Love You Forever.

 I must start by apologizing for not writing more.  The weeks preceding my getaway were crazy, and the last couple of days have followed in the same pattern.  I had two ideas for imperfect prose postings yesterday, but couldn't find the energy to write either of them.  And I still need to do the photography for one idea.  I must say that I'm loving Emily's idea!  The challenge of writing an artistic post has begin to push me out of my mommy rut and linguistic complacency.  It's nice to use my creativity for more than just telling stories to my kids.

 That brings a story to my mind.  This morning we were running late.  Kian needed a nurse, the kids needed to eat, and I was slow moving because Steve and I had been up quite late talking.   Aris made breakfast(toast) and even set the table to help me out.  I was so proud of her!  But the boys were ungrateful and complained.  This caused Aris to cry as she has a cold and feels miserable in the morning.  It was so disheartening to serve sacrificially only to have her efforts criticized.  I tried to gently point out that this is how I feel many days.  I'm not sure she understood my point....

 But all this is background.  There were three crying children around my table, all needing to eat.  I was trying to decide if I needed to cancel our plans and just drug my children with tylenol and send them all back to bed.  It was that bad!  And then I had an idea.

 One of our favourite family stories is "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch.  We have the story memorized and often personalize it to fit our children's stories.  So this morning, I told each child a segment about them and ended it by singing the song to them.  I started with Kian.  As I told the story, he stopped crying.  He didn't smile, but he liked being sung to.  As I sang to the older children, they both ran over and sat on my lap so I could "rock them back and forth, back and forth and while she rocked them, she sang".  It was a precious moment, even punctuated by Kian's loud complaints that someone else was in my lap.  Apparently it belongs to him.  The other two don't agree.  That aside, it was a sweet moment of reminding my children that I love them, even in the crazy moments of parenting.  The cuddles were fun too!