Monday, December 17, 2007
I just want to note that in every single picture taken of Eva in the last 3 months she has a bruise somewhere on her face. Just to clarify, Ben uses photoshop often to remove bruises in pictures, so treasure any photos of Eva with a clear forehead. Eva, Mommy says to SLOW DOWN! Stop running into walls :)
Eva loves to bring things to Jordan and I, she started by bringing her bottle to us for us to give her more milk, but now she brings us bowls to fill with cereal. In the last week or so, she's even started to bring us presents so that we can unwrap them for her...
Eva and Nathan both love our neat little advent calendar, they both pull out the little drawers and stack them around the house. Eva really tries to distribute them as widely as possible.
Eva doesn't really understand the whole sippy cup thing, but she likes to lick the cup at least. She knows that there is good stuff in there, but she doesn't quite know how to get it.
Here's Nathan summoning the waiter, he's getting better and better at communicating what he wants. Sometimes he gets a little pushy, and acts like a little diva when he doesn't get what he wants, throwing things and screaming like Tyra Banks.
Taking Advice
When starting this job of caring for and teaching teenage girls, I never dreamed that it would affect me so much as a person. The seemingly trite comment that I've heard over and over in sunday school of "I learned so much more for myself than for anyone else in preparing this lesson." has taken on new meaning for me. In some ways, it was like my experience learning a foreign language.
When I started to learn Norwegian, I started with learning vocabulary words, and memorizing sentences, but as I progressed I learned more and more of the subtle rules of syntax and grammar. The more I learned, the more I had to reexamine English to understand why we phrase things the way we do. You never really think about in your native language, because to you that's just how you would say it correctly. Norwegians were so good at speaking English, that sometimes they would ask a complex grammatical question. All I could say sometimes was what the correct phrasing would be, but I would have to think and think for a while about why it was right.
I find the same thing happening with frightening regularity in my work with the girls, as I teach them about not dating while they are young, the value of honesty and hard work, the pitfalls of pleasure now and pay later. Just as explaining the subtleties of English can be difficult without the knowledge of why it's supposed to be said a certain way, it's frustrating to explain the how and why of morality when the supporting structure of my faith has to be stripped away. I have to teach pure ethics, and use logic and reason to prove the things that I know in my heart are true. It has really reinforced my testimony about how God gives us commandments not to restrict us, but to show us how to be happy and feel good about ourselves. Showing that these commandments and social obligations we call morality are intrinsically worthwhile has really helped me to reexamine myself.
It also occurs with punctuality that I catch myself giving the girls advice about what I really need to hear at the moment. Just the other day I was giving the counsel that we always need to keep ourselves open to learning new things and changing the preconceptions we hold about things and people. I was referring to her refusing to admit that she might ever think that the goth lifestyle wasn't fulfilling or cool, but later that evening I refused to watch a movie because I thought it was going to be liberal propaganda. It struck me that I was closing off opportunities for me to grow by closing my mind to it before seeing it. I watched it objectively, and I learned that I really enjoyed watching the movie and thinking about perspectives I had never considered before.
Most of all, this job really makes me want to really get to know Katie, my youngest sister. I've watched her grow and become such an interesting person to read about while she learns in Jerusalem and I can't wait for her to get home and have her come hang out with us more. Most of all, I just want to listen to her, because I feel I've talked so much to her, rather than with her. I can't wait.
When I started to learn Norwegian, I started with learning vocabulary words, and memorizing sentences, but as I progressed I learned more and more of the subtle rules of syntax and grammar. The more I learned, the more I had to reexamine English to understand why we phrase things the way we do. You never really think about in your native language, because to you that's just how you would say it correctly. Norwegians were so good at speaking English, that sometimes they would ask a complex grammatical question. All I could say sometimes was what the correct phrasing would be, but I would have to think and think for a while about why it was right.
I find the same thing happening with frightening regularity in my work with the girls, as I teach them about not dating while they are young, the value of honesty and hard work, the pitfalls of pleasure now and pay later. Just as explaining the subtleties of English can be difficult without the knowledge of why it's supposed to be said a certain way, it's frustrating to explain the how and why of morality when the supporting structure of my faith has to be stripped away. I have to teach pure ethics, and use logic and reason to prove the things that I know in my heart are true. It has really reinforced my testimony about how God gives us commandments not to restrict us, but to show us how to be happy and feel good about ourselves. Showing that these commandments and social obligations we call morality are intrinsically worthwhile has really helped me to reexamine myself.
It also occurs with punctuality that I catch myself giving the girls advice about what I really need to hear at the moment. Just the other day I was giving the counsel that we always need to keep ourselves open to learning new things and changing the preconceptions we hold about things and people. I was referring to her refusing to admit that she might ever think that the goth lifestyle wasn't fulfilling or cool, but later that evening I refused to watch a movie because I thought it was going to be liberal propaganda. It struck me that I was closing off opportunities for me to grow by closing my mind to it before seeing it. I watched it objectively, and I learned that I really enjoyed watching the movie and thinking about perspectives I had never considered before.
Most of all, this job really makes me want to really get to know Katie, my youngest sister. I've watched her grow and become such an interesting person to read about while she learns in Jerusalem and I can't wait for her to get home and have her come hang out with us more. Most of all, I just want to listen to her, because I feel I've talked so much to her, rather than with her. I can't wait.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
My favorite christmas memories...
I've had a little time since Jordan posted her thoughts, and the thing that I remember about Christmas head and shoulders above everything else is the waiting, and waiting, and waiting again at the top of the stairs of our home. This was all part of the Christmas morning routine in my home. Shelley and I would wake up around 5:30 or so and we would run to the others bedroom and wait for my parents to wake up. It was an eternity before my parents would call up that they were ready with the video camera and such, with the youngest going first. So I would watch Kate run down the stairs, listening to her excited cries as we waited for a few minutes, and then it was Chris' turn to go down. The cycle of excited cries and loud announcements of "Wow, a a ________" would continue with Chris and finally Shelley. After them it was finally my turn to come down and see my presents from Santa. Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be the oldest sibling...
I remember helping to decorate the trees, and that we had to straighten the branches of the fake tree just so to satisfy my father's sense of craftmanship. The sad part is I gave the same speech I received about spreading the branches out correctly to my girls just the other day. I also remember holding the ladder while my father put the lights up on the nails he had spaced perfectly down the gutter, so that they would look straight and hold tight. I didn't appreciate my father's commitment to making it look right at the time, and just wanted to be finished.
One of my hardest years was one of the most memorable, the first Christmas away from home. At the top of the world, I worked in Norway as a missionary with my companion. We had opened the area up to missionary work a few weeks previously with my companion, and had very few interested people, and even fewer members. We lived with the family that comprised the small branch in Alta. After spending almost a week inside escaping the dangerously cold weather, we looked forward to enjoying the weeklong event of a norwegian Christmas. It begins with little Christmas eve, the day before christmas eve, and goes until 3 or 4 days after Christmas. On little christmas eve, I remember feeling a little sick, and thinking to myself that it was lucky that I was getting sick on little Christmas eve, because then I wouldn't be sick for actual Christmas. Oh, what a cruel joke that turned out to be, I spiked a fever of around 103, and spent most of Christmas Eve, and the greater part of Christmas day lying on the couch, listening to the same Tennis Shoes among the Nephites book on tape over and over again. I remember calling my parents, and talking to them for a while, and then hanging up and a few minutes later wondering if I had really made the call, or was just delerious.
Reading the Nativity story was also always a tradition on Christmas eve, as was the yearly pleading from Shelley and I that we should be able to pick one present to open on christmas eve. I loved going to lunch at grandma's house so that I could run around with my cousins and try out and compare presents. I could always depend on getting a good pair of sweats from grandma, and the feeling of such large group of people around me that cared about me is something I have found more and more treasured as I see what other families have to make do with. As much as I grumble about cheesy christmas songs and hearing christmas music before thanksgiving, I really love christmas and can't wait to start real traditions with my children that they can hold on to.
I remember helping to decorate the trees, and that we had to straighten the branches of the fake tree just so to satisfy my father's sense of craftmanship. The sad part is I gave the same speech I received about spreading the branches out correctly to my girls just the other day. I also remember holding the ladder while my father put the lights up on the nails he had spaced perfectly down the gutter, so that they would look straight and hold tight. I didn't appreciate my father's commitment to making it look right at the time, and just wanted to be finished.
One of my hardest years was one of the most memorable, the first Christmas away from home. At the top of the world, I worked in Norway as a missionary with my companion. We had opened the area up to missionary work a few weeks previously with my companion, and had very few interested people, and even fewer members. We lived with the family that comprised the small branch in Alta. After spending almost a week inside escaping the dangerously cold weather, we looked forward to enjoying the weeklong event of a norwegian Christmas. It begins with little Christmas eve, the day before christmas eve, and goes until 3 or 4 days after Christmas. On little christmas eve, I remember feeling a little sick, and thinking to myself that it was lucky that I was getting sick on little Christmas eve, because then I wouldn't be sick for actual Christmas. Oh, what a cruel joke that turned out to be, I spiked a fever of around 103, and spent most of Christmas Eve, and the greater part of Christmas day lying on the couch, listening to the same Tennis Shoes among the Nephites book on tape over and over again. I remember calling my parents, and talking to them for a while, and then hanging up and a few minutes later wondering if I had really made the call, or was just delerious.
Reading the Nativity story was also always a tradition on Christmas eve, as was the yearly pleading from Shelley and I that we should be able to pick one present to open on christmas eve. I loved going to lunch at grandma's house so that I could run around with my cousins and try out and compare presents. I could always depend on getting a good pair of sweats from grandma, and the feeling of such large group of people around me that cared about me is something I have found more and more treasured as I see what other families have to make do with. As much as I grumble about cheesy christmas songs and hearing christmas music before thanksgiving, I really love christmas and can't wait to start real traditions with my children that they can hold on to.
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