My New Title

Life hit a rough patch for me recently. I said many times over the summer that I knew it was going to hit me sometime this school year, with Bubba in preschool, that I have big kids now. Cakes will be in middle school in September; Silly is getting baptized soon; and even just a month or two ago Bubba was still a little hesitant to go to a friend's house without me sticking around, now he just goes off with his friends happy as can be, which is adorable and sad at the same time.


And then I was released from a calling I loved, leading the music at church, when we were so close to finishing the entire hymnal! I jokingly said to a friend that my life's dream of singing the entire hymnal was ruined. Really just a 2+ years dream. Last time I was released from a calling I couldn't have been happier. And leading the music was so fun, something I was good at, something I got tons of positive feedback from, which I really needed at the time. Now I'm playing the piano in Primary, which is a little scary for me. I don't mind playing in the actual Primary room at all, but accompanying them when they sing in sacrament meeting (which they do several times a year and in the fall the kids are the whole program and sing 10 to 12 songs and guess who has to play them all!) really freaks me out. I mentioned that to my Primary president and she said she didn't think anything freaked me out. Uh, just that, pretty much. But it'll be good for me. Now I have to practice just as much as I make Cakes and Silly practice. I don't love it yet, but I'll get there. Most callings are that way; you start off not sure you can do this, but then you start to love it and right about the time you think you could do this forever, you get released and asked to do something else.


Lastly, in the last few months we turned into a yelling family. There had always been some yelling, but lately it's been all yelling all the time, parents yelling at kids, kids yelling at each other. I read about the Orange Rhino Challenge over Christmas and it was totally easy not to yell when we're just on vacation and nobody really has to do anything or be anywhere, but then life resumed and the yelling increased. I even had a complete yelling, screaming, crying fit one day at all three of my kids. I told them I don't want to yell all the time, but they frequently don't do what they're asked or what they know they're supposed to do until I've said it so many times that I'm mad I've said it so many times and now I'm yelling. I don't want to be a mom that yells and screams all the time and wouldn't they rather have a mom who reads them a story and tucks them in and says 'I love you' every night rather than feeling like their mom doesn't love them because all she ever does is nag and yell? And of course one particular child was the recipient of more yelling than the other two...which all came to a head last Monday night when Family Home Evening once again digressed into something other that what was planned. It turned into a long talk about that particular child and how we can't keep yelling all the time. I didn't know what to do if not yell, because that child does not do anything until I yell it. I'm I just supposed to let that child get away with not doing anything?


I definitely need to stop yelling though. I just don't know what will take it's place. Don't you have to replace a bad habit with a good habit? If you just tell yourself "don't yell" then you'll certainly end up yelling. It's like when someone says "don't look" - of course you're going to look! Scott keeps telling me not to worry about that part, just don't yell anymore, but I'm still not sure how that works. Also, I think this Orange Rhino Challenge is a great idea, and I've read about how she decided to make a rhinoceros and the color orange her symbol, but that doesn't work for me. I don't think of rhinos as calm, and I need something calming. Also, Cakes would take offense at anything rhino related because a certain younger brother of mine used to tell her she looked like a little rhino, which at some point became completely traumatic for her and she didn't want to be anywhere near him for fear he would call her a rhino. Also, orange is not a mellow color; it is a notch below red, which is the color of anger. Plus I don't like orange all that much; Bubba does though. So I thought about it. I need to be slow to anger. What's a really slow animal? A sloth! Who doesn't love those cute little tree hangers? Now, what do I consider a calming color? Blue? Green? I googled 'blue sloth' and 'green sloth'. Green sloth tells you all about sloths and their symbiotic relationship with green algae...um, no thanks. Blue sloth pulls up a whole page of super adorable sloth things on etsy. Yes!


I could get a t-shirt. Look how calm and peaceful they are.







Or nesting dolls. Is that littlest sloth knitting?







Or a personalized family print!





The list goes on and on! And I am happy to report I have not yelled since last Monday. 9 days! And counting...let's see if I can make it a whole month...and then another month!


But still, I feel like I'm at the bottom of this trough - so many things are ending; no more yelling, no more little kids who need me for everything, no more calling that I love...now what? Scott and I had a long talk a few nights after the FHE incident. I told him what Middle Sister told me - she thinks of this phase of family life as a great time to make memories. He'd been thinking that we need to do more fun things as a family and told me I'm really good at planning things (I am? apparently he thinks I did a great job planning our trips to Alaska and Chicago...who knew?) I mentioned a few things I've always wanted to do, like do all the touristy things in Richmond; I grew up just outside of Richmond, yet I've never done any of the typical tourist things there. How lame is that? Time to fix it. I'd love, more than anything, to get a beach house with my two favorite non-relatives and their families. We've been saying for 3 years now that we're going to Disney World, but it hasn't happened yet, and it's about time it did. So that's what I'm gonna do. Find more fun. Doesn't have to be far away, doesn't have to be expensive, doesn't matter if the kids moan and groan the whole way there, just has to be fun once we get there. You've heard of Forced Family Fun, well, I am now going to be the Family Fun Enforcer. How's that for the boring sister? ;-)