Is it forever?

I had an interesting conversation with one of my neighbors yesterday. I am just getting to know this woman and really through her girls who skate at the same rink as my boys. I know she is divorced and have put together that she has a new partner. The girls' father is remarried and it is his wife that takes the girls to ice skating most of the time. Yesterday though my neighbor was on rink duty and we started talking about taking kids to all their activities. My neighbor was happy to see her girls skate but was more than happy to let this duty fall to their stepmom most of the time. She mentioned that she gets every Friday, Saturday and Sunday "off" while the girls are with their Dad. I know she loves her kids but like any mom she enjoys a little me time, a little time to be off the mommy clock.

While I adore my husband, in my moments of exhaustion I can see some advantages to getting to split the parental responsibility between two sets of parents instead of full time sharing family life and being the one always on duty.

Okay, just writing that not only makes me feel guilty but also shows how far off the tracks our society has gotten.

To my neighbor marriage is a temporary state, something you commit to for a time. And then as you both change and grow, usually apart, you divorce and go your separate ways. No muss, no fuss. At least not for the grown ups involved. Except I doubt that is true even for the grown ups. While I understand this view in the modern world, I don't understand one's need to insist that this view is true for all. Because while the fairy tale may not be true, that we live happily ever after, after thirteen years of marriage I am still convinced that I am with my life partner.

I believe marriage is forever, which is why I took it very seriously when I made the decision to marry my husband. Yes I was in total infatuation/lust love with the man, but I also admired who he was as a person. I knew that in five years there would be times when I did not like him or us together but that would be true of anyone I married. This actually happened sooner than I expected in year three but we were both totally committed to being married for 80 years and working together to make it work, and work well. More importantly we were, and are, both more committed to God and following His commands than our own selfish desires. In the moments we often fail, saying a mean word, quickly snarking or putting our schedules ahead of the other person. We let our egos get bruised, our hearts get pierced and our resolve tested. And then suddenly God's grace moves into the broken places. God's word speaks to our agendas and pain. Our connection is restored.

Marriage for me is forever! I would not want it any other way. How can you truly feel loved if you are only loved in the good times? It is when you both stay even when you want to walk away that you truly experience love. And once you understand that kind of love, a love deeply committed to being with the darkest part of you, that you fall in fall in love all over again.

I am still so in love with my husband. He is an amazing husband and father. He is still my first choice for a dinner date or vacation partner. My first choice for any conversation and the first call I make when I need to talk or share a funny story. I am one lucky girl, married to my best friend.

Mind Clutter or Really Important Stuff?

I have some deeper thoughts floating around my head and hopefully I will get to spend some time putting them into words soon, but I am currently busy trying to figure out how to teach Middle Man to armpit fart. He announced today in the car that he wanted to learn to armpit fart and that if he did he would stop burping on purpose all the time. This is my life. My life with boys apparently is going to involve lots of conversations about body parts and gross out stuff.

Middle Man also wants to have a Phinneas and Ferb summer vacation this summer. Not sure how to pull that one off but am thinking I might be able to sneak some educational stuff in between building a rocket and fighting a mummy. But again my mind is starting to think up summer plans based on the lives of Disney cartoon characters.

I am finding that these boys take me out of my box, A LOT. I love new things as much as the next person but I like my box as well. Having kids is a bit like walking out of Plato's Cave and finding out the world is so much bigger than you ever could have imagined. My boys are interested in things that never even made my radar. Trains, planes and motorcycles are all just forms of getting from point A to point B to me but to Little One they are something to be studied and also purchased because we don't have this particular Hot Wheel Mommy. Not to mention I get to do school all over again but from a very different perspective. I now get excited when I find a hexagon shape on the shopping cart.

The boys have also reminded me of things I used to really enjoy. Middle Man used to go in the backyard and just stare up at the stars which I once enjoyed when I had time, and lived somewhere warm enough to sit outside at night. I love watching playoff games with Hockey Boy and see him cheer wildly when the Red Wings score.

So as much as I would like to expound on the balance between serving and having time for personal relationship, I am currently busy trying to decide if I should help my son learn to armpit fart or not. I am leaning toward turning a blind eye when their Uncle teaches them. I am sure I will regret this decision when the teacher emails me to let me know Middle Man is doing it during class but I think there are certain things that are part of being an Uncle.

School Carnivals

I am not a fan of carnivals. When I was a kid, I went to one of those parking lot carnivals that roam from town to town taking the money of children in exchange for silly games that are the start of our fascination with get rich quick schemes. Think about it. You give the game person a few tickets which feel meaningless but actually cost real money and you get a chance to win a big prize. Now you could have taken all the money you had and bought the a decent prize for yourself, though all the money you spent on tickets would probably not buy you the big panda bear the size of a four year old child. That is why you must play the game. I don't remember the details but I remember halfway through the evenings fun feeling pretty defeated and like I wasted my money. And I hate to waste money. I felt a bit cheated too. I don't think I have enjoyed a carnival since.

This week we had the boys' school carnival. I was not sure what to expect since it was our first time attending. I volunteered to help set up because I figured it would take both of us to keep track of our kids at the carnival. So glad I did. It was so busy that we ended up dividing and conquering with my husband taking Little One and I took the older boys. They had so much fun. They loved all the games, especially the dart ballon throw. They are such boys. I think popping a balloon with a dart and hearing the loud pop is probably prize enough for them. Though each booth had a winning prize and a consolation prize so you never walked away empty handed. They bowled. They fished for rubber duckies. They bounced their way through an obstacle course. They got lots of candy and a few little trinkets along the way. They had a blast. And I even had fun. It was fun to see everyone and know that the money raised was going back into our school. It was so fun watching them squeal with delight when they popped the balloon or saw a friend. It was a great night.

I guess there are some great things about growing up. The bigger I get the smaller the world is. The things that used to scare me or make me feel vulnerable no longer do. I'm not scared of the dark or the unknown. I actually sort of enjoy both at times. But I am still very uncomfortable around get rich schemes and am teaching my kids that it is better to save your money. So I guess the lesson was learned. The fun is in the games, not the prizes.

Boy Parts

When we were pregnant with our first baby, before we knew its gender and we still referred to it as the alien, for obvious reasons, my Beloved and I made an agreement that whatever parts the kid had, the parent with the same parts would have to have all future conversations and care taking of said parts. Notice I use the term parts here because before I had kids I rarely if ever said the clinical name for boy parts out loud. There were lots of euphemisms though. And then one day in Santiago, Chile, where we were living at the time, we saw our son's penis and testicles so clearly on the ultrasound that there was no doubt he was a boy. We were far from friends and family, before the world of Facebook, so I sent out a group email to tell the good news of our ultrasound. And then I spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out how to write what we saw. Do I just say he's a boy? Do I mention that we saw all his "junk". I am pretty sure that was the first time I wrote the word penis in an email or in writing ever!

Well since that time we have added to the penis count in our house and have had many penis related conversations:

Get your hands out of your pants!

Aim your penis INTO the toilet.

Bedrooms and bathrooms!

Go show your penis to your dad. I don't know what it is supposed to look like but it does seem red.

Recently we have had some new topics of discussion and they all seem to happen when my husband is traveling or at work. My favorite was when I was told recently, "Mommy, sometimes my penis gets stiff. Why?" Oh how I wished my husband was not in Florida at that moment.

I really want to help my boys develop a healthy understanding of their bodies. I want to be able to have open conversations with them when their hormones are raging which means I can't just tell him to wait until his father gets home in 4 days to talk to him about his penis being stiff. He was not asking for the entire sex talk in that moment. Penis for him does not mean sex at all. He just wanted to know why it gets stiff. My response seemed to satisfy him at the time. "I don't know but it does sometimes and it is totally normal. It happens to all boys. When Daddy gets home we can ask him about it more."

We also had a very amusing talk yesterday about what happens when your penis gets hit with a hockey puck. Middle Man is getting ready to start wearing full gear which means a hockey cup. He liked the shorts but wanted me to take the plastic piece out because it was uncomfortable. Thankfully Hockey Boy was right there to explain to his little brother the importance of the plastic piece. Turns out if you get hit with a hockey puck in the penis it might fall off and then you would die. I had to step in with a few corrections to this information explaining that if you got hit your penis might be damaged and it is an important part of a boy's body. There were a few more funny comments but I think I will keep those in the family.

I try to follow Dr. Phil's advice and answer only the question asked which is good advice because it keeps me from scarring my kids forever with too much information. My boys know that God makes babies and that they live inside their Mommy's uterus and that eventually they come out. Just recently they asked how and we got to have that lovely conversation. But thankfully they have yet to ask how the baby actually gets inside the Mommy.

Who knew how quickly I would go from being really modest and never saying the word penis to saying it way too often. I think I have written it at least a dozen times in this post alone. I wonder what this will do in google's search engine.