Fashion trends for toddlers

You never know when the van might be submerged. Goggles are a necessity.

N's "toddlers who lunch" ensemble

Patience (the lack thereof)

I used to consider myself a patient person. But that was before I had children. The more children I had, the lower my patience threshold got.

On weekdays, T has to read 20 minutes a day. Because I know my son well, we do this before he goes to kindergarten. He's way too cranky and tired after school to even attempt it. So, every day while we eat lunch, we read. It's something that we both really enjoy... except for when one or both of the twins yell. Which, unfortunately, is often.

I try to get them everything they could possibly need before I sit down to read. But it never seems to matter. Within a few minutes, A2 is yelling about more this or more that. And N is yelling about how she dropped her carrot on the floor and why haven't I picked it up. And no matter how many times I say, "Just a minute, Mom's reading with T," the yelling just never stops.

I know that they're small people, who don't necessarily understand the meaning of the word patience. But I feel so badly for T, who just wants to eat his lunch and read with Mom in some semblance of peace and quiet. The twins yell, and then I get upset, and then poor T just gets sad cause he can't hear himself think.

I think the twins and I need to all take a seminar in patience.

One screamer is better than two

When T was little, he yelled a lot. (Come to think of it, he still yells now that he's bigger.) At the time, I started noticing that my ears, particularly one of my ears, popped all the time. And I mean, all the time. When someone's yelling right near your ear, it pops. And when your ears pop all the time, they hurt. A lot. I finally went to the doctor and he told me I had eustachian tube dysfunction. I asked him if it could be caused by yelling. He said no, but I still have my doubts. He prescribed pseudo-ephedrine to reduce the swelling. It worked to some extent and I just kind of got used to the pain and popping that was left over.

Fast forward to now. I now have two tiny yellers. N's is actually more of a high-pitched shriek than a yell. A just bellows until he gets what he wants. And by the end of the day (or maybe before lunchtime), my ears and my head throb. I thought it would get better as they learned more words and became more verbal, but sadly, that hasn't been the case.

The other day, I quietly asked N to stop screaming. She replied by doing a little whisper scream. Yep. That. Stop doing that.

All good things

must come to an end.

Christmas break is over. My kids went back to school today. And so, we're back to cranky kids getting ready for school in the morning, Mom and Dad both working full-time, and the general schedule of things. I was off work for over a week and I really, really enjoyed it. Really, really. Sure, I still had to take care of five kids, but it was oh so nice to be a bit lazy.

Another nice thing that came to an end was our brief respite from 1-4 pm church. Our ward split in the beginning of November, and just like we called it, we were bumped to 11 am-2 pm church for a little while. We've been on 1-4 for most of the past three years, and 2011 will be our fourth year. We (and by that I mean my husband and I and probably most parents of young children) hate it with a passion. For the past few months, it was really nice to get home from church, put the twins down for a late nap, and relax for a while before dinner. The kids were even a little better behaved in sacrament meeting and I may have gleaned a few nuggets of spiritual information.

Well, this past Sunday changed all that. The older kids were actually somewhat decent, but the twins were not. At the end of sacrament meeting, as I brushed away a few tears in hopes that no one else saw them, I realized that it was the first time in a few months that I had cried at church. And I felt sad to enter another year of trying to find anything... anything... that will work.

In more uplifting news, I'm actually kind of excited to make goals for the new year. Usually, I scoff at such things because they're often discarded so soon into January, but I realized recently that my life and my home need some work here and there. Wish me luck!