Friday, November 7, 2014

7 Quick Takes about Muffin Accidents, the Afterlife, and Friendship Litmus Tests

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday!

1


You know how I said when you're feeling physically unwell you should refrain from making sweeping generalizations about the quality of your life? Well, one particular morning I was feeling pretty beaten down after the morning schoolbus rush, and it was only 8:15 AM.

I did what most people having existential crises do and turned to my 3-year-old. "What should I be doing with my life?" I asked her. After a few moments of deep thought she answered, "Play games. Probably... like Boggle."

It's that simple, folks! I love asking preschoolers about the meaning of life.

2


How do you manage the aftermath of Halloween in your house? In years past I've been driven to the brink of insanity answering the question "Can I have candy now?" approximately 3,000 times a day. After a while, I begin to feel like an out-of-order robot that randomly spits out the words "yes" and "no." And then there are the candy-related tantrums: "But HEEEEE had some!" "But you let me eat candy before breakfast YESTERDAY!"

This year, I told each child they were in charge of their own stash. They could do whatever they wanted with it, except ask me about it. If they wanted to eat it all in an hour that was fine, and if they wanted to enjoy a piece a day until Easter that's fine, too. Why did I never see the genius of this system before??

3


My 6-year-old brought home a worksheet he filled out in school of "Halloween nouns." His phonetic spellings were the best. My favorites were "gost" (ghost), "scelutun" (skeleton), and "eyeball":
It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
After the huge success of the iPad and iPhone, Apple next plans to unveil the iBall.


4


Speaking of iPads, ours was smashed on Tuesday in our latest brush with the baking-with-children curse.

The kids were out of school for the day and I foolishly thought it sounded like fun to make healthy muffins together. We found a recipe on the iPad, set it on the counter, and everything was going smoothly until I opened an upper kitchen cabinet. The usual avalanche of Tupperware came spilling out, but with it came a glass bowl that landed right on the screen.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
Whoops.

At first I was optimistic that we could just replace the glass, but then I realized that the impact also broke the camera. Bummer.

5


Over lunch I had a great conversation with my good friend Kate. Kate and I have a lot in common, not least of all our devotion to our religious faiths: she's Catholic, I'm Mormon.

We love to talk about the intricacies of the faiths that are so important to us. We don't make any apologies for the doctrines of our respective churches, but we always seek to understand and to find the beauty in what the other believes, even if we don't agree.

We started talking about Catholic intercessory prayers for the dead and ended up connecting it back to the doctrine of Mormon baptisms for the dead, and how you can really look at the two as flip sides of the same coin. One of the things I love about talking faith with Kate is how we so often find such beautiful similarities in our beliefs.

6


With 5 kids it's always one big playdate around here, but lately I've been making more of an effort to host my kids' school friends for playdates at our house too.

When my 10-year-old had a friend over they went from talking about Serious Life Stuff to giggling and jumping in a pile of leaves as I was raking. When will they grow out of playing in piles of leaves? I don't really know. I do know that I'll miss it when it happens.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?  {posted @ Unremarkable Files}
My oldest playing in the leaves, circa 2009.

7


Over the years, I've found that a good litmus test to decide whether one of my children's friends is a good kid is to look at how they treat my other children.

We've had lots of friends come and go through this house, and inevitably the ones who were the kindest, most responsible, and most trustworthy friends were the ones that also played with my other children when they came over.

Conversely, the friends who were a little fickle and quite honestly not the greatest influences were also the most likely to say things like, "Tell your annoying little sister to stop following us around!" I recently read {affiliate link} Hold On to Your Kids, which basically made the same point. Interesting food for thought.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've observed #7 with my kids' friends too. I hope that my kids are the ones who play with little sibs when they're at their friends' homes!

Kelly M. said...

I take so many, probably too many, pictures of my kids phonetic spellings. It never gets old!

Unknown said...

AuntSue
With my brood, I just let them eat their candy, which usually worked out pretty well. They were supposed to keep their candy in their top drawers, but when they left the bag of candy on their beds, our greyhound always helped himself to the chocolate. Luckily he was a 95 pound dog and he suffered no ill effects, but it did upset the owner of the unlucky bag. They couldn't understand that a dog that can eat off the kitchen counter and table if he wants to, can also eat off their beds.

Jenny Evans said...

But I'll bet they never made THAT mistake again!