It's all a matter of perspective

Gratitude changes the way you see the world. I've been doing a Gratitude Project for a few months now, finding things to be grateful for. Sometimes it's hard to be grateful. Sometimes I just plain forget. Sometimes the best I can do is "I'm alive," and sometimes it's hard to even feel grateful for that.

But slowly, I'm getting better. And life is getting better. Not that actual circumstances are changing, but that I'm beginning to see them in a better light. And when I can see hope in the world, I react better and create better circumstances for myself and for all of us.

And really, it's amazing what a difference gratitude can make in the way the world looks.

For example, there are two ways I could describe what is happening in my house today.

1) The kids are going crazy and are playing with dirty outdoor stuff that's not even proper toys. The ambient sound in the house is equivalent to a heavy metal concert and just as unpleasant. We're going to be eating hot soup on a hot day because our diets no longer allow for normal sandwiches and we don't have salad in the fridge at the moment. The house is a total disaster and all the shoes are in the living room.

Or

2) Heidi is crowning Ion with the "Crown of Truth," which is a broken tricycle tire, because childhood imagination is amazing. Rori is trying on all of our shoes pair by pair because childhood fashion is also amazing (as is the getup she chose for herself this morning. She managed to find an entire multi-layer outfit full of items that don't match each other in the slightest.) Emory is sleeping peacefully in the back bedroom. There is broccoli cheese soup simmering on the stove because Bear Creek Soup is the gods' gift to busy families everywhere. Ryan has converted the kitchen table into a makeshift shop and is drilling out some sheet metal to fix the running board of our van. We have a massive van that fits our whole family, and we're not paying the dealer hundreds of dollars to fix it because Ryan likes to tinker with stuff. Basically, we're the Weasleys without the wands and I always wanted to be them. I'm living my dream, I just didn't know it came with so much noise.

See? The difference that gratitude makes.

I could go for having the Scourgify spell though.

Learning to want things

I love watching my little girl blossom into her own person with her own independent thoughts and ideas. Today she climbed into her carseat ready to go bye-bye, so we took an impromptu trip into town and got some yarn and board games out of storage. And why not? I want Heidi to grow up to be confident and able to communicate her wants and needs and to accomplish her goals. That doesn't start when she turns 15 and can already be a go-getter; it starts now with us acknowledging and encouraging her little baby ideas.

Love Languages?

Tell your kids you love them, all the time. But please, do it spontaneously and mean it. If you find you don't mean it, don't lie. Address your own feelings, learn why you don't mean it, and fix the problem. (Because in the most nonjudgmental-to-those-with-emotional-struggles way possible, if you don't love your kids, THAT'S A PROBLEM.) Don't saddle your kids with an understanding of love that's tinged with guilt or expectations.

My shrink repeats to me, every time I tell her about being insecure about my mothering abilities, "What do kids need the most?" and I answer, "love." But what if our form of love is the problem?

As I've been working through depression, my worldviews and how my childhood formed the adult I am in good ways and bad, I've discovered that there's a difference between what I mean when I say "I love you" and what I hear when others say it to me. I suspect that most other people experience their own versions of the same thing, for the same reason that there's no such thing as a perfect childhood.

When someone else says "I love you" to me, I hear "I have an obligation to you and I'm going to stand by it. Also, I want whatever problem you're having to go away." When I say "I love you" to my husband, I mean, "I desperately need you to love and accept me as I am, but even though every time I've given you the opportunity you've gone above and beyond my needs and helped to heal deep wounds, I'm still afraid to open up because I've lived under certain expectations and related guilt my whole life, so here's my version of what I think good wives say and do." When I say "I love you" to Heidi, I mean "I'm so sorry that my depression makes my obligation to you so overwhelming that sometimes I want to run away, because you are such an important and precious person and you deserve so much better than I can give you, and I never want you to hurt in your life, and if I can do anything to make you happy I will."

These disconnects in the meaning of the word "love" cause me pain in my life and make me feel sometimes like I don't know what love is at all. However, I also know that there are others in the world who hear or mean "I hate or resent you but I can't get away from you" when they hear or say "I love you," and I know that I am lucky for my particular dysfunctional connotative misnomers, since all of mine imply care and concern.

If my therapist is right, though, and I'm sure she is, then surely one of the greatest gifts we can give our kids is a healthy meaning of "I love you." It will follow them into every relationship for the rest of their lives, and even affect their understandings of themselves and their own self-worth. Surely this is worth cultivating. (This is also true with spouses, but that's a different discussion.)

What about you? Do you hear and mean different things for "I love you?" How do you try to ensure that your kids and loved ones are hearing real love in your "I love you?"

Baby signs and early communication

Before Heidi was born, we had grandiose plans for her education and our role in it as Awesome Parents. We were going to read all the baby sign language books! We were going to learn all the signs! We were the super awesomest ever. Of course, it hasn't exactly happened that way. Baby signs never really ended up on the top of our priority list once she was born. We enthusiastically signed at her for a couple of months after she was born, on the expert advice that babies begin learning communication from Day 1, and met with zero indications of understanding. Our baby would not be a signing protegy by the age of two and a half months, so sign language went on the back burner. We'd bring them out occasionally, find no response, and forget about them again.

This summer (8-10 months old) she has begun to blossom into her own personality. She clearly wants what she wants, and began to become frustrated with us for not reading her mind. Out came the signs again.

I am officially a much bigger believer in windows of opportunity than I used to be. We have been signing "more" (which we also use for "hungry")

and "drink"

 and "all done"

 for somewhere between two weeks and a month. As of three days ago, SHE SIGNS BACK! "All done" is more of hands opening and closing than wrists turning, but it's clear what she means, which is the whole point anyway.

And we are officially on a quest for more signs. If she can tell us when she's hungry, thirsty or done, why not when she's sleepy or bored or wants to pet the dog? Some interesting resources that we will definitely be checking out:
Baby Sign Language Academy
babysignlanguage.com
signingbaby.com

Ryan (before she was born): But why baby signs? Why not just become fluent in regular ASL and sign everything around her?
^ proof that the SuperAwesomestEver syndrome comes from him, not from me. Why bother doing ANYTHING if you're not going to do it ten times more enthusiastically than EVERYBODY ELSE?

Language Acquisition

Tonight, much to her daddy's delight, Heidi demonstrated her ability to follow directions. She fetched a toy halfway across the living room before she was distracted by a shoe. (I didn't specify that her attention span was particularly long.) Daddy reminded her about it, though, and this time she brought it straight to him. Later, he instructed her, bizarrely, to put her finger into the filtered-water spigot so that she could feel the water spray around it. And she did, several times. Far be it from me to squelch learning, of course, but Daddy was wise to volunteer to clean up the mess himself anyway.

It was an evening of much language-acquisition elation. Which led to this conversation:

Him: I told her I wanted the red toy! And she went and brought it to me! And handed it to me when I asked for it! And stuck her finger in the spigot when I told her to, without me even showing her how!

Me: Well, they say babies understand words a lot sooner than they start to say them.

Him: I know! It's awesome!

Me: So we should probably start watching out for those four-letter words...

Him: Yeah...



Because there are some forms of language that just aren't acceptable in preschool, guys.

This has been your daily lesson in parenting. Tune in next time for more tips on how to be better parents than we are.