The Swimming Fight - How I Finally Won

Ben and I aren't the richest people in the world.  My kids go without a lot of stuff that I had as a child, and that's kind of a hard pill for me to swallow sometimes.

For instance, when I was growing up, if we wanted to do an extracurricular activity, Mom and Dad could pay for it.  No prob.  But my poor kids are deprived in the extracurricular area of their lives.  We finally were able to start getting Dylan into Taekwondo a year ago, when he was almost 8.  Sadie took ballet lessons for free when my cousin lived here, but now that my cousin's moved, Sadie's dancing days are over.  She'd like to do Taekwondo as well, but we just can't afford it right now.

Swimming lessons have been a particular point of contention between Ben and me.  I keep telling him that being able to swim is such an essential skill, especially living in Idaho, with all the canals, lakes, rivers, etc.  It's just wise to give your kids swimming lessons.  He always insisted that we couldn't afford it, and that he would teach the kids himself.

Yeah, that's never happened.

I was able to talk Ben into putting the kids into lessons once in 2007, and then once in 2009, but nothing since then. 

As you know, two weeks ago, we went to Lake Chelan, Washington, for a week to hang out with Ben at his mom and stepdad's house.  Ben decided that now was the time to teach Dylan to swim.  In the freezing cold snow melt-fed lake.  In an area where Dylan couldn't touch.  In a lake where he couldn't see below his waist.

It did not go well.

I was sitting on the grass near the beach, and you know how sound carries really well over the surface of the water?  I could hear every tormented word that came out of Dylan's mouth:  "MOMMY!  MOMMY!  SAVE ME!  I'M GOING TO DROWN!  MOOOOOOOOOM!  HELP ME!  I'M SCARED!!  NOOOOOO!!"

And I could hear Ben's frustrated attempts to calm Dylan down:  "Dylan, I'm not going to let go of you.  You're going to be fine.  Stop scratching my back."

I let it go on for about five minutes, until some lady came up to me. 

"Is that your kid out there?"

"Um, yeah."

"Tell me that's someone you know with him."

"Um, yeah."

"Your husband, right?"

"Um, yeah."

"Men."

"I know, right?"

I figured that maybe I should go intervene, since people were starting to say things to me.  So I peeled off my really ugly coverup and waded out into the water.  They were out pretty deep - probably to my chest or so.  And like I said, this water was ffffffreezing.  So I was wading out there, step by step, hugging my boobs to my chest (I don't know why that's my first response when I walk into cold water.  Hug the boobs.  That will help.  Not.), trying to call out to Ben, studdering from the cold:  "B-b-b-b-Ben.  Be-en.  Gi-gi-give Duh-duh-Dylan to m-m-m-me.  Pe-pe-peo-p-p-ple are s-s-s-saying things to-to-to m-m-me."

Frustrated, Ben thrust Dylan in my direction, and he dog-paddled to me.  When he reached me, I scooped him up, and he clung to my neck as if he was two years old, sobbing.

I heard Ben mutter as I waded away, "I don't know what his problem is.  Everyone needs to stop coddling him.  This is how I learned to swim - my dad threw me into the lake and said, 'Swim!' and I did."

Dylan and I reached a point where he could touch, so I set him down and we walked over to the log where Ben's mom was sitting with Gage.  She was chuckling.

"So Ben seems pretty mad."

"Yep.  Tell me something - is it true that Ben learned to swim by his dad throwing him into the lake and telling him to swim?"

"NO!  He took several years of swimming lessons!!"

"That's what I thought."

Later that night, when Ben had calmed down, I said, "You know, eventually, Dylan will be able to swim in a cold lake.  But he hasn't learned in a safer environment first.  If you would let me sign him up for swimming, that will be a more comfortable place for him to learn.  Eventually, you two will be able to swim in the lake as much as you like."

Ben pouted for a few moments, and finally said, "Okay, fine.  Sign the kids up.  Fine."

And that is how I finally won the Swimming Fight.

(Dylan, before the swimming debacle.  He had no idea what was in store for him in mere moments.)

The kids started swimming lessons today.  They're all doing great.  Well, except for Micah.  But let's be real here - he's NEVER doing great.  He's usually in various states of emotional meltdown.  Today was no exception.

The Reverence Lesson - What I Did

So the Church is doing this pilot program with 11 stakes or so - they're thinking of re-vamping the Sunday School curriculum for the teenagers.  My stake was one that was asked to try it out for awhile.  So far, I'm looooving it.  Usually, the teenagers use the same Gospel Doctrine manual as the adults, which can be a little dry for them sometimes.  I had to add stuff to it to kind of...keep the kids from sleeping during Sunday School. :)  You know, object lessons, games, things like that.

With this new program, you are given six topics per month to choose from.  You choose the four that you think your students need the most.  For each topic, the church gives you some suggestions on some General Conference talks to read and some scriptures to look up, and then they say, "Go nuts!"  The outline is up to you.

It's fantastic.  It's more inspiration-driven.  We know what our kids are dealing with.  We know what they need to learn.  So I'm hoping the new program stays.  We'll see.

I chose to teach the lesson on reverance this week - something my students have struggled with.  I've been slowly getting the class into shape from where they were when I got this calling last fall.  I can say with much happiness that texting during class has stopped.  Thank heavens.  That was a hard one to overcome with these guys.  We're still working on leaning back in our chairs and blabbing too much.  But we've come a long way.

One of the talks we were supposed to study and ponder was this one by Elder D. Todd Christofferson.  One of the things he said about reverence is that how we dress is reverent/non-reverent behavior.  He said that we don't dress nicely to be like, "Look at me!"  He said we dress nicely to revere the Lord.  I love what he said about this - "It's not about us.  It's about the Lord."

As I pondered that thought while in the shower at midnight last night, LAAAAAAAAAAA!  Inspiration hit.  I decided to make a memory game on reverence.  I wanted to show certain reverent/non-reverent behaviors.  When the kids got a match, they had to say whether that behavior was making church about them or about the Lord.

Here's the game board:

I like to re-use my poster board - hence the scrapbooking paper, which is covering a project Dylan did for his class in school this year.  I'm in love with this paper, by the way.  I have big plans for this paper.  I need to make some "thinking of you"-type cards.  I've needed several of those in the past few months.  You're going to make some lovely cards, Paper.

Kay.  So I taped each square just at the top with scotch tape so that you can flip them up and down to look at them, and they stay put.  One card of each match is a description of reverent/non-reverent behavior, and its companion card is a picture of that behavior.

For instance, here's a match:

 Here's another, placed on the board and flipped up so you can see the underside:

In case you have crummy eyes like mine, the picture shows a kid leaning back in his chair and going, "Weee!"  And the description says, "Leaning back in your chair during class."  So quiz question:  Is that behavior making church about him, or about the Lord?  Ding-ding-ding!  That's right.  He's making it about him.

I had wayyyyyyyy too much fun making these scenarios.  They are all straight from experiences I've had in my class.  Hilarious.  I was giggling to myself a lot. Part of that may be because it was, like, 1 in the morning when I finished.

This is one of my favorites:

 Yeah.  I teach the 15- to 18-year-olds.  The overt, very loud flirting is prevalent. :)

Clandestine Competence

For the past week or so, Dylan's Taekwondo teacher has been focusing a lot on....for lack of a better term, stealth.  I honestly don't know how stealth will help him in a tournament.  When I see them sparring, they're yelling and grunting and doing all kinds of stuff.  When they demonstrate their forms, they're whooshing their breath in and out, kicking, stomping...and at the end, they yell, "Huh!" really loudly.  One kid would yell, at the end of each of his forms, "HEIGHTSSSSSSSSSS!!"  It was the weirdest thing.  Everyone else yells, "HUH!"  And this one brown belt would yell, "HEIGHTSSSSSSSSSSS!"

Maybe the reason they're working on stealth is for the self-defense aspect?  Although stealth seems to be more of an offensive type of thing.  Who knows?  All I know is that Dylan goes to Taekwondo four times per week for one hour each time, and I like it.  He's out of my grill for four precious hours per week. And they talk constantly about respect, hard work, no drama, etc.  It rocks.  And Dylan really loves it.

So something their teacher was having them do, to see how stealthy they were, is have a partner face away from them.  Then they would come up behind them and jump really high and land as quietly as they could, and see if the partner could hear them.

Dylan has let me know in no uncertain terms that he is the stealthiest kid in the class.  (This may or may not be true; the kid has always thought very well of himself.  Low self-esteem is not one of his issues, that's for sure.)  He said that his partner has the "best ears in class - she can hear everyone jump... except meeeeeeee."

"You?" I asked, incredulously.  "You, of the hobbit feet?  You're stealthy??"

"Oh yeah."

"Well, maybe you can use these stealthy skills that you're honing at home."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, for instance, you could not stomp back and forth with your pizza-sized feet on the dining room floor early in the morning, which wakes me up."

He frowned for a minute and shifted his eyes back and forth.

"Um," he said doubtfully, "I think that may be too big of a challenge for me."

1.  I love that he used the word "challenge" in a sentence instead of boring old "hard."  That's my boy.
2.  Of course it would be a challenge.  Until his ADHD pills are in his system in the morning (which takes a good hour after I wake up [to the sound of stampeding up above], shove said pills into his hand, thrust a drink into his other hand, and stand staring at him until I see him actually drink the pills down), he is a one-man production of Stomp the Yard.  Or Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk.  Maybe even Rent.  Any of those raucous Broadway shows.  The kid is LOUD.

Chafing - The Final Fat Verdict

Dude.  Look at me.  I got this little cover-up to go with my tankini, which has a black top and hot pink bottoms.  But dang, I need to re-think ever, ever wearing it again.  That's just UGLY.  And totally accentuates my large girth.

But this post is not about how ugly my cover-up is.  This post is about chafing.

For those of you who are skinny, chafing is when the top part of your inner thighs is so fat that they rub together when you walk.  It's a little obnoxious in pants, kind of uncomfortable when you're trying to jog and your shorts ride up because of the chafing, resulting in much tugging-down-while-jogging, which is kind of a hard thing to do.  But when you're in a bathing suit, it's downright PAINFUL.

There are lots of hints that have surfaced throughout the past several years that I'm...well...fluffier than I used to be.  When my husband saw someone in Salt Lake from behind and thought it was me.  And when I saw that someone, I thought, "I'm not that fat!!"  Or when I couldn't get my size-10 jeans to even fit around my thighs.  Or when my face started resembling the Man in the Moon. 

But the final indignity, the final bang of the Fat Gavel, hit when my family went to a waterslide place in Chelan, a place which is very cleverly named Slide Waters.  For reals.  Of all the names.  "Hey, let's just switch the words around!  Instead of Water Slide, let's name it Slide Waters!!  We're so clever!!"

I digress.  So I was wearing my new tankini and running around with my kiddos - walking up hills with water tubes hoisted onto my shoulders, walking over to the extremely overpriced concessions stand to get the kids some hot dogs, walking with Gage through the wading pool...and can I just say - PAIN.  So much pain.  I specifically got little shorts instead of normal brief-style bottoms, hoping that would help with the chafing issue. Nope.  I guess they weren't long enough.

I finally gave up on all sense of decorum and started waddling around with my legs spread apart, which Ben found really funny.  I came THIS close to going into the overpriced swimwear shop and buying some board shorts.  They would ride up, a la workout shorts-while-jogging, but at least I wouldn't be in pain.  I actually went into the shop and perused the board shorts.  Then, hopefully, I looked at the sunscreen section, praying that they had some kind of magical chafing cream you could buy.  No such luck.  I know I saw a commercial for chafing spray or chafing cream or something several years back.  Back when I didn't have to worry about such things. 

I just couldn't bring myself to buy the overpriced board shorts, so I just...waddled around all day. 

And, to add insult to injury, the kids and I were going down a slide where you get onto an inner tube, and then the little buff teenaged dude in charge of the ride pushes you down.  So I got down into the little pool area at the top of the slide and tried to get onto my inner tube.  And my big fat self tipped over.  I splashed all over the buff teenaged dude in charge of the ride.  I laughed and apologized and maneuvered my way on.  I'm sure the skinny teenaged kids in line behind me were like, "This lady is so fat she can't even get onto an inner tube..."  It was awkward.

But not as awkward as when I almost lost my bottoms at the end of the ride.  Scary stuff.  Let's just say that I'm really glad my bumb was inside an inner tube.   I was able to yank those suckers back up before anyone saw anything they might not want to see.

So this new chafing experience has motivated me to lose a little weight.  Gaining weight is humiliating and sad.  But when it is actually painful, then it's time to do something.  I HATE dieting, but I hate my inner thighs rubbing together more.

Road Trip with Four Children and Two Elderly Ladies - Lessons Learned.

Welp, we're back.  Being the daft person I am, I drove 12 hours each way to Chelan, Washington with my kiddos, to Ben's mom and stepdad's house.  Ben rendezvoused with us there (he got off easy).  Being the not-knowing-my-kids-very-well people they are, Ben's great aunts asked to come along.  Needless to say, the drive was akin to Dante's 7th Level of Hell.  Here are some things I learned.

1.  Gage is scared of rest stop changing tables.
2.  Road trips are only fun with the two elderly ladies.  Or with just your hubby.  Or in college.  Road trips are NOT fun with small children.
3.  Micah has inherited my tiny bladder.
4.  Gage is really scared of rest stop changing tables.
5.  In-car DVD players are a Godsend.
6.  Dylan can't ride next to Micah.
7.  Dylan can't ride next to Sadie.
8.  Micah can't ride next to Gage.
9.  Micah can't ride next to Sadie.
10.  Don't buy stuffed animals at rest stops.  Unless you think it's fun for your toddler to have a severe reaction to whatever the H is on that stuffed animal for the next several days.
11.  Gage is super-duper scared of rest stop changing tables.
12.  It's really important to change a toddler's diaper every few hours.
13.  Lunchables are a Godsend.
14.  Micah will pee anytime, anywhere, in front of anyone.
15.  Sadie will pee anytime, anywhere, in front of anyone.
16.  Dylan will only pee in a rest room with a toilet.  And only if it doesn't smell funny.
17.  Oregon's speed limit is reeeeeeeeeeeeally low.
18.  I like Red Vines.
19.  I like Coke.
20.  Ben's great aunts are going straight to heaven for having survived this ordeal.
21.  Gage is extremely scared of rest stop changing tables.
22.  Children's Benadryl does not knock out two-year-olds or four-year-olds.  It just makes them really pissy.
23.  Gage will only sleep in his crib or pack-n-play.
24.  Micah can only function on long car rides if he sits in back with an adult and has her attention every second.
25.  Micah doesn't sleep in cars, either.
26.  Despicable Me sounds like a cute movie.  I haven't seen it, but I've now heard it five times.
27.  I cannot even describe to you how scared Gage is of rest stop changing tables.
28.  Dylan likes Cream Soda.  That's his first choice.  Second choice is root beer.  Third choice is Bug Juice.
29.  Sadie's first choice is Coke.  Her second choice is Coke.  Her third choice is Coke.
30.  Hagerman, Idaho is a raging inferno of heat.  It's like someone transplanted the Sahara Desert right there to the northwest of Boise.  This is Idaho we're talking about!!  Where does Hagerman get off being hot??
31.  Female senior citizens really, really love the Hallmark Channel.  And Jeopardy.
32.  I'm so glad I didn't grow up during the 1930's in Menan, Idaho.  No electricity.  No indoor toilet.  No central heat in the house.  Yikes.
33.  Ben's Great Aunt Myrna knows roughly 10,000 cute children's songs.
34.  Dylan is officially addicted to the iPad.
35.  Sadie asks, "Are we there yet?"  roughly five times per hour.  For 12 hours each way.
36.  Gage is deathly scared of rest stop changing tables.
37.  Next time we go to Chelan, we're flying.  End of story.

We got back at about 9:30 last night.  In celebration of our return, Gage pooped in the tub last night.  And Xena celebrated her return home today by promptly killing a bird.

It's good to be home.

It's getting harder.

A couple of weeks ago, someone in my ward was asking how things were without Ben here.  I thought a minute and then said, "You know, I thought it would get easier as time went on, but I feel like it's getting harder and harder.  I wonder why that is."  Because it's true. I'm more tired every day.  I'm more sad every day.  I feel more alone every day.

She kind of patted my shoulder sympathetically and we said our goodbyes.

A different friend, Jennifer, had overheard my conversation.  "You know why it's getting harder, Karlenn," she said.  "It's because the kids are out of school.  My life is a whole lot harder now that the kids are home all day."

It was like a lightbulb went off in my head.  Duhhhhhhhh.  Of course it's harder when the kids are home all day!  They're all up in my grill all day long.  They're killing me, Smalls.  (What movie?)

(Sadie and Micah thought it would be fun to get close to the sprinklers, then set up an umbrella so they and their towels wouldn't get wet.  They're silly.)

But here is my plan to help with the summer doldrums - swimming lessons.  And revisiting my chore chart.  It's time for some structure.

A Product Prelect

I went in to get my hair cut today (which is my favorite thing to do.  I love having shorter hair, because it gives me the excuse to go in every six weeks for some pampering).  My hairdresser is a girl I grew up with named Elise.  It's so much fun to reminisce about doing backbends and jumping on the tramp together.  Today we were talking about who had the coolest bangs in elementary school.  My bangs never, ever looked right.  Elise's were always perfect.  She swears it was because she used Aqua Net.  That stuff is like glue. :)

Anywho, as I was paying her, she said, "Do you need any product?" 

I laughed and said, "Oh jeez.  That stuff is wayyy too rich for my blood.  I'm a Suave girl, unfortunately."

She stared at me, mouth agape, eyes wide open.  "Shut up.  You did not just say that to me."

I giggled and looked at the floor.  "It's just one of the things that has to go when you're poor."

"But there's so much wax in Suave!  It's just wax!  Your hair must have so much buildup on it!  How can you even stand the thought of that???"

"Well...it's either buy milk for my family, or buy nice hair product.  I choose milk."

She shook her head and took me into the back room.  She opened up a cupboard stuffed full of samples of shampoo, conditioner, clarifying shampoo, etc.  She shoved an armful at me.  "Kay.  Use the clarifying shampoo first.  And after you rinse it out, then use normal shampoo and conditioner.  You will totally notice a difference."

Oh, I know I will.  But will noticing a difference in my hair make $30 magically appear in my pocket to buy said product?  Nope. 

When I eventually get too many grey hairs on my head  (I have a few now, which aren't too noticable yet) and have to color my hair, in all likelihood, I'm going to just have to buy the cheap store brand and do it myself.  And it won't look as good as it would if Elise colored it professionally.  That's just the biz when you get married, push your hubs through school, quit your job to be at home, and have four kids.  Lots of things go down the tubes.  I do my own pedicures.  (And they look horrible.  Ask anyone.) I buy Suave.  (Although I'm considering switching to Dove, just because I like their commercials about how they use some of the money they earn toward self-esteem-building workshops for young girls.  I like that.)   I buy Cover Girl makeup instead of Clinique.  That's just the way it is.  Maybe someday I'll be able to pamper myself a bit more, but for now, I'd rather be able to buy bread and fresh fruit for my kiddos.