March on Raleigh, part II: the temple

I've heard stories about people believing that Satan is doing everything in his power to keep them from attending the temple. The first I heard this was from my neighbour across the street when I used to babysit her boys (who no longer need babysitting) quite regularly—often so that she and her husband could go to the temple. They had some sort of code word for talking about the temple, as if they could trick Satan into thinking they were going somewhere else and thus he wouldn't stir up chaos to keep them from getting to the temple. I've heard similar stories since then.

But what if there's a greater power paving the way to the temple, clearing obstacles, sending out a homing beacon, calling us home (or at least to His house).

Side story, yesterday in nursery we were talking about prayer, specifically about things we could be thankful for in our prayers. The kids were taking turns pulling items out of a bag to figure out what we could be grateful for next. When the picture of the temple was pulled out a little girl said, "That's the temple! Mommy and daddy live there!" What a sweet misconstruction of the facts. But, yes, the temple is The House of the Lord and we should feel welcome there. (I'm assuming that this little girl was talking about a wedding photograph of her parents, probably standing in front of a similar temple).

Anyway...

All he can see is himself

He doesn't speak for me.
His tremendous words of emptiness
And pat-yourself-on-the-back rhetoric
Only inspire me to fill my life with substance
By reaching out, speaking out, carving out
A safe place. Yes, a safe place.

He doesn't act for me.
His thumbs-up, smile-and-wave gimmick
Will be met with my kitten-throated roar
Because ideas that belittle are little
No matter how winningly, bigly, and hugely terrific
They tell us they are. Yes, they tell us they are.

Oh say, what is truth?
His alternative truth: glass diamonds
Fool's gold, smoke-and-mirror stylized lies.
Trumpet-played puppets aren't out to spin facts.
It's a bald-faced attack, a normalization of the death
Of liberty and justice for all. Yes, for all.

Oh say, can't you see?
This is bigger than me/you/she/he/xe/it or them.
We're all on this plane but the pilot can't fly!
He's at the controls but he has no window.
His cockpit is covered in spit-polished gold
And all he can see is himself.
Yes, all he can see is himself.

March on Raleigh, part I

Millions of people around the world participated in the Women's March on Washington. It is the largest protest in American history. And yet, somehow, people are still asking me what it's about. As if they hadn't heard nary a rumbling about it...as if Google isn't a thing (Pssst! Google is a thing).

Pussy cat, pussy cat, what did you there? I frightened a little mouse under the chair.

I don't quite remember when I started thinking about participating in the Women's Marches, but somehow my thoughts went from, "That might be something I might do if I were into that sort of thing," to "I might be into this sort of thing," to "Okay, so we're doing this."

So we made plans and we made signs and when the day came we loaded the kids into the van and headed out to Raleigh. We weren't even out of the driveway before we ran into our first co-marchers—our nextdoor neighbours went as well! When we were parking we ran into another neighbour (Crystal, who organizes the MLK trash pick-up day) who just happened to have a few extra hats to hand out, which she offered to us.

Messiness

My children are the messiest eaters on the face of the planet. You might think yours are the messiest eaters, but you're wrong. Because mine claim that title.

I spend a good chunk of my time wiping down table tops, sweeping food off the floor, bathing children smeared head-to-toe in dinner (and so forth). And I know that mothers are supposed to be the pinnacle of patience—don't cry over spilled milk!—but sometimes the continual mess gets to me so when the fiftieth blueberry falls off their fork, bounces off their plate, skips across the table, and rolls across the floor, and the culprit smiles at me and shrugs their shoulders I growl, "You'd better go find that," instead of sweetly reminding my child to look after themselves. Because if I find one more forgotten (and smashed) blueberry (or anything else, for that matter) I'm going to lose my mind.

We must not cry over spilled milk, true. But how many times must we not cry over spilled milk? Until the seventy and seventh time? Say it ain't so.

This morning Zoë put her elbow in her cereal bowl before I'd even given her any milk (thank goodness) and dry cereal went flying across the table.

"Just sit and eat your breakfast," I reminded the kids as I scooped up the spilled cereal. "Eat and then play. Do not play and eat."

Thing I'd never thought I'd say #2239

"Rachel, there's a vertebra under the trampoline. Come take care of it."

She found a (partial) skeleton of some sort of critter while we were out picking up trash on Saturday and it was too interesting to leave alone so she brought it home (in a plastic bag) and somehow one of the vertebrae found its way out of the plastic bag and under the trampoline.

Because why shouldn't we have random animal parts scattered around the house?

When is the pool going to open?

Yesterday the kids were playing LEGO before church and Benjamin insulted Rachel's creation, which spurred on a huge fight because she took his criticism extremely personally. There was quite a bit of mud-slinging and even a little bit of physical contact and it was all completely ridiculous.

"I want you to say three nice things to each other," I instructed when I had pulled them apart. "Rachel you go first."

"Fine," she huffed before snarling, "I like your roof. The green part on top is nice. You build cool things."

Benjamin didn't think this qualified as kind because for family night last Monday we'd had a lesson about saying nice things nicely—and how if you say nice words in a mean way they don't really count as nice words. Rachel did not say her nice words nicely. But she was in too much of a snit to fix this so I asked Benjamin to let it go and take his turn saying nice things.

"Fine!" he echoed Rachel, but then said very calmly, "Your LEGO house isn't ugly."

She shot him a withering look.

"When is the pool going to open?" he said next, his words waxing saccharine.

Don't throw your trash in my backyard...

This weekend the kids and I participated in our second annual litter collection event, in honour of MLK day. As you can see from the pictures the turnout has been phenomenal (or not):

Shenanigans

Late Wednesday afternoon we got the news that the girls would be having a full day of school on Thursday morning. I had them pack up their backpacks so we'd be prepared in the morning. Andrew and Rachel went to church in the evening for a meeting and an activity, respectively. I stayed home with the littles, as per my usual, and gave Miriam her piano lesson.

We'd had scriptures and prayer before Andrew and Rachel left, with the hope that I'd have the other kids in bed by the time they returned—and we were right on track for that. We'd cleaned up from dinner and had story time and everything! And then Miriam got out of bed to announce that she'd forgotten to do her "Sunshine Math," an extracurricular math program (that seems to be rather widely used in the States...I dunno).

I was like, "You've had this worksheet sitting in your backpack for over three weeks and now is when you decide to do it?!"

Seriously. She'd been at home for twenty-six days in a row—and there had been several outbursts of "I'm bored!"—and she was just sitting on this worksheet the whole time?! Kids!

The girls were happy to be back at school for a couple of days before our long weekend (because, yes, that's just what we need after being home for twenty-six days and going back to school for two days—a long weekend). It's probably a good thing, really, because we need to reenter our schedule slowly. This 7:45 AM start time. Boy. I dunno.

In other news, Zoë, who suffered somewhat of a sleep regression over our month-long break (meaning she doesn't just go to bed when she's put down anymore...and has stopped napping pretty much altogether...in addition to still not sleeping through the night...but that's fine), fell asleep with a soother in her mouth tonight!

Snow, snow, snow

We tried to cobble together a snowman of sorts yesterday, but our results were rather sad. How sad?

This sad: