Vandals You Own

*Folks have been asking for an update on the “water to the gas tank” incident with our van. Welp. Here ya go. *Vandals You Own* I turned my back for one second. All good parental spiels begin this way, right? … Continue reading

Primary Program Sunday

Primary Program Sunday Each year, usually in October, each of our church’s congregations have a special Sunday where the little children present a program. They sing songs and talk about Jesus for an entire hour and it’s my favorite thing … Continue reading

The Most Important Thing

Because I’m questiony and curious, I want to ask you a hypothetical question.

What is the most important thing a parent could ever do?

Thinking…

The cynical little hag that sits on my shoulder says, “Eat Oreos and Cheetos in the closet where no one can see or hear.” Or maybe, “Train all the children to do all the chores and then read books all day.” Or “Get shock collars for all the ki…” Wait. Scratch that last one.

No screentime

Just a little screentime

No screen

No gluten

No sugar

No nitrates

Babywear

Baby Led weaning

Attachment parenting

Helicopter parenting

Free-range parenting

Sleep with the baby

Sleep train the baby

Fed is best

Breastfeed

Bottlefeed

Homeschool

Unschool

Forest School

Private school

Public school

Authoritative

Permissive

Helmets

Love and Logic

Wild Child

Vegan

Vegetarian

Paleo

Keto

The sheer amount of knowledge and information and choices in our modern lives – especially with regard to parenting – just blows my wig off.

My real opinion?

Traditions. Traditions change everything. Traditions mean the kids have something to look forward to, stand up for and remember long after we’re not in their faces all the day long. It’s the tireless job of building a strong family culture.

It’s family vacation. It’s chores and working together. It’s praying together. It’s making the elf do stupid things. It’s consistency. It’s church on Sunday. It’s rules. It’s consequences. It’s playing hard as a family and then working even harder. It’s a special glass egg in the Easter basket every year. It’s holidays with extended family. It’s Grandma and Grandpa.

It’s strong beliefs and opinions. It’s encouraging questions. It’s sweet potato casserole every single Thanksgiving. It’s going through hard things and suffering and coming out stronger, side by side. It’s laughing till you pee and crying because life hurts. It’s making it clear that family is always first. Always.

It’s dragging out the same dusty Christmas ornaments and Halloween decorations every year and dessert and pot roast on Sundays. It’s celebrating milestones and personal growth and life changes. It’s spiritual growth as a unit. It’s sharing our weaknesses and our triumphs. It’s celebrating the smallest victories. It’s culture of acceptance. It’s the book challenge in summer and reading the scriptures together.

It’s talking about sex and love and relationships all the time. It’s letting them know that we don’t have all the answers and that’s okay. It’s late-night chit-chat after dates. Bedtime stories. Height recording at the beginning of the school year. Family movie night. Matching jammies at Christmas. The list goes on and on and on and it’s different in every family.

There is no right answer for tradition.

It’s not one culture or religion or tradition. It’s all the little things we fight for and the puzzle pieces we keep on placing even though we’re exhausted from all the running but we keep on going because it brings our babies back into our orbit even when they’re grown. It’s the expression of love that speaks to their heart and assures them they are more than the sum of their own parts. Tradition whispers to their soul that they belong and they are part of something. They matter. They’re important.

Our family isn’t whole without you, child.

Creating memorable experiences with our families changes each member. It builds love and trust and connection. It’s a historical narrative that fortifies their lives one tradition at a time and makes them stronger mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. It binds them to their people and their home and reminds them where they came from and what they’re always a part of. It gives them something to stand for. It buries a longing in their innards for always returning to where they started.

Get out that elf you hate this Christmas because it’s not about the elf. It’s about the feelings. Make those special cookies or read that special book over and over or kneel down together even when it’s hard and feels weird and you don’t want to. Herd them under your wings and chase them down and make them pose with their Easter basket even though they’re too old. It’s about the belonging and significance these traditions implant into the hearts of our babies.

Do it. It matters. Even when it’s so hard and so exhausting and so confusing. It’s so important.

What No One Told You About Parenting

If you’re following my drift here, it’s not all beer and skittles, my friends. Parenting sucks a great majority of the time. Ironically, it is also the most fantastic hard thing that will ever happen to you and those squeaky little rats will gift unto you unparalleled joy and purpose and lead your heart to the Land of Milk and Honey. Paradoxically, they will also draw out your worst fears and insecurities and unhealed emotional anguish. Sometimes all these things happen over the course of a single day Continue reading

What Old Moms Do When Left Alone

I was left home alone for approximately 7.5 hours today. This is a rare occurrence in the life of this ordinary Hausfrau because I own so many children, it’s very difficult to convince anyone (even the man who procreated them with me) to brave leaving home with all of them in tow. Continue reading

Little Kids, Big Kids

So, here we are ladies. We’ve been pregnant or feeding an infant for so many years, we don’t remember when we started. Or maybe we had one and had to take off 8 years to recover. The last time we wore a bikini, it was cool to pluck out every last eyebrow we had and then draw it back on. Our bladders either randomly pee all over us or won’t squirt urine for nobody or nothin’ no matter how hard we squeeze or how many Kegels we force out while driving the maxi-van.   Continue reading

Shark Week

Anciently, women would hole up together in “moon huts” because this was a time for needed rest and reflection. Also, no one wanted a bear or tiger to smell the blood and come eat the villagers, so having all the bleeding women in one spot to lure the blood-thirsty lion to one place was probably a good idea.  Continue reading

The Maxi-Van

It will always smell like an armpit ate a diarrhea diaper stuffed with extra beans and onions with a side of dead fish, which digested a few hours and then barfed all over the place. Or a foot wearing a suit made out of anus skin in the middle of summer. I really can’t provide enough quality adjectives to help you understand the smell.
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Another Mother

You’re born, and then you grow and you never remember a time when your mom wasn’t your hub. All your world revolved around her. She was the axis and from her stretched the spokes that were your food, your time, your emotions, your spirituality, your education, your style, your livelihood, your illusions, your teenage angst, your frustration; and your eyes slowly peeled open when you created your own first human.

There is an invisible but almost tangible conduit that links your heart and your soul to hers. You can’t imagine there’s anyone else in this world who is connected to you like she is. And you’re mostly right, until you meet him.

He is new, he is arresting and he is yours. He is all hard angles and soft feelings and he comes with his very own hub. She is the center point he has revolved around all his life and these revolutions around our mothers are sometimes hard to remodel.

As you grow together, you become the axis of what you create together and the world opens up because the rose of understanding blooms in your heart and mind and motherhood changes you.

Years into loving him, you recognize the spark in your heart that burns bright for your own mother, also burns for his. You love her like he does. You never could have imagined the possibility of two nuclei in your life. But here you are.

The prospect of losing either of them stings and stabs deep in your heart. When she suffers, you feel the misery acutely. Watching him ache for her breaks your heart into shards of emotional glass. When you’re faced with the fragility of her life and the precarious thread upon which we dance daily unraveling, the future feels like it arrived too quickly and you realize with panic that you haven’t had enough time with either of them.

There is peace that radiates from your knowledge of Christ. There is always a warm hand on your shoulder because you embrace the infinite power of His atoning sacrifice. But the graduation from mortality still strikes fear and sorrow and grief in your gut. You just keep climbing and clinging to the strands of beauty stitched into your tapestry because you know the love of two mothers.

Easter Egg Hunting

These two little cowboys are out having an “Easter Egg Hunt” in the pasture. The “baskets” are giant fish nets and the “eggs” are balls of horse poop. Yes. They’re using their hands to collect eggs. I’m not sorry that … Continue reading

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