Preschool Years

This is how we spent our Monday.

Can you guess whose house we’re going to for Thanksgiving? We brought Cousin Stomach Bug too, so that just doubles the fun…

Hurts 🙁 I value truth. I am not always jazzed about the truth, and I often can’t swallow it very easily. But I do try to be sensitive and open to encounters with it – even when its taste is offensive and bitter.

Monday was one of those days where I had a week’s worth of obligations crammed into one day – all fun stuff that I was excited to do but still just one of those days when life and circumstances and responsibilities ask a lot of you. I am sad to say that I can even sweat the fun stuff. So when I have to go without an interval of collection and reflection during the day, I am a terror. Hence, on these occasions I judiciously limit interaction with others. Unfortunately my fam doesn’t enjoy that option. On Monday the girls and I were a train wreck. We sassed each other; we spoke sharply and negatively; we were eating each other alive. And I just found myself at a complete loss for what to do. The girls weren’t obeying me; they were yelling at each other non-stop, and I was doling out punishments left and right. I was at a loss…

Out of pure desperation, I asked the girls to come sit with me in the floor to pray – during which time I began to cry. If they thought I was nuts, they didn’t say so, but things improved after that. Tuesday was phenomenally better! I praised Carson at bedtime for her improved attitude, and you know what she said to me. She said, “You just needed to get it together and then we would.” Oh, yes she did…

I patiently retracted my compliment, addressed her insubordination, and accepted her apology. But it was not until this morning when I was asking God for the grace and the patience and the forgiveness and the wisdom to parent today that I realized that Carson had nailed me with truth last night. Though her tone and intentions were disrespectful and unappreciated, she was dead on. She spoke truth to me, and I will choose to receive it.

I taught high school long enough to know that on days I walked in with a crummy attitude it was invariably reciprocated by my students. I set the tone for interaction in my classroom. I set the tone for interaction within my family.

That’s not to say that I won’t totally bomb tomorrow, but at least I can come at this issue with a little different perspective.

Ah yeah, sometimes the truth does hurt…

Me

1. snakes
2. chewing gum
3. lotion (i really do hate it! there are some that aren’t super greasy, but i can’t stand to feel lubed up.)
4. when i really, really, really am excited to eat at a particular restaurant and it is closed; after that kind of disappointment I don’t want to eat at all – and that’s serious
5. tomatoes
6. scary movies
7. picking vegetables from the garden (i know that sounds so lazy and ungrateful but for years i was an indentured servant to my family’s mammoth garden – it was planted in the middle of three intersecting tobacco fields – large! i resolved that i would not marry a man whose family grew a garden and i was dead serious about it)
8. having a body chemistry that attracts nations of bugs to feast on my flesh (others around me aren’t nearly as tasty – don’t understand it)
9. flying (the whole gravity-defying deal just freaks me out)
10. flat shoes (they’re fine on other people, but i am too short and curvy to be that low to the ground)
11. trash in my trash cans (someone shared this eccentricity at a Beth Moore conference and i felt so validated)
12. reruns
13. homework (this is surely recompense for my die-hard belief that students should have homework every night – yes, i know she’s only in the first grade but it’s awful!)
14. fat-free salad dressing
15. things that don’t end at a good stopping place (like i had to add this one because i couldn’t bear for my list to stop at 14.)

I also interviewed my cute lil’ fam, and this is what they had to say…

Chris

1. Georgia Bulldawg red
2. playing Baby Jaguar (which is this game he made up with the girls, but they went all nelly-nutcase on him and wanted him to play it every single day as soon as he walked in the door – with absolutely no variation from the script day after day after day after day. a dad can only take so much…)
3. CBS news
4. crabgrass
5. scary movies
6. litter (he seriously wants to be a litter patrol officer when he retires – i kid you not!)
7. credit cards
8. restaurants that serve only instant or flavored tea – we only like it brewed, straight, on the rocks with a healthy dose 0′ sweet n’ low (no aspartame warnings allowed – it’s a vitamin in my book!)

Carson

1. collards
2. cooked carrots
3. washing and combing her hair
4. scary movies
5. arising at 6:38 each weekday morning
6. anything that requires a wait

Campbell

1. anytime momma leaves 🙁
2. anytime her sister locks her door
3. anytime the spotlight hones in on her (see picture post; she doesn’t even like for the three of us to sing Happy Birthday to her on her big day)
4. scary movies
5. standing in the corner
6. replacement blankies (please don’t ever make the mistake of trying to convince her to use another blankie while her 2 real ones are being washed; she will flail about madly – like only a three year-old can – even if she has an accident during the night she prefers to go without cover than to allow a sub)

Hope you noticed my capitalization and punctuation had the night off – quite liberating for the psycho English teacher in me…