Way back in my student teaching days the speech therapist at my school did a language evaluation for a third grader. The otherwise bright girl mumbled, mixed her words around, and used strange, seemingly made-up names for commonplace classroom objects and actions. She was observed for a week in clinic and classroom and the therapist documented all of these problems. This cheerful and intelligent little girl was having serious difficulty functioning normally at school. When my friend thought she had a diagnosis, she made a home visit to confirm.
The girl didn't have a speech impediment. She was being raised by her grandmother, who had difficulty communicating because of a stroke suffered when the girl was two. She learned to talk by repeating words she heard from a woman who could barely speak herself. This became apparent when my friend realized over coffee and cookies that the girl and her guardian sounded just like each other.
This stops me in my tracks.
I taught for eight years, and though I did my best for my students I knew that most of their training was going on at home. Many times I left a parent-teacher meeting thinking "Well, that explains a lot!" Most of the time it was for good reason: kind, thoughtful, intelligent parents were successfully raising a wonderful child.
Sometimes not.
Giggling over morning cereal and filling sippy cups is the easy part of parenting. The hard part is that to truly be successful I have to BE the kind of person I want my babies to become. That means getting up in the morning and doing battle with the parts of my personality I'm not happy about.
There are no secrets in a house with small children. If I think my children won't notice my flaws, and by noticing feel comfortable in accepting a lower standard I have modeled for them in my own life, I'm sadly mistaken.
This weekend Craig and I are sitting down and making THE LIST. On it go words that will not be allowed in our house. Some are profane, some are best left to private conversation and not trotted out in public, and some are best left to older people who can judge each situation and use words to help and not harm. However, THE LIST isn't for policing what our kids say. It's for monitoring what WE say.
It's about time. Devon's vocabulary has gone from 10 words to 500 words in three short weeks. He's putting the words into increasingly complex sentences. It's without a doubt the most fun I've had being a parent. It amazes me that I can say "read" once and find him rocking in his chair with book open saying "read...read...read" an hour later.
I have a choice to make. I can be stupid (a word on the list, actually) and think that I can continue to act any way I feel like and raise children that don't have my hangups. Or I can choose to learn my hard lessons quickly and not let any of the foolishness I struggle with become a part of them.
People already say my kids look and act like me. I want that to be a good thing.
I hope it's not too late in the year to make that New Year's resolution.
Only twenty days late is actually doing pretty good for me. All three kids are on a really good schedule, but only just. Bedtime routines are firmly established, but things don't always go according to plan. When I take this picture at 8 pm.,
chances are I'll be taking this one at 11:30,
and, finally, this one at midnight.
Mysteriously, Carrie's and Melina's day schedules have flipped. Melina used to keep me company in the afternoon as Carrie and Devon slept. Now for the past few days Melina has been taking the marathon-style naps of a much older baby
while Carrie and I enjoy floor time, do the afternoon chores, or sit at the kitchen table typing a blog and eating cereal.
I cherish every minute I have alone with Carrie. She doesn't have the high-energy needs of toddler Devon or the "all the world is a stage" personality of Melina. She's the one who could easily get lost in the shuffle of my day, the wheel-that-doesn't-squeak that therefore gets left alone. I have to make an effort each day to notice her, enjoying every minute of her serenely cheerful babyhood.
So I do. That's my other resolution, and I make that promise to all of my babies.
Before we had kids, I admired the attitude of a friend of mine who had one child at the time and now also has three. She said she made up her mind to treat her little boy like he was the only child she would ever have, and to give him all the attention and love that he needed without looking ahead to having more or back to when it was just her and her husband.
I want to do the same. Part of living the very public life of parent of three under two is fielding questions about our intentions:
"Are you done?"
"Did you plan this?"
"You're going to end up like the Duggars, you know!" (Interesting side note: they had their first three on our timeline.)
Most people are nice. Some, quite frankly, aren't.
"You just enjoy making things hard for yourself, don't you!"
"This isn't the 1800's! There are things you can do to prevent that!"
"I know the name of a good bankruptcy lawyer! You're going to need it!"
I love my life with my husband and kids. It's amazing now to think of the time I wasted worrying about waiting too long bringing on infertility (HAH!). God gave us three kids before we even asked for two. How amazing! God knows what we want, but he gives us what we need. At this point, that's enough for us. More children would make for some interesting blog titles (6 in 4? 9 in 6?) but we're too busy loving our children like they're the only ones we're ever going to have.
It's easy for me to move through the day in a putting-out-fires state of mind, especially when a small crisis threatens to destroy the peaceful evening I planned. After an evening like last night when I changed eleven poopy diapers in two hours and gave two emergency baths, it's easy to wonder when I'll ever be able to plan an evening out or have late evening hobby time (if by "hobby time" I mean finally starting the girls' baby books). Then I stop, focus on my kids who need me, and make the decision to participate fully in this time of my life.
This morning Carrie woke up at an early 6:30, and after eating she laid on my chest in a blissful milk coma as I checked facebook and email and enjoyed the rhythm of her breath for two hours as Devon and Melina uncharacteristically slept in.
I have to make enough of those moments. Perfect strangers warn me of that all the time.
"They're so sweet! Enjoy them! They're going to grow up so fast!"
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