On the Move

This is a video I took this afternoon of Alex scooting around the room. AAAAaaaHHHhhHhhh!! He's scooting!!! And while I thought it was just him wiggling around aimlessly, not one hour later, he was at it again, but *obviously* heading straight for a toy bird in front of him.

Oh boy. Cute as it is, I'm not really ready for him to be moving around the house whenever he pleases!!

Scripture Sunday

Proverbs 20:7
The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.

In the LDS church's Young Women program, there are seven values that girls develop through Personal Progress goals and projects during their teenage years. The seventh is Integrity. The Young Women manual says:

I will have the moral courage to make my actions consistent with my knowledge of right and wrong.

Being a life-long member of the church, I participated in this program. I completed all my goals and projects and earned my Young Womanhood recognition award. I did a pretty good job, I think, at making my actions consistent with my knowledge of right and wrong while I was a Young Woman.

Since becoming a stay-at-home mom, I have to say that my opportunities to practice integrity have been few and far between, relative to the rest of my life. And when you're out of practice with something, sometimes it takes a little bit of work to get it right when you are faced with it again.

A few weeks ago, I got a call from a friend, asking if we'd like an invitation to her daughter's birthday party. Melinda and her daughter are very close in age, and Melinda absolutely adores playing with her. And her family is wonderful, as well. So of course I excitedly said YES! We would love to be invited. We both were attending a dinner party together later that evening, so she told me she would give us the invitation then. In the meantime, I shared the fun news with Melinda - wouldn't it be great to go to her friend's birthday party? How fun!

So when I was given the invitation just as we were leaving to go home after dinner that night, I initially felt nothing but excited. I opened it right there in front of our friend, with Melinda standing next to me eagerly. And as we opened it, our friend explained that the birthday would be on a Sunday. It was the only day she could reserve time at the community pool, and it was a swim party. My heart honestly fell. All my life I had been raised with the ideal that "we don't swim on the Sabbath day". And it's been a standard that we've carried through into my own family. Melinda has asked several times to go swimming on Sunday, and every time, we explain to her that our family doesn't do that, because Heavenly Father asks us to keep the Sabbath Day holy, and that's one of the ways I was raised to do it. Let me clarify that we are nowhere near close to removing all inappropriate activities from our Sabbath day, but this is one of the very few that we're extremely consistent about. Still, Melinda and I had both been looking forward to this invitation very much, and I faltered. I said nothing about the date, just smiled as best as I could, made general comments about how fun it sounded, and so on. And I began an internal argument with myself.

Initially, I talked with Jesse about it. It wouldn't be so bad, after all, would it? We'd still be able to go to church. We'd be spending time with good friends, who also happen to be lovely Christians. We aren't totally against recreational activities - we feel it appropriate to enjoy the outdoors- Heavenly Father's creations- on the Sabbath. We are open to lunches and picnics with friends, sometimes even long walks or hikes. Why not a birthday party, outside, with friends? It was easy to see all the reasons why we should do it. Still, the one (big) reason not to do it kept glaring in my mind. The word turmoil seems appropriate to describe it. I really really wanted to say yes to the invitation. But I also really really didn't want to compromise my family's standards and set a bad example for my children.

In all honesty, I did eventually come to the point of just shrugging my shoulders and deciding that it would be perfectly fine to go. I intended to accept the invitation. It wouldn't be "that bad". But I hadn't yet officially RSVP'd, and the internal argument continued within me. Especially while we were on the road a lot during vacation. There's a lot of time to think while you're driving for 25 cumulative hours! And in the end, I realized what a mistake it would be to attend, despite how innocent it seemed on the surface.

What would it teach my children, if I say over and over and over again, "We don't do x," and then turn around and decide it's okay to do it this time, just because we all want to? As a friend recently reminded me, we teach our children not only by what we say, but also what we do. And we must set a good example for them in order for them to learn what we are trying to teach them. I know that, but I was conveniently forgetting it while I was trying to make this seemingly simple decision. I was taught that you choose the right, no matter how hard it is. And in fact, that's what I teach the children in my Primary class every single Sunday of the year. Choose the Right. (Boy, what a bad teacher I would be if I couldn't even follow the lessons meant for 6-year-olds!) I was given a commandment to keep the Sabbath Day holy. I made covenants when I was baptized, and when I went to the temple. I promised to keep those covenants. It would be a pretty big mistake to do something against my standards with the intention of repenting for it. Making an honest mistake is one thing... intending to make it is a whole different ball game. Ironically, today's lesson compared the feeling we get from making wrong choices to having a pebble in your shoe - you just can't stop thinking about it, it makes you really uncomfortable and unhappy. But when you finally get it out, you feel so much better!

Ultimately, I sent an email to my friend telling her that we wouldn't be attending, and that we were very sorry, and told her exactly why I hadn't said something right off the bat. She was very understanding and told me that she respected our desire to be consistent in our parenting and religious values, and offered a day that week that she could get together with us outside of the party.

And you know what? I felt happy. And after talking about it with Melinda, she agreed that we should stick to our family's rules and standards, even though it would be sad to miss such a fun party. Her only concern was that she wanted to play with her friend. And when I explained that we could make plans to see her on a different day very soon, her face lit up happily. It felt doubly wonderful to see my daughter happy about making a good choice, too.

And so like the above scripture says, children are blessed when their parents walk with integrity. I'm glad for the opportunity I had to remember the things I learned as a child, and to put my integrity back into practice. It was difficult, but rewarding. (And can I just say that I'm a little shocked at how hard it was for me to make this decision?)

I hope that as my children continue to grow, that we will face many more decisions and come out proud of the choices we make together. And I hope they will learn well along side us, and be able to gain their own integrity as adults. Petty as a decision about a birthday party invitation might seem, I think how we dealt with it set us on a postive path for harder choices in our future.

Using the Potty!

Well, it looks like Jacob is definitely on his way to being completely diaper-free!!

This whole week has been good progress on the potty training front. We started the week unable to convince him to wear underwear instead of diapers, and now he's running at the chance to get his underwear himself! We had a few "naked days" in the middle of the week, since he seemed to have accidents with underwear on, but now he's wearing underwear with only a few problems! Yay!

Last night and the night before, he even wore underwear to bed and had no accidents. Thrilling! I was thinking we were still quite a ways from tackling night time potty training, but his own preference proved me wrong in the end.

The only problem we're running into is pooping on the potty. He's always preferred to run back into a closet or a tucked-away corner of a room to poop while standing up. Sitting on the potty for that process is a little odd for him, I guess. He's gotten a little less regular than he has been until now, which made me slightly nervous that he'd end up running into a problem similar to Melinda's (when she would withhold bowel movements for a week at a time). But today and yesterday he started to go in his underwear, and finished on the potty. So, it's progress, and I'm a little less worried.

We're still having accidents here and there, but the vast majority of the time, he's running to the potty on his own, without our prompting, and I think that we won't be turning back to diapers.

And I have to say, I'm thrilled about it. :)