Tag: kids

Categories
life

Family Man

Father Holding Daughter's Hand
Photo by Spirit Fire

I have decided to more completely dedicate myself to my family and nothing else and to do so in an orderly fashion. A thought struck me again about how much more I noticed and recorded in my kids’ lives years ago so that my younger kids have almost no record and the older kids have no recent record. I decided that in order to fix that I would need to spend more focused time with each of the kids. That’s tough to do since things are so busy but I need to do it so I have decided that I will carve out half an hour each day Monday through Thursday to spend with one child. That will allow me to have time with each of my children regularly. On Fridays that equivalent time would be folded into date night (date night is longer than 30 minutes of course). Saturday I will carve out some dedicated time to working on some project around the house (there’s always something that has been neglected which that time could be used for) and then Sunday is dedicated to spiritual pursuits.

How to schedule this in is the real trick. I already get up and do any exercise and study before I go to work which I do before anybody else is up for the day. (Sometimes my oldest will be up reading or one of my younger boys will be up asking for a snack as I run out the door.) Once I get home from work I have to make dinner, feed the family, and do the dishes before getting people to bed. Somewhere in that time I need to allow the rest of the family to coast unsupervised while I create a bubble of attention around the child of the day. We can do an activity, work on homework, or talk during that time.

I hope that the dedicated half hour will help me be more perceptive and have things to record about each child more regularly. I created a rotation that would feel somewhat random to the kids but make sure that they each got regular attention within each cycle. I started this last week and have had time with most of the kids by now and I believe this will yield the results I have been hoping for. A few more cycles should make it obvious but already I can see that the kids are anxious to have time with me rather than seeing me as the big bad ogre all the time.

Categories
life

The Next Best Thing

I failed to get a picture of Ezra after he climbed into the toilet but I couldn’t pass up the chance to take a picture when I found that he had climbed into the sink this morning (in the same bathroom):
image

Categories
life

Parenting Fail

At some point in their lives everybody has seen a picture on the internet where a parent chose to snap a photo of something crazy happening to (or caused by) their child. The photo is very funny but you are left wondering why the parent chose to take apicture rather than intervene in the situation.

I had one of those experiences with Ezra. Because I did not have a camera immediately available I opted to intervene even though I could have run to grab a camera first – I am starting to think I made the wrong decision. I am left with only the ability to describe the scene that I failed to capture on film.

Ezra is at that stage where he is fascinated by toilets. His fascination is much more acute than any of the other kids’ ever was. He will walk to distant parts of the house to get to an unguarded toilet so that he can play in it – often by sticking in a toy or brush and stirring/flinging the water. This time I walked into the bathroom to discover that he had a new trick – he had climbed into the toilet bowl and was sitting – happy as a clam – as if her were in a hottub. He was completely inside the bowl with the toilet seat at shoulder level. He looked up at me as if he had just conquered the world by climbing into the toilet. after considering a run to get a camera I opted to take him out of the toilet, strip off his diaper, and give him a bath – so much for the viral internet photo opportunity.

Categories
life

Welcome Ezra

I have to admit that this was published well after the fact so I have no pictures handy to add and I am going to dispense with the statistics for now. Despite the sparseness of this post I did want it recorded that we welcomed our fourth son to our family today and everything went perfectly (especially perfect in that Laura no longer had an insatiable itch thanks to the cholestasis brought on by the pregnancy).

Categories
life

Growing Children

Last night Savannah asked me what time I went out weeding in the mornings. I told her 6:00 and apparently she set her alarm for 6:30 this morning so she could join me. When she came out I was still finishing scriptures but then we went out together and I taught her the tips to pulling weeds among plants you would like to keep. So not only was I pulling weeds this morning, I was growing workers.

20110727-102521.jpg

When I got inside I discovered that not only had I been training up a new worker I also had an audience while we were out there:

20110727-102938.jpg

From the way Alyssa talked after we came in I have the feeling that I may soon have two kids out working beside me on some mornings.

Categories
life thoughts

Be Where You Ought To Be


photo credit: orkydorky

Last week we had a family reunion at Bear Lake. It was great for the kids to see their cousins and for everyone to have fun on the water and off. In planning for the trip the hardest thing was deciding whether we should come back Saturday night or whether we should stay over Sunday and come home Monday morning. For a variety of reasons we decided to come home Saturday.

We felt good about that decision but as if to confirm our choice, the discussion in Sunday School focused on the importance for each of us to be where we ought to be. Of course it included the declaration that “at this moment Sunday School is where you ought to be.”

As I listened to the lesson I thought about the fact that being where we ought to be, or as it was said of Gideon’s men, “{standing} every man in his place,”(Judges 7:21) is a prerequisite to obeying the counsel that President Uchtdorf gave in the October 2008 priesthood session of general conference that we should stand close together and lift where we stand.

I hope our family can always be found standing in our place and lifting where we stand.

Categories
life thoughts

What Fatherhood Is


photo credit: Amodiovalerio Verde

Last night, before I realized that today was Father’s Day, Enoch taught me exactly what it means to be a father. He was fussy and tired, it was two hours past bedtime, and we had already had a long day. I went in and picked him up out of the crib and rocked/bounced/cuddled him until he finally fell asleep. I remembered times with various kids when I have done that despite being completely frustrated with the child and/or despite feeling that I simply could not meet their needs at that time.

The lesson was basically that fatherhood is all about doing what needs to be done because you love your children and it needs to be done even when you don’t want to do it or think it is more than you can do.

Categories
life pictures

Welcome to Katherine

I got the exciting news that I am a new uncle again as my brother and his wife had their new baby girl this morning. I expect she’s beautiful but I haven’t seen any pictures yet. On the other hand, I thought it was very funny to see the baby statistics for Katherine right above a tax advice disclaimer – as pictured above.

Congratulations to Katherine … and Mom and Dad … and Jack (big brother) and Mariann (big sister).

Categories
life

Winning the Contest

Yesterday at church was apparently a contest of wills between Isaac and me. He was acting up and causing a disturbance in sacrament meeting and I took him outside. Eventually he won his way back in only to have Laura take him out a few minutes later after renewed disturbance. Laura came back in a few minutes later sans Isaac and informed me that Isaac only wanted me. I went outside to where he was sitting and talked to him. He wanted to go home and take a nap. As we talked I explained to him that he was tired because he had been struggling with me in a struggle that he could not win. I told him that I did not want to take him home but that I would be happy to let him take a nap in my arms. Due to his continued sobbing I finally asked if he would be willing to take a short nap at home and come back in time for the last hour of church. He agreed to that and I collected Enoch (so that Laura would not have to take care of the baby while teaching her Sunday School class) and left as sacrament meeting was drawing to a close.

As soon as we got home and closed the garage door Isaac announced that: “I won the contest.” I asked him what contest he was talking about and he told me he won the contest with me about us going home.

Not to be outdone I decided to turn the tables on Isaac. (Yes, that’s dad, competing with his three year old in mind games.) I asked Isaac if the whole idea was to win the contest. He said that it was and so I asked if we could go back to church now that he had won the contest. He agreed. I quickly took the opportunity to put in my contacts (that I had forgotten before church) and then we went back to church before the chapel had even cleared from the meeting.

As we parked Isaac said that he wanted to go home and take a nap. I reminded him that he had already won the contest and had agreed to come back because of that so he went in and I took him to primary. I was feeling pretty proud of myself – I figured that I had won the contest after all – although I would not say such a thing to Isaac. Later I saw Laura in the hall between meetings and I explained how we had been able to come back to church so quickly because of Isaac winning the contest. After we got home from church Isaac announced to Laura that: “Dad won the contest.”

Apparently he recognized that he had been outmaneuvered even without me rubbing it in.

Categories
life

Budding Fashionista

For those who don’t know, Mariah is all girl in every way. It shows up in everything she does from dancing to dressing to interacting with babies. We got another taste of it last night when she had to put her laundry away.

I was tasked with helping her get the job done. We started off very slowly as Mariah and I worked through a philosophical difference. I was trying to convince her to put shirts in one basket and pants in another etc. She wanted to put one outfit in one basket and another outfit in another basket etc. The final compromise was that she could place things together as outfits, but each basket would not be limited to a single outfit (not enough baskets). By the way, an outfit consisted of shirt, pants, socks, a jacket, underwear, and pajamas. Eventually she got bored of assembling the whole set so outfits became shirt and pants (the way I would have defined them).

As we got closer to finished Mariah discovered what I had been trying to tell her before, that she did not have the same number of shirts as pants. She discovered it when she had three shirts left and five pairs of pants to match them with. I was not sure how this situation would play out but Mariah had a great solution – she went to the buckets and pulled out two of the shirts and added them to the remaining shirts so that she had 5 shirts and 5 pairs of pants to form 5 more outfits.

After we got finished I told Laura the story and she insisted that I had to record this adventure with out little fashionista.