So the twins are both stripping themselves naked every night. They won’t leave their diapers on and end up peeing (hopefully just) all over themselves by morning. So I resorted to this mom’s trick. Cut the feet off the footie pajamas and turn them ’round backward.

Now they can’t unzip them! Silly, I know, but such a life saver. Cut just below the elastic at the ankle and then cut a V where the tag is in the back so it doesn’t choke the neck. If you’re worried about the integrity of your footie pajamas… I would advise against having kids. :)

I can see better things for you

The pancakes were fresh off the griddle and the scent of warm batter was in the air. The girls were scaling the safety gate when I reached them–to free them to the independent society that is the dining room.

Each of them raced to their chairs and stood waiting for me to lift them into the boosters, but before I could get M in her seat, she pounced on a berry crunch morsel from yesterday that was missed in my nightly walk-through. When I snatched it from her, she was angry. She was hungry, and I had stolen from her.

But she didn’t understand. I had something much better for her than yesterday’s dry goods. But my assurance of warm flapjacks covered in “snow” (this is what we call powdered sugar) was no consolation to her. She wanted that cereal and she wanted in now.

Now that scrap of cereal would have been just fine. It wouldn’t have hurt her any to eat it and though it wouldn’t have satisfied her hunger, it would have done well for her mood. But as a mother, and much taller, I have a broader view of the situation.

You see, I know that a tiny piece of cereal in this moment is good, but not wonderful. It’s decent, it fulfills a desire, but it’s nothing compared with the delicious tummy hug that would be pancakes, if only she would have patience enough to wait for them.

And there’s the crux, with kids. Their tiny little brains can’t yet comprehend all that ours as parents have tucked inside. They have no idea the things we know.

And guess what… our tiny brains can’t begin to imagine the splendid things in store for us, would we be willing to wait on God to deliver them, and refrain from scraping the tile for leftovers because we can’t contain our hunger.

I can see the future

AJ had been acting out all week, just little acts of rebellion that for other kids would go unnoticed, but for her was utter defiance. She continued shaking a loud rattle after bedtime after I’d told her to stop, and when I told her the second time, she set it down with one last good shake to spite me.

At the grocery store, the twins were angels, sitting quietly in the cart as I scolded AJ up and down the aisles because she was running into people, lagging behind, and then finally, climbing on the cart – the cardinal sin of grocery shopping, similar to climbing up the slide.

To top it off, I had a soda and pretzel we were sharing, but the rule is always that a child must ask before taking a drink. She never asked once, so I had to put the soda away, under the cart. As we were checking out, I caught her under the cart sneaking a drink. I turned around, pulled her up, and smacked her chin (yes, I did), gave her a good long stare, and turned back around and chatted with her sisters as if nothing happened.

All the way to the car she was crying, not from a sore chin, but a sore soul. Her feelings were hurt, and I was pleased, not because I’m a sick mother who beats her children, but because I knew there was still hope for her.

So I spent the drive home explaining why I had hit her–and I told her what did NOT fuel my actions. I told her, AJ, did you know I can see the future?

She stopped crying and looked right at me, bewildered at the thought that her mother was in fact the super hero she imagined. I told her I can see her future self, years from now, all grown up, and in moments like this, I didn’t like what I saw. The bottom line, I told her, was that I was afraid for her.

You MUST understand something… I’m NOT angry with you. I’m terrified that you’ll grow up to be a liar (the way you sneaked a drink), a thief (you stole that drink too), and worst of all, that you’ll disobey God the way you disobeyed me tonight.

She tried to argue, I was thirsty, and all I could think about was her making excuses to her boss one day when she steals from petty cash, but I really needed the money. I told her (as I’ve said before) that one day her life could depend on her following someone’s orders and that she is seven years old now and would have to learn to obey no matter what. And painful moments like this one were necessary to impress that upon her.

I then told her I could see the other future AJ, the one who is kind and generous, never goes back on her word, and loves the Lord with all her heart. She smiled and said that’s the girl she wanted to be. I asked her if she knew what she should do next time in order to ensure that she would be that girl–woman. She smiled with a nod and hugged me.

The message was received–by her, and by me. I praised God for His patience with me in my own insolence. And that’s what I think about now. I think about my future self, and I shudder to think who I could be and where I could end up without God’s guidance in my life. And I think about just how obedient, or disobedient, I have been in following His direction.

You know, I think that’s what makes it easy to understand AJ though. I know right and wrong. I know what God expects of me, but sometimes I just want what I want. I want to read a book about the Bible rather than the Bible itself. I want to check my email rather than pray, listening to what God has for me today. I want to take a drink, even though I shouldn’t. I want the cereal on the floor.

I know there are things He can see that I can’t. He has better things in store for me and he knows the me I can really be if I’m obedient and patient enough, and want it badly enough, more than the childish things I want now.

And so God says to me, I can see what you can’t see, and so in this you must trust me.

I considered some more how I would make twice as much as he does if I were to go to work full time. I imagined about how nice it would be for me not to have to account for every penny of “his” money, about not having to get up with the twins when they get up at 3AM or worry about how we’ll get formula this week.

And then I remembered how I freak out if there’s a dish in the sink for more than a few hours, or how it irritates me when clothes are left on the floor, and I sank out of my role-reversing dream because I know my husband. I understand that, though he’s a hero in so many other areas of his life, he’s the biggest pack rat, leave-it-where-I-last-used-it slob I’ve ever known (and I say that in the most loving way you can imagine)!

But here I am, having just finished writing a blog post on our personal family blog (if you’re a friend, you know the url), about all of this when I opened my feed reader and read this:

…in married couples “where she has a job and he doesn’t, and where you would anticipate a complete reversal, even then you find the wife doing the majority of the housework.”

So there it is, in a study. This quote is from Thoughts on Housework and the study is from the New York Times’ article, When Mom & Dad Share it All. As Christians, we know that biblically, there’s a reason things are this way: God made us that way. God designed us to think and act a certain way, and housework, much as we hate it most of the time, is in our blood and guys, even the clean ones, just aren’t born with the “anal” gene.

So what about caring for the kids? What happens to the girls if I go to work and the Groom stays home? Will the responsibilities really change all that much? Will he be the one begging me to help with the kids, or will I be able to work at all because I feel the need to step in anytime a cry is heard? There’s more to the study:

Where the housework ratio is two to one, the wife-to-husband ratio for child care in the United States is close to five to one….And back in the 1950s, when no one was even bothering to measure how many hours men spent on child care because it was thought to be negligible, the average mother spent 12 to 15 hours caring for her children — the same as they spend today.

Hmm… I don’t know. Sounds like I’ll still be the primary caretaker and, if I go back to work, the sole financial provider as well. It doesn’t look good. Or do I just have less faith in my husband than I should? We’ll be talking about all of this, and doing some heavy-duty praying too, but I thought it worth blogging about anyway in case there are others of you out there weighing similar options.

My tile, your tile

To help her understand a point about sharing one day, I took her into the kitchen and went through this routine with her. I had her stand on one tile and I on another about three feet away.

Who’s tile really?

• ME: I love my tile, do you love yours?
• AJ: (chuckling) Yeah, I love my tile too.
• ME: Is that really your tile?
• AJ: (thinking) No?
• ME: Whose is it, do you think?
• AJ: Yours and Daddy’s?
• ME: No, think some more.
• AJ: Um… God’s?
• ME: There you go, that’s right! Everything we have ultimately belongs to God. So who’s rules do we follow when we’re on these tiles? Do we follow AJ’s rules? Mommy’s rules? Daddy’s?
• AJ: (triumphantly) No! God’s rules!

She gets it. She knows all this because we talk about it, but the visualization of standing on that tile and realizing it’s not hers seems to make something click. So we move on…

To give and give up

• ME: So I love “my” tile (which isn’t really mine) and you love “your” tile (which isn’t really yours). But let’s say I really want to stand on your tile. Is there room for us both?
• AJ: No.
• ME: How can I have your tile then? What has to happen for me to stand on that tile?
• AJ: (a little puzzled) I have to move?
• ME: Right! In order to get what I want, you have to give up what you want. Do you see that?
• AJ: But I don’t want to move.
• ME: There’s our problem. This is what happens when you and your friend aren’t sharing, and when you yell at Daddy to change the channel because you saw Sponge Bob on. So here we are on our tiles, I want yours and you don’t want to move to give it to me. What should we do?
• AJ: (shrugging) Ask God?
• ME: Kind of, yeah. We have to think about God’s rules of kindness and giving. What do you think God would want you to do right now?
• AJ: (head down, pouting a little) Move.
• ME: Yes, but it’s not just about the moving; it’s about making you a better person so that you want to move because you want people around you to have the things that make them happy. Let’s try another game.

I could see this lesson was getting a little deep and I’d need to come back to it another time, so to the back burner it went and I moved on to another to try to ease a separate issue.

Love, discipline, and obedience

As I mentioned before, another big issue for her is thinking we don’t love her when she’s in trouble. She runs to her room in tears anytime we scold her for something.

With Dad, it’s a problem with his yelling at her and she gets scared because he’s always “big teddy bear cuddly daddy” and it startles her when he gets mad. Me, I’m careful never to raise my voice until she’s in immediate danger, like crossing the street without me.

But, I think her conscience is very deep. She always knows she’s done wrong, and though in a fit she doesn’t want to admit it, she still knows and that’s what eats at her. I also think Satan whispers in her ear quite a lot, telling her things like, just this once or who cares, and I pray against that the most.

So back to the tiles

Standing on the tiles again, this time a little further apart:

• ME: Now… I’m on my tile, you on yours and there’s a car coming after me. What should I do?
• AJ: Move!
• ME: But I love my tile and I like it here. I don’t want to move.
• AJ: But the car will hit you.
• ME: (stomping and whining) But I don’t want to move.
• AJ: But you have to!
• ME: (not whining, mom voice now) What are you going to do about it?
• AJ: (hesitating) Um… push you?
• ME: Yep!
• AJ: (laughing)
• ME: (stomping and whining again) I don’t wanna move! I don’t wanna move!

She laughs, then takes off running toward me, knocks me down and we have a good laugh, both of us on the floor.

Real love

• ME: Hey listen, when you pushed me just now and knocked me over, you weren’t trying to hurt me or keep me from having fun on my tile, right?
• AJ: No, I was trying to save you.
• ME: That’s how it is with Mommy and Daddy (and God too). We aren’t trying to hurt you or keep you from having fun. We’re trying to protect you from things that can hurt you.
• AJ: (smiling) Oh!
• ME: We love you, and real love, God’s love, means that sometimes, to keep you safe – and to help you learn to be a good grown up, we have to do things you don’t like. But that’s proof that we really do love you. If we let you watch bad things on TV or too much TV, that could hurt you. Do you understand?
• AJ: (frowning) Yeah.

It’s going to take more time because obviously, a five-year-old isn’t going to pick up all this “mom speak” in a few minutes on the kitchen floor, but hopefully she’s able to visualize some of the lessons I’ve been trying to work with her on and she’ll pick it up.

Anyway, I’m sorry this one isn’t about design, but this is how I spend my days lately, so there you go. :)

Since then we’ve had innumerable discussions about scissors, knives, and bathtubs–and how she is never ever to use any of them without Mommy or Daddy there to help. She’s been pretty good, apart from a few times she really wanted to cut something and I had told her she couldn’t. We’d have “the scissor talk” again and she’d be fine for months.

Tonight she cut her hair again, all of it. This time it’s not cute. This time I’m scared. There’s something going on in her right now that I’m not a part of and I don’t know how to reach it. This time she’s not being curious. She’s crying for help and I don’t know where to start.

I asked her, Why did you cut your hair? She shrugged, I was tired of wearing clips in my hair all the time. Then why didn’t you ask me to cut it for you?

Mumbling something inaudible, I finally got it out of her that she was “nervous” to tell me, afraid I would get mad. It’s not as much the hair, though it was beautiful and I’ll miss it, but I’m sitting her crying because I feel like I’m losing her.

You have to understand, she’s been an only child all this time and we’ve done everything together. She always could, and always did, tell my anything and everything. Every dream, every whim, every crazy random thought that came into her head was open and free for me. She loved me, trusted me, completely.

This past year she has been thrown to the back burner without her consent and though she loves her little sisters dearly, she is feeling the effects of being the older child thrust into this bigger family she didn’t ask for. It’s no wonder she’s lonely and a little insecure. I get where she’s coming from, I do. I just don’t know how to “fix” any of it.

Although I wouldn’t give up the twins for anything, I long for the days when it was just me and her, free to go anywhere and do anything. I was her best friend, and teacher. She taught me too. Now she’s afraid of me, afraid to tell me she doesn’t like her hair the way it is. It may seem small to you, but to us… it’s huge. If she can’t tell me this… now… I’m afraid for the future of our relationship.

Please pray that her heart would be healed, that she would find peace in Jesus if not in me. Pray for her spirit, that she would know we love her and that she can come to us with anything.

She’s such a sweet, loving girl, and at only five years old, it’s way too soon for her to be afraid to talk to the one person with whom everything should be safe territory. A daughter should always have her mother, no matter what. Please pray that I would never give her any reason to think she’s not totally safe with me.