Cherishing the Doing

Cherish the doing a little more, 

and the getting it done a little less! 

~ Anna Quindlen

I love this quote.

Too often, I'm trying so hard to get a bunch of stuff crossed off the to-do list, thinking that once those check-marks are there, I'll be able to do the fun stuff.

Really, though, the list just keeps growing... and that can be a suffocating feeling.

I joke about that with my kiddos, because the laundry is never really done -- unless we take a day to run around naked! Come to think of it, that does sound fun!

So there's one way to make the doing a little more fun... rather than waiting until the "done" to celebrate.

Okay, so nudity might be slightly inappropriate -- but ya gotta admit, there's nothin' like a dancin' two-year-old's flubby blubber! On the other hand, I don't really want anyone to see my flubby  blubber.

But I can still dance!

That might be one way to cherish the doing a little more -- making the doing a little more fun. Turn up the music!

Let myself eat a little chocolate during the doing, not just as a reward afterwards! (Maybe I'll burn the calories off before they have a chance to settle...)

Take time to teach the little ones how to do the doing... they want to know, really they do! And that counts as quality time, during the doing!

What else can I do to cherish the doing a little more???

Baby, baby

My baby isn't so much of a baby anymore.

She walks, talks, uses the potty... however, she still sleeps in my bed AND she still nurses, so, for the time being, she still fits in the baby category!

Every once in a while, I consider starting a real-true-weaning program rather than just casual suggestions to her that someday she'll be too big to grood (that's a code word, since my kids nurse all the way up through being able to verbally ask for it -- hopefully, people who hear them yell for grood simply figure the childspeak is lost on them).

This post was going to be about how each of my babies has gone through the weaning, and it keeps happening in other ways.

But instead, I want it to be about how my baby is a KANGAROO now!

That's right -- she was given a beautiful Cinderella dress for her birthday, but when it came time to choose a costume, she picked the ol' Kangaroo one... and she won't take it off!

She has worn it day and night for two days already!

Something funny: someone asked her if she was a kangaroo and she gave them a puzzled look and said, "No, I'm Cinderella!"

Here she is: a Kangaroo for All Occasions:

Sleeping Peacefully (nevermind that tail)

Eating normal kangaroo fare: noodles

Storing Halloween Loot in her Kangaroo Pouch!

Too busy singing

My awesome husband is awesome for lots of reasons... Besides being intelligent, handsome, kind, and hard-working, he's musical!

Now, he'll be the first to tell you that he won't be making CD's of his musical talents to sell to his fans... but that's part of what makes his musical talents so endearing! They may not be professional-level offerings, but he offers them anyway -- and blesses the world, or his little corner of it, in ways that only he can.

I think there's a lesson in that for those of us who worry that we have to shine like the top of the Chrysler-building before we can share our light... but, alas, that is not the lesson I was going to give for this post, so let me stop digressing and get back to the original purpose!

Recently, my music-man was asked to play the piano at church for when the men meet together. He agreed, under the condition that he would get to practice far in advance! So the person making the arrangements convinced another fellow to play every other week, giving my husband, Ted, two weeks to practice the assigned hymn.

As a family, we are encouraging his success by singing the hymn during our daily devotionals so he can squeeze his practicing in.

At one point during today's practice, Ted stopped playing between verses so he could apologize for the mistakes he had made. A couple of the kids responded that they hadn't noticed the missed notes, because they were too busy singing.

So there's the lesson I intended to get across originally!! If we are each too busy singing our own parts, we won't have the wherewithal to pay undue attention to the mistakes of our accompanists.

Now, it is an important part of the metaphor to note that our accompanists are supposed to lead us: our leaders aren't always perfect and need us to just keep singing even when they've messed up!!!

I sure appreciate my husband's willingness to lead our family -- in many ways beyond just our daily hymns -- even though he knows he's not perfect. And I pledge to keep singing and not take time to notice his mistakes, and trust that he's not too worried about when I get off-tune!

In spite of these errors, and maybe because of how we deal with them, we'll be making beautiful music together!

The "L" in S.M.I.L.E.

The above video is two minutes and 51 seconds long. If you don't have time to watch all of it, just skip to the last 30 seconds or so and see if you can find out WHY it is appropriate for this post...

CONFESSION:
In my mothering life, I AM TOO MUCH LIKE MARY POPPINS, and for heaven's sakes, I need to just let up, let loose, and LAUGH!!!! Too often I cop the 'tude of seriousness displayed so well here by Ms. Poppins (though I don't think I've ever had such a distaste for laughers. ... She comes off quite disturbed, doesn't she? Keeping the children from laughing, even!).

Come on, Mary, let's you and me lighten up! Unlike you, I'm not going to leave my kiddos when the wind changes, so I'd better learn to enjoy the time I have with them.

Laughter has become one of the instruments in my Mom-Sanity Tool Kit. I've learned that hitting myself over the head is a sure-fire giggle-maker!

It makes sense, doesn't it, for one of the letters in the word SMILE to mean Laugh? Laugh and smile aren't really synonyms -- they aren't completely interchangeable... I often smile without laughing. Yet if I laugh without smiling, I find that it's a poisonous kind of laugh -- the kind that hurts me or the people I'm around... ya know, the kind of laughing bullies do on the playground. I have to make a conscious effort not to allow that kind of laughter in my home. Period.

And sometimes I have to make a conscious effort to create the right kind of laughter -- the kind that bonds us all together, like Uncle Albert and the children. It doesn't quite seem right that laughter sometimes feels like a duty, but hey, at least it's a fun duty! And it's worth the effort!

When I'm having a hard time being motivated to laugh, it helps to think of it as multi-tasking, because somewhere I heard that laughing burns calories...

So, let's end with a joke! How about a good old-fashioned knock-knock joke.

You start it...