"A Mother's Role"

Yesterday was our ward's Primary Program, the day the children ages 3 to 11 speak and sing in sacrament meeting. As always, it was beautiful, inspiring and amusing. Five of my children performed in it and except for a slight miscalculation in seating Allison and Sarah next to each other, things went well. The first ten minutes the two girls spent poking and teasing each other and putting their feet up on the chairs in front of them. Finally, it got so disruptive that I decided to go up and sit next to them (My husband and I team-teach their class but the other teachers were sitting with them for the program). Things improved from that point on. To my surprise, they even said their parts clearly into the microphone! During practice, they had both yelled them very loud. The theme was families and most of the teachers helped their students write their parts themselves. Michael's part described my role: "A mother's role is to do chores and answer questions. She takes us to Church and helps the dad." So, I guess that about sums it up right there, doesn't it? Does chores and answers questions. Because it's been a while since I've updated this blog, I think I'll use Michael's headings to give you a heads-up on our lives: "Do Chores" I've been starting to feel a bit more energy and I've even had a few days where I haven't felt rotten, so I think I'm moving into the second trimester! The Zofran, by the way, seemed to take the edge off the nausea but did nothing for me on several awful, horrible days. I've decided it might not be a miracle drug after all. But since I'm starting to come out of my pregnancy-induced stupor, I've started to look around and notice all the chores that have piled up for me in my hiatus. There's lots. I started by sorting through all the kids' shoes in the house. I moved them out of our basement storage and into the mudroom cabinets, organized and labeled by size. Since we keep all the kids' current shoes in there (no one has any in their bedrooms), this should help us rotate them better as their feet grow. I've also tried to get more motivated to keep the house in better order. We had a fun family home evening lesson last week where I demonstrated the chaos that can quickly happen when people don't clean up after themselves. I grabbed a coat, shoes and backpack and headed out the front door. As I walked in, I pretended to be one of the kids getting home from school and dropping their stuff everywhere instead of in the mudroom where it goes. After I dropped the first set of things, I asked the kids if it looked very messy. "Nope," they replied. So I went back out and did it two more times. The kids were cracking up at my impressions of them, and the message got across. With three coats, three pairs of shoes, and three backpacks strewn around, they agreed it looked pretty messy. Next, we took turns timing each child to see how long it took them to put things away. Twenty-two seconds was the longest it took. Among other chores, I'm doing the following: A neighbor brought us a box of apples and I've got a bunch of slices drying in the dehydrator. I helped Lillian and Joey make top-secret Christmas presents for their dad. I'm working on stripping my computer so we can reformat my main hard drive and start over. I had major computer problems a month ago that required me to re-install Windows. It still needs a major overhaul, though, and somehow, I've got to find the disks that originally came with it. Wish me luck. We went through all the Halloween and dress-up costumes, gave some to DI and sorted out what to keep out and what to put away until next year. I cut back our rose bushes for the winter. We have about twenty right now and many were still in bloom even a few weeks ago. I also started to clean out the garden. "Answer Questions" This does take a bit of my time. We've had some interesting ones lately, such as Joey's: "How much would it cost to buy a signed copy of Harry Potter?" "What books do you think I would like to read?" or (calling from school) "I need to have $3 so I can go on the field trip. Can you bring it to school today?" The funniest question lately, though, was Sarah's: "But WHY can't we keep him?" Last week, we caught an enormous spider on our back porch. The twins were so excited about it and wanted to bring it to school the next day, but after they went to bed we did some research and though we didn't make a positive identification, it was fairly likely the spider was a brown recluse and therefore poisonous. DH did the honors of smashing it, and I got to tell the twins the next morning. After the part about "poisonous," but before I could say "smashed it," they were already making plans, "OK, so we won't EVER open the cage. We'll just keep him inside all the time." They were both disappointed when I told them we had to kill it. "Why, why did you do it?" I told them it's not good to have a pet that can kill you. Allison accepted that -- she's usually very good about letting her bugs and critters go after a day or so -- but Sarah asked me at least three more times that day about why we couldn't just keep it inside the cage. (this picture is not the best, but you get the idea of how huge this guy was.)