Of Good Report

Estelle will turn the big 9 on May 4th. She has only slept through the night in her own bed a few times each year for her entire life until about two months ago. After spending a lot of energy worrying and bribing and consequencing I finally surrendered and figured that she would sleep through the night whenever she was ready. I put a pillow and blanket on my bedroom floor and told her to just lay herself down there. That worked for a couple of years until she decided a year ago that she would get in bed with Emma instead. While that did not bother me at all, Emma was not too fond of that arrangement. After a fair amount of understandable crankiness from Emma, Estelle was informed that she either needed to remain in her own bed or sleep on someone's floor. She has been more partial to Emma's floor lately, but after having slept in a bed all night she would rather do that. A few months before she turned seven I thought I had the sure thing for motivating her. Destry had put i...

My baby has the first birthday of the year. She turned the lucky number 7 on April 3. She could not have been more excited! We celebrated with a rainy BBQ and ice cream pie with family along with games with more ice cream pie with her friends. She recently learned how to ride a two wheeled bike without training wheels and her birthday wish was for a new helmet which Kevin and Christine delivered. She is still easy to please and we had fun parties with her. I am so grateful that she is a part of my life. She has taught me more about expressing love than anyone else. I am the Primary chorister and I have been observing the children lately, especially the younger ones. They are able to express their love freely; they give hugs and smiles to their teachers and anyone else who makes them happy. They sit on their laps and expect to be loved back. The older they get the less easy it is for them to express love. Sarah is not the youngest in Primary any more, but she is sti...

When my now older children were young we had a small alphabet board book. For the letter "R" there was a robot. I honestly cannot say I remember for sure how the "Robot Mom" came into existence, but I know it was inspired by this book and by my children's driving me crazy. From time to time children do that to their parents and from time to time those same parents run out of patience. So in order to diffuse tense situations when mom may not be able to put herself on "time out,"  Robot Mom comes to the rescue. I, the real mom, go into my closet and enter a utopia through a secret passageway; the Robot Mom who looks and smells and acts and has the same authority as the real mom emerges. The only difference is that the Robot Mom talks like a robot. One would think that this would not be too much of a bother to the children; in fact, perhaps it would be somewhat amusing. Well, my children do not always see the entertainment in the Robot Mom. They do usua...

So Taylor gets sick. A lot. For the last several months he has been sick more often than not. When he is not sick he is silly and quirky and funny and we all love it (we probably wouldn't appreciate it as much if we didn't have the days and weeks of silence). When he is sick he quietly withdraws. He doesn't even talk much and when he does he almost whispers and he doesn't even move his lips. We have yet to figure out how his illnesses are attached to his voice and his lips. Perhaps he is working on his ventriloquism skills. Anyway, when he is ill we talk about the real Taylor being "absent." When he is well we all do a happy dance and shout, "Taylor's back." Last night was no exception, but it was especially joyful. Destry and Taylor who were both under the weather. Destry has had shingles for three weeks and Taylor has had his usual for a week. They attempted to go to the General Priesthood meeting. (Spencer went to Panguitch with grandpa for ...