are those other kinds of words.  The ones that I take in stride at the time, but then later it hits me how strange they really were.  It hits me that mine may very well be the only household around that overheard those particular words that day.  And these are the words that usually are going to involve cleaning up some sort of mess, receiving a puzzled look from any non-family member that may have heard them, or simply making a mental note to repeat them to someone later so that I’m not the only one who knows exactly how remarkable my children are.

The latest example of this kind of words?  Well, the other day, I heard my husband come home and the first words out of his mouth were, “Why does the dog have Parmesan cheese all over his head?”  Now, I’m just taking a wild guess here, but that probably isn’t something you heard at your house this week.  Even though Clay is the one who spoke those words, they do in fact refer to Elisabeth, since she was the one who dumped the Parmesan cheese all over the table, chair, and floor, and yes, unfortunately, all over poor Elliot who happened to be sitting beside her chair at the time.

There are countless examples of these words that result in a massive clean-up effort.  Words like, “Um, how did these Sharpie marks get on the steering wheel and windshield and rearview mirror?”  “Mom, look at Elisabeth!  She got into your bubble bath!”  “No, no, no…put the pancake mix down…put it..oh, no!”  “Oops, we forgot to put a pony in her hair while she was eating!”  “Look, we painted in our class today!”  Oh, the messes I’ve had to clean up within five minutes of hearing words like those.  These are the words that spark dread in a mommy’s heart.  I hear them, and I know action will have to be taken, but quite frankly, sometimes I’m scared to go look.  When moms hear words like these, it is truly an exercise in courage to go and deal with them.

But not all of the unusual phrases result in clean-up efforts.  Some, while not commonly heard from most kids, simply happen through the course of daily play and conversation.  This would include the other day, when my girls were playing outside.  I stood at the door for a few minutes watching them, and Abigail was positioning Catherine and Elisabeth around the yard and telling them to stand in the typical outfielder “ready” pose she’s learned at tee-ball.  She instructed them to yell, “Hey, batter, batter!” and to pretend to hit and catch the ball and run the bases.  I called out to them and asked them what they were playing.  I’m not even sure why I asked, since it looked obvious to me, but I was completely taken off guard when I heard the answer:  “We’re playing Harvey!” the older two yelled in unison.  Harvey?  I thought they were playing tee-ball.  But no, a few more minutes revealed that they were in fact playing Harvey Klinger, who is a random character that shows up in one episode of the Brady Bunch.  You never know what you might hear my kids say while they’re playing.

They play pretend all the time, but they pretend in about seven distinct games.  There’s Brady Bunch, sure, but there is also “Chelsey, Charlie, Ella,
Kelly” which used to be quite the favorite.  The funniest thing overheard regarding this game was when I asked one day, “Hey, Catherine, when you guys play Chelsey, Charlie, Ella, Kelly–who are you?”  Her answer:  “Rachel.”  When they’re playing, you might also hear things like, “That mean old Buddy Hinton–he made Cindy cry again.”  “Billy, stop pushing me down!”–(spoken into thin air as she throws herself down to the ground.)  “Mommy, I need to stay in my bed because I’ve been having a baby all morning.”  Most of the time, I take these without a blink since I’m the only one there, but anytime someone else is around, I always feel obliged to explain to them why my kids really aren’t weird but just extremely imaginative.

Then there are those things I hear that are just darn cute.  Like a couple of weeks ago when we were shopping.  I needed something from one of the higher shelves and couldn’t reach it.  Catherine was observing my struggles and said, “Boy, Mom.  That’s so high only God can reach it!”  And Elisabeth’s verbal struggles to figure out this whole “God made everything” concept.  She’s been taught that God made everything, but she knows that Nanny made her new “dankie.” (blankie)  So one day she said “Nanny make my pink seat,” referring to her carseat.  I said, “No silly.  Nanny didn’t make your pink seat.”  Elisabeth thought for a minute, then said, “God make my pink seat?”  I hesitated, wondering how technical I should be, but said, “Yeah, I guess God made your pink seat.”  She grinned and said, “God make my pink seat, but Nanny make my pink dankie.”  She thought she had one on me there, since I was obviously wrong when I said God made everything.

There are so many other phrases that mark milestones in my days, like today when Abigail came in the living room, very excited, and said, “Guess what Samuel just did!!”  But before I could guess, she immediately shifted gears, got a worried look on her face, and nervously asked, “Am I allowed to hold Samuel’s arms and help him walk?”  Oh, well.  Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?

Every mom is going to have moments like these, hear these words that you just don’t hear every day.  The more kids you have, the more outrageous things you’ll hear.  But it’s these crazy words that spice up my days, I have to admit.  Whether I find myself rushing down the hall to rescue a baby, walking fearfully into the kitchen to see how much Parmesan cheese is actually still in the can, taking a deep breath and trying to judge how weird someone else now thinks my family is as I try to explain why my kid just said what she did, or simply hiding a smile and recording the cute phrase in my memory, I definitely have learned to laugh at all the things I’ve overheard.