When to teach them to just love one another...

Why are kids so mean?  Why?  Why do they need to tear each other down? Why will they be an awesome friend for several months and then rip out a heart and smile about it?  

Cadence is an includer. I know. Not a word.  She gets a lot of that from her dad.  She likes for everyone to feel welcome and comfortable and included.  She reaches out to everyone, no matter how difficult it might be to include them, and keeps trying even when they push her away.  

In her last school she was often chosen to sit with the boys with behavior problems in class.  Like her dad she has a unique ability to let things just roll off her back, and with these kids she would always be their friends no matter what they said to her or what they were going through.  She is incredibly patient and kind.  Last year for field day she was on a team with a group of boys who all fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. They had all asked for her to be on their team so the PE teacher put them all together on the same team.  I remember watching with a full heart as Cadence cheered them on so hard, no matter how long it took some of the boys to do the tasks and sometimes running out there to do it with them so they would want to do it.  She cheered even though she was sometimes the only one on her team doing so.  She celebrated with them like they came in first on every event, even though they came in last every single time.  And at the end, when she could have run off and found her other friends to get the promised Popsicles, she rounded up those boys and sat with them and invited her other friends to join them.  One of the boys parents's came up to me after with tears in their eyes to tell me that their son had never been willing to participate before, but this year it was all he could talk about because Cady was going to be on his team.  

My girl is special.  So incredibly special.  And so when someone makes her cry I really just want to charge into action with a battle axe.  

Recently a girl who had been Cadence's friend since she started school told Cadence that she was a liar and an idiot.  This girl said that she just couldn't stand to be her friend anymore and strong armed two other girls into saying this too.  All because Cadence believes in magic.  Because Cadence likes to make up silly stories to tell, in made up lands, with fairies and dragons and sometimes her own Pokemon. She isn't trying to pass these things off as real or say that they really happened. It's all just for fun and a creative outlet for her and her friends. She illustrates and writes her own stories at home and takes them to school to share. I have never, ever tried to stifle her creativity.  I don't ever want her to be ashamed of it. 

But in a single afternoon one little girl did some major damage. 

By the end of the day, Cadence said that the two other girls had appologized.  One said, "I'm sorry.  I really like you just the way you are."  Mean girl heard this and scoffed, "Geeze don't say that, you'll make her worse." Thankfully the teacher stepped in at that point and told the girls she expected them to work this out kindly, and that if Mean Girl couldn't uphold the school standards of no bullying and treating others with kindness then she could go sit in the principles office and wait for her mom to be called. That, at least, shut Mean Girl up for the rest of the day. 

To say I was angry was an understatement.  My momma bear went from hibernating to ferocious in about a second.  I wanted to find this girl and her parents and rip her to verbal pieces. I wanted her hurting as much, if not more, than my girl was.  

But that wasn't the answer.  It certainly won't make anything better.  

Sometimes it is so very hard to do the right thing.  Almost no one, no parent anyway, would begrudge me my anger.  I think we have all felt it before.  

Cadence asked me what she should do.  She was very hurt that her friend thought these things.  Felt these things.  And worst of all, she felt like it was her fault because she "made up stupid stories" and believes in magic. 

That last bit about broke my heart.  

I held her for a long time.  This is not easy as Cadence is almost as tall as I am.  But we both needed it. 

I told her that it wasn't her fault.  That she can be as creative and as silly as she wants.  That people often react like this when they are jealous of someone and that she didn't have to change who she was for anyone. That she isn't stupid. She's brilliant and she needs to choose friends who like her for who she is and not who they want her to be. 

Then I asked her what she thought Jesus would want us to do.  This was not easy for me.  I was still spitting mad inside, but attacking a little girl and her parents is not the example I wanted to set.  

Cadence wasn't sure and so I told her that Jesus would want us to show love and forgiveness.  I told her that she didn't have to choose to be best friends with this girl, but that we should all treat her with kindness and let the bad feelings go.  

Kids bounce back pretty quick.  By the next day Cadence was much better.  She was kind to Mean Girl every day and respected the fact that Mean Girl didn't want to be friends anymore.  

Then yesterday Cadence and Mean Girl came out together after school.  They were laughing, and my heart...it was so happy.  Cadence told me that Mean Girl had apologized that morning.  She offered no excuses for the behavior.  Just a simple, heartfelt "I'm very sorry for what I said and how mean I was to you." Cadence accepted.  They aren't best friends anymore, but they are friends again.  

I asked Cadence how she felt.  She felt good.  Then she said, "I'm glad that we decided to do what Jesus would have done.  It's really so much easier to love people."  

And you know what?  It is easier.  It's easier on everyone.  

Happy Birthday Beckah!

Dear Beckah, 

Sometimes I think that God sends us challenges designed to make us grow in ways that we don't think we can. Those challenges come in many forms, and in this case, God sent me you.  

You are so much.  So much of everything.  So much emotion.  So much energy.  So much noise.  So much motion.  

You test us all in so many ways and it has taken me a while to realize that you are testing our ability to be better.  To love bigger.  To play harder.  To give more.  

In only four years you have taught me that it's okay to let go more often.  To let you run as hard as you can for as long as you can.  To let you be loud and laugh like a maniac. To let you cry like the world is ending. To let you bring the joy, that seems to be your ever present companion, with you to everywhere.  To let you light up other peoples lives the way you light up ours.  To not temper your exuberance. 

I love that you tell people exactly what you are thinking all the time.  I hope you always keep that honesty.  I hope I can teach you tact. 

I love that you see everyone as beautiful and that you get mad at me if I forget to tell the girl in the drive through that you think she looks beautiful today.  More strangers have hugged or waved to you with tears in their eyes because you aren't afraid to tell them that they are the prettiest or handsomest person you have EVER seen.  And it's sincere.  I don't think you know how many people you touch just by seeing their beauty and telling them you see it.  

You will forever keep me on my toes.  I never know what to expect with you. 

You are like a lit fuse and in my head I'm chasing you trying to blow it out before the explosion. 

In my head explosions are messy and chaotic and to be avoided.  

Reality is that so many explosions have a purpose.  A reason.  

And some are incredibly beautiful.  

So often you surprise me by being just the right kind of explosion. 

I just hope that I can teach you timing to go with that tact.  

A few days ago you told me that you wanted to be like a firework.  Loud, strong, and beautiful.  

You are baby.  You are breath taking.  

I'm just so happy that get to be part of your show. 

Happy Fourth Birthday Beckah-bean.  We love you with all our hearts. 

Happy Birthday Cadence

Dear Cadence, 

I'm overwhelmed.  

These years are slipping by much to fast and I feel like I'm watching you grow up with the fast forward button permanently depressed.  

Do you have any idea how wonderful you are?

How beautiful?  

How intelligent?

How delightful?

Do you know how happy it makes me to hear you laugh? 

How it breaks my heart to see you cry?  

You were my first big surprise.  I always wanted to be a mother.  I thought I knew what it would be like. 

Then they placed you in my arms.  You didn't cry or fuss.  You just looked at me and this new world around you with your huge blue eyes.  Just taking it all in.  

And I looked at you and I realized that I had no idea.  None at all.  

My love for you was instant.  Almost painful in its intensity and alarmingly vast in its scope.  We were responsible for you now.  Responsible for loving you, shaping you, and guiding you.  

Responsibility was not a new thing for either of your parents, but it was suddenly so much heavier than I have ever known it to be.  You weren't bills, or chores, or obligations.  

You were something much, much more and I was elated and terrified by the new responsibility I held in my arms.  

I want you to know that you have made that responsibility so easy to bear.  

You are naturally kind and good.  

You love so easily and are so very clever. 

You accept responsibility easily and always do your best.  

I'm equal parts enchanted and entertained by your ability to be creative.  

You always seem to know when it is time to come back to earth and plant your feet solidly on the ground, ready to face reality. 

You are such a gift.  Such a blessing.  

I know that some of the hardest years are ahead, but I take comfort in who you are showing yourself to be: a smart and capable young woman who knows who she is and values herself.  

Today you are nine years old.  The past nine years have been the best of my life and you are a huge part of my happiness.  

I know I don't always say it but...  

I'm thankful for you.

I'm happy with and for you. 

I'm proud of you.  

I'm in awe of you.

But most of all I love you with a love so big, so vast, that there isn't anything you could do that would make me stop loving.  

Happy Birthday my big girl.

Life is moving right along...

I'm really bad at posting here lately.  I know that so many of us don't really blog much these days, but I do like to update from time to time as it's been a decent little family journal over the years.

Life here in Texas has been really good so far.  The winter weather is a lot warmer than the winters in Nebraska (though I am finding myself missing snow...weird but true). I miss our neighbors.  I'm sure that our neighbors here are awesome and wonderful but we have really only waved and said brief hellos so far.  I need to change that.  One of our neighbors did stop by on New Years Eve and gave us a bag of goodies and introduced herself.  I loved that she did that and now when I see her I can holler, "Hi Irene!" instead of just "Hi!"

The kids love school.  This school is really wonderful and their teachers are amazing.  Cadence actually has homework now which, while annoying, has been very good for her.  She has a much better appreciation of her own time as well as other peoples time.  Rory is reading.  It's choppy and she gets impatient when she does read, but it's coming along.  She adores her teacher.  I do too.  She has been teaching Kinder for 25 years I think she said.  Yep the same grade for all those years.  She loves her job and it totally shows.  The school has also been taking Rory's dietary needs seriously.  I had one meeting with the woman in charge of food preparation, went through the school lunches with her and what Rory could or could not have and by the next day every single person working the lunch line not only recognized her, but gently reminded her when something had soy in it so she wouldn't chose it for lunch.  Rory has started to grow out of the milk intolerance and can have cheese and yogurt now with out trouble, but soy still causes issues. I was truly impressed with how quickly the school did it's best to meet her needs even though they aren't life threatening.

Church has been wonderful.  It's probably the first time we have been in a ward where we didn't get callings within two weeks of moving in, which has been nice.  I still don't know very many people, but it has been awesome to attend the adult classes the last couple of months.

I miss Nebraska.  I miss all the people we left behind (thank you internet for keeping us connected).  I miss the small town feel that we had there.  I hate starting over.  We were so blessed in Bellevue.  We had ready friends; next door and at church and even school.  We found wonderful people to teach our children in their extracurricular activities and they became our friends too.  I miss that living here, in this huge city with all it's huge city drawbacks, but I can't over look all the good things about living a big city either.  We do have friends here (thank heavens for them or things would be pretty lonely), but I'm sure even they agree starting over stinks.

I'm glad that 2014 is over.  Odd to say, but true.  It was a really exhausting year.  I'm thankful for all the new opportunity that is open to us now, but getting here was long and not something I'm keen on doing again. Brady was gone for so much of the year and that was harder on me than I thought it would be.  I am forever amazed by my kids and their ready adaptability to every situation our life seems to throw at us.  They are truly awesome kids and I'm so thankful that the Lord sent them to us.  I am thankful that all the training is over though so we can all be together again.

I'm looking forward to 2015.  It's going to be a good year I think.

Daily Family Scripture Study

Okay so I said I would blog about this once I got a good plan.  I'm not sure it's a good plan, but it's working so here I am to tell you all about it.

To start, daily family scripture study has not been a strong point for us.  Sad but true.  I have made several attempts over the last couple of years to change that, but because our kids are so young it's stupid hard to keep everyone on track.  We got to the point where it was somewhat like General Conference: get the kids all in one room, keep them somewhat occupied with church based/family based activity and hope that some of the information was sinking in to their little heads.  Unlike Conference it had to happen daily and it was stressful and exhausting and ended up with bad feelings all around.

I have been praying for a way to do this with the kids that will at least keep their interest for more than 10 minutes.  I had a half formed idea that instead of just reading straight from the scriptures and trying to explain after reading that I would pick individuals or stories from the scriptures to talk about and then just read the key scriptures involved.  That seemed crazy daunting to me to organize and do every single day and I did reach out for story ideas on Facebook (which so many of you supplied and I'm so glad you did, thank you!).

Then I remembered something very important.  This work had already been done for me and was available on LDS.org. I know some of you remember the Book of Mormon Stories book from childhood.  Had all the pictures with explanations and then several scriptures to read about the stories.  I got online and sure enough, there was the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine and Covenants all simplified into stories with recommended scriptures for me. You can click each of the book links above to view the manuals online. 

I pulled a generic 2015 calendar from the internet and gave each day a lesson from the manuals starting with the Old Testament. I left Monday's out because we do Family Home Evening that night and I know that for us doubling up would be impossible (especially while Brady is currently working evenings so I am on my own for quite a bit of this). Once I used up all the lessons from all four books I was near mid-October.  I'm thinking I'll have to come up with something else a that point, or start over from the beginning with the lessons and maybe have Cadence and Rory do some of the scripture finding work. I had the thought that you don't have to go through each book in order like we are doing either.  You could mix it up a bit and jump around. 

To plan the actual lessons/reading I usually pull up the lesson on my computer and go through it all and decide which scriptures to use.  Sometimes the scriptures chosen are repeated more than once in the lesson and I know that would bug my kids to be reading the same scripture over and over.  So I pick and choose so we aren't being repetitive and sometimes add some other ones that I liked better.  I usually put everything in order in a document on my computer and print it out, including the scriptures in larger print so I can have Rory try and read some of the shorter ones.

I use my print out to keep us on track, and the last couple of nights I used my iPad while we did the reading so that my two little ones could see the pictures involved from the lesson.  Cadence and Rory are always completely engrossed in our reading.  Owen and Beckah seem to zone in and out, but they are 2 and 3 and they are doing so much better then they every have before.  It's also going pretty fast (20 minutes max) so no one is getting bored or frustrated.

All in all I'm happy with what I've come up with and super thankful that most of the work has been done for me!