Keeping track

It’s a dilemma of motherhood: finding the line between enjoying each child’s current SELF and trying to sufficiently document the sweetness. I kept a baby book for Jay’s and Rose’s first year of life. Then I tried to write  a few cute things they say/do in a small notebook, one page per month. That seems nice and low-key, right? Well, I kept it up for a few months, but after my sickness last year I never started up again. It felt like too many records to keep up with: I have my personal journal, my [often neglected] scripture journal, and this blog already, and that seems like more than enough. We have to LIVE life, not just write about it! And yet…I wish I could remember that one awesome thing that Jay told me the other day…

It’s hard to remember the funny little things that kids say long enough to write them down. Any time I sit down to write a blog post about their cute sayings, I can’t think of a single one. It makes me sad—I feel like I’ve lost that moment of their cuteness forever! I have to remind myself that everything they say doesn’t have to be written down, or even remembered next week. I can just smile and feel like the luckiest person on the planet that gets to bask in such personality and giggle with them in the moment (and then breathe deeply and count to ten before I tell them to stop doing____ in the next moment). As long as I get a few cute videos here and there, and write a few stories about them now and then, I’ll have plenty of moments preserved.

Rose is a musical girl. She can be surprisingly in tune at times.

Next I want to interview Rose and record some of her funny mushy 2-year-old language on video. She started talking in sentences before she could pronounce 2/3 of the words right, and it cracks us up. She’s getting pretty good at praying. We still have to help her start out and tell her when to end, but now she can usually think of 2 or 3 things to say on her own. She says “pee beh Tao on hih missin, teeh peepuh dah-puh.” Almost every night. It is darling. [translation: “please bless Kyle (my brother, her uncle) on his mission to teach people the gospel.” love]

These two are BOOKWORMS. They sit on the couch and read to each other all the time. They memorize the exact words of their faves and recite them. Jay will remember the storyline of less-familiar books and tell the tale to Rose in his own words, describing the pictures when he forgets a part. I love listening to them read. The two or three days after we get a new stash of library books is like Christmas to them. Read-a-thon!

One more thing I want to add: Jay is such a tender sweetheart. For one thing, his freckles are multiplying like crazy this year, and they are one of my joys in life. This afternoon, I noticed that Jay and  his friend had dug HOLES in the only patch of dirt where we were starting to get a few pathetic little sprouts of grass in our back yard. They had left the two big shovels out there as evidence, and then the sprinklers came on and watered the metal shovels and the holes. The sight made me moan, and the whole day just kind of went plop and I got kind of cranky. Jay was very concerned about me not being happy, so when I sunk in defeat into my chair, he climbed up and snuggled up to me, put his arms around my neck, and said, “Mommy, I’m sorry that you’re sad. I’ll go smooth out the holes later.” And he went out and tried his very best to fix the holes (and got rather dirty in the process). Then he came back in, sat with me, and told me in a tender little voice that he wanted to help me be happy again. So we snuggled in the recliner together for a while. He kissed my cheek and hugged me, patted my arm, and offered to read me stories. It was so sweet, I couldn’t help but cheer up!

Look out, it’s Sunset Season again! The smudgy winter-spring haze has given way to the bright clear WIDE sky that I love about this place. Check out that halo around the mountain.

Speaking of peaceful scenes,

Layne and I are finally getting used to each other [4 weeks later] and she actually sleeps at our house now, which helps all of us immensely.