7 Quick Takes about First World Problems, Calming a Kid's Fears , and The Key to Working Out with Confidence

It's 7 Quick Takes... Sunday! Better late than never, I guess.

—1—

Sitting down to write this 7 Quick Takes was pretty hard. So much of what I do centers around my church life right now: planning and thinking about the needs of the Young Women I lead at church, volunteering in the temple, and helping friends through church assignments with various needs they have at home. It's immensely fulfilling, but it's not terribly interesting to talk about.

In fact, it reminds me a little of the days when you have babies and toddlers at home. You're so crazy busy you don't have time to clean the house or even sleep properly. But when someone asks what you did all day, you realize you have no idea. 

You just know that all the unglamorous work you put into helping and loving the people around you was totally worth it... whatever it was.

—2—

I dropped my 19-year-old off to at the theater to see the Barbie movie with her friend, and it was funny to be able to see from the parking lot exactly what people were going to see what movie. There was pink everywhere.

I asked my daughter afterward if I would like the movie and she said, "Probably not." I didn't have time to ask for more details, but she's most likely right. I keep seeing America Fererra's big speech from Barbie floating around on Facebook and my eyes are about to roll out of my head. 

In planning an upcoming week of The Educational Summer Vacation, I just read about a specific law that had to be passed in Pakistan in 2011 to address the problem of men throwing acid in women's faces who displeased them... if one of those female survivors want to tell me how "it's literally impossible to be a woman" I'm willing to listen. But when it comes from someone with a net worth of $16 million, it just sounds like toddler whining.

—3—

My 9-year-old is suddenly getting very nervous about everything. Nothing specific sets him off, but he'll randomly start worrying about an upcoming swim meet or starting school in the fall, and he gets so worked up about it that sometimes he actually throws up. (This is the same kid we have to struggle to get to eat enough in the first place, so it's doubly concerning when he does that.)

We've tried listening to his concerns, we've tried breathing exercises, we've tried visualizing how upcoming events will go, we've tried distracting him, all with little success. Any advice from other anxious kids' parents out there?

—4—

This summer has been very rainy. My 11-year-old finally attended a pool party that had to be rescheduled twice because of the weather. On the other hand, our grass (which is usually a pathetic shade of tan by this point in the summer) looks amazing.

Not our yard, but a hike where we briefly paused to appreciate all the green before running from cover for the mosquitoes that were eating us alive.

—5—

My family got a gym membership for the summer. My 7- and 9-year-olds love to run on the treadmill and use the stairstepper, to the amusement of whoever else happens to be in the cardio room at the time.

I usually supervise the kids or play with them on a free basketball court when we visit the gym, but last time I went to the weight room with my daughter. It was full of fit guys in their late teens and 20s, and once upon a time I would have probably felt very intimidated to be in there.

As a 40-year-old mom, though, it was very liberating to not care in the slightest. I've given birth in front of so many nurses, doctors, residents, and possibly janitors (I was too busy at the time to notice who was in the room), I'm not embarrassed to struggle with a 55-lb barbell in front of you guys.

—6—

There are so many competing schedules for work and sports and church activities that the entire family doesn't often eat together at the same time, but one day all 6 kids and I were eating lunch together. 

When I think about how they're all mine it's a little surreal, especially as they get older and each of them are bigger and take up more space. With a grin I said to them, "I made everyone at this table, you know."

My 19-year-old made a horrified face, gasped, and yelled, "WHAT?! You told me I was adopted!"

—7—

I saw this on Facebook, and it made me smile. Little kids are savage, but they do it so sweetly that it doesn't even hurt your feelings.

 

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7 Quick Takes about the Arcade in the Basement, Getting Forgetful in My Old Age, and When Teenagers Have to Use Facebook

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

Oh, my. I went down to the basement one day and saw that the kids had made an entire skee-ball game on the stairs. 

Not sure if you can see in the picture, but each of those papers says a point value with the highest at the top.

The stairs are unfinished and don't have risers yet, so if you throw a ball in there it just rolls back down to the bottom.

I am honestly amazed at their commitment. They even stuck a dry erase board to the wall to keep score.

—2—

This is our 11th consecutive year (or is it the 12th?) of The Educational Summer, but it looks a little different.

For starters, we're only doing it for three weeks this summer. (Some summers, we've done as many as eight!) The older the kids get, the more they've got going on and it's just not easy to find time when they're all here. 

For another thing, by the time we got around to choosing this summer's countries it was the day before we were supposed to start, so it was a little haphazardly thrown together.

Because of our lack of planning ahead, we didn't hang up all the previous years' flags around the wall map in the dining room like usual. When we started Portugal on Monday, we just hung up that one singular flag after we made it, and even that sagged and fell down midway through the second day. 

Sad.

—3—

Speaking of things I've done a mediocre to bad job at this week, I also stood up my friend up at the movies. I didn't even have a good excuse, it was just a crazy week and I got preoccupied with the kids and forgot what day it was. Maybe it's been a busy summer. Maybe it's a decade of exhaustion catching up with me. Maybe it's early-onset dementia. Who knows?

We were going to go see the new Indiana Jones movie. When Harrison Ford did an Indiana Jones movie in 2008, I remember saying to Phillip "This is getting ridiculous. The man should be allowed to grow old with dignity. What's next? Indiana Jones: Escape from the Nursing Home?"

Fast-forward to 2023, and it turns out that Harrison Ford is just fine as an action hero and maybe it's ME who needs to be in the nursing home.

—4—

The grocery store my 17- and 15-year-old work at has a Facebook group. In theory, this is where they post the schedule and other important store information, and employees can also trade shifts with other employees if they need to.

I'm enjoying it way too much.

One of the managers posted, in all caps, "DO NOT ASK FOR AM SHIFTS OVER THE SUMMER IF YOU DON'T NORMALLY WORK MORNINGS. YOU WILL NOT BE GIVEN A MORNING SHIFT." Below it, an employee commented: "Inspirational."

Another time, an employee posted, "I can't work my 4-7 shift on Thursday. Can anyone take it?" In reply, someone simply wrote: "No." (My daughter later told me it was the OP's brother, which made more sense.)

—5—

My 9-year-old has outdoor summer swim team practice two evenings a week, and last time I brought the 7-year-old with me. We were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes at the side of the pool, so after a while we decided to get up and move around a little. 

We ended up going down to the tennis courts and, because we didn't have any equipment, playing imaginary tennis.

I highly recommend playing imaginary sports. Your kid never gets upset that he can't hit the ball. He still runs around and gets out tons of energy. And it's kind of fun, too.

—6—

The younger kids and I went on a hike and look what we saw: mushrooms straight out of a video game.

Upon closer inspection, the white flecks were actually parts that had been gnawed off by a bug so they weren't actually Super Mario Bros. mushrooms. But close.

—7—

We've been working on table manners with our younger kids but sometimes, it feels like a lost cause.

The other night at dinner, the 7-year-old asked "Can I have some milk?"

Trying to gently remind him to say 'please,' I prompted, "Can I have some milk, what?" 

Puzzled, he furrowed his eyebrows and said, "For me!"

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7 Quick Takes about School Year Goals, All My Newfound Knowledge, and Misadventures in Air Travel

This post contains affiliate links. If you buy something using them, I may receive a small commission but the cost remains the same to you.

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

This week the teenage girls at church babysat for the moms in our congregation so they could socialize without their children. 

Leading up to the day, I was worried that it wouldn't work out; so many of our teens are on vacation right now, and to be honest, right now I feel like the world in general treats anything that hints at traditional womanhood like something that smells bad and I wonder if that attitude sometimes sways our teens a little. 

But I didn't need to worry, because it went great. One of the teenagers there told me that it made her realize that she actually likes taking care of kids (!) and I heard one of the children being babysat exclaim "This is the best day of my life!" 

This kid was only 4, so it hasn't been a very long life, but it was nevertheless a nice compliment. 

—2—

Around the dinner table, we were talking about our goals for the fall. When it came to my college kid, she thought about it and said, "My goal for next school year is to approach social situations like a normal person who knows a normal amount about ants."

Apparently there was a situation where she couldn't think of anything to say to someone she'd just met, so she randomly shared a fact she'd just heard somewhere about ants and it was a little awkward. But to my knowledge it only happened once, so I don't think it merits an entire goal to avoid repeating.

—3—

I just learned something crazy about the Bible. How did I never hear about this? And how is this not common knowledge?

When Christ was on the cross, at least according to Matthew 27, He cries "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" Whether or not He also meant it literally, His words were quoting Psalm 22. 

The listeners would've been familiar with the Psalms, which back then weren't numbered like they are today. People would've referenced a Psalm by reciting the first line, and then like any good song, you would sort of finish it in your head. 

Well, "my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" is the first line of Psalm 22, which directly references some of the events of the crucifixion, especially verse 16 and 18.

—4—

On the less important side, I learned some other factoids.

My daughter was petsitting for some people with dogs and chickens, and that got us thinking: without a fence around their little run, those chickens would all be eaten by morning. Where did this defenseless domestic bird come from, anyway? Turns out, from a wild South Asian bird called the junglefowl. Look it up!

Then later in the week, the 7-year-old played a Franklin Delano Roosevelt card in a history game called {affiliate link} Timeline and told me he was the only president to serve four terms. Thinking maybe he'd read it on a plaque at the FDR memorial this winter, I asked if he'd learned it in Washington, D.C. 

"No," he replied, "Because the fountains were off." I didn't see what that had to do with anything, and I still don't know where he got his Roosevelt trivia, but I guess I should stop chuckling at his desire to play timeline (Take #6 here) because apparently he knows more about history than I do. 

—5—

My 17-year-old finished her second music camp of the summer. Tonight was her final concert, where I got to hear her perform in a trio.

All in all, it was a really nice time. Last night, they had a guest violinist come and perform a concert which was probably the most epic concert either of us will ever see, but unfortunately Phillip wasn't able to make it. 

He was on the way to the airport to pick up the 15- and 11-year-old who were flying home from visiting their grandparents, but it didn't go at all as planned.

—6—

What happened to the kids' flight last night is that they ran into some bad weather, and their flight was diverted to an airport in Buffalo, NY. They waited on FAA updates for the next 4 hours to see if/when they'd be able to take off again, until the flight was finally cancelled and rescheduled for 12:15pm the next day. 

Luckily, because they were kids flying alone, someone pulled some strings and was able to get them on a flight from San Francisco headed to Boston that had also been diverted to Buffalo. They were finally able to take off at about 1:30 AM and made it home around 4 AM.

In the morning, my daughter looked like those "hot mess mom" Halloween costumes you see kids do on the Internet. I heard one of my other kids tell her, "You like you were dunked into a giant pool of water, then electrocuted, then blown off with a giant fan."

"That's what I feel like," she groaned, with her forehead resting on the dining room table.

—7—

I got just as little sleep as they did after being up all night on the phone with them and the airport people getting updates on flights. And of course I'd just read this article from the New York Times suggesting that chronic sleep disruptions might cause Alzheimer's to come for me ten years earlier... maybe. 

I'll sleep really well tonight after having tucked away that little factoid, thanks.

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7 Quick Takes about Patriotic Chiropractor Humor, the Thing About Skunks, and Dropping Kids Off at the Airport

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

How was your 4th of July? 

That afternoon, on the way to buy sparklers for the kids Phillip spotted a roadside letter board outside of a chiropractic clinic that said  "God bless America with liberty and adjustments for all."

This is the last thing you see before someone "avada kadavra"s you.

—2—

At the end of her homeschool year, I made my 17-year-old read portions of Walden and even play a Walden video game in preparation for an educational pilgrimage to Walden Pond this week. Unfortunately my attempts to make it a learning experience were mostly met with eye rolls and one-word answers, but I tried.

We visited the cabin replica, watched the video and looked at the displays in the visitor's center, then walked around the pond and saw the site where Thoreau had built his cabin.

This quote from the visitor's center ended up coming in handy later in the day, when we were hiking the trail around Walden Pond and caught a giant whiff of marijuana. It's legal here so we unfortunately smell it all the time, and we joke that it smells like a nasty skunk. But this time we all just grinned and said "How invigorating!"

—3—

Technology. 

I charge my phone on my nightstand and this week it gave a loud notification early in the morning. I was having a hard time getting back to sleep but it was too early to get up, so I put on my headphones to listen to one of Jason Stephenson's super-mellow sleep talkdowns. After several minutes, the talkdown was interrupted by the headphones blaring "BATTERY LOW!" in a loud robot voice.

I probably wouldn't have fallen back asleep anyway, but it was still very annoying.

—4—

Sometimes I think I bit off way more than I can chew when I decided to work on our yard. I don't know anything about landscaping. I don't even like it. 

I look at the enormous mountain of topsoil where the enormous mountain of fill sand used to be, and I wonder if I will ever be able to move it to where it needs to go, one shovelful and one wheelbarrow at a time. 

But I just keep telling myself that if I just work on it a little bit every day, there's no way for it to stay unfinished forever. Even if it feels like it.

I made a ton of progress today, actually. I've shaped quite a pretty hill with a rock wall around the mailbox if I do say so myself, and covered it with topsoil, and now the rest of the topsoil is getting distributed around the yard to the many, many areas that got ripped up and destroyed by the big equipment that came in to redo our driveway in the fall.

—5—

Learning another language is so hard. I haven't felt this dumb in 20 years. But I also have moments when I am really proud of myself — probably precisely because it's so hard.

And I'm getting better by objective standards of measurement. For example, I graduated from the children's graphic novel on the right to the YA novel on the left, AND I EVEN UNDERSTAND IT BETTER THAN THE KIDS' BOOK. 

I mean, it still takes me 30 minutes to read a chapter and I have to have my phone nearby to look things up, but still. I am learning new things.

—6—

Earlier this week, the 15- and 11-year-old flew to visit their grandparents. I was a little nervous, mostly because when I dropped off their older sister at this airport two weeks ago to go to music camp, I assumed everything was fine but ended up getting a panicked phone call 30 minutes before her plane took off saying she was stuck in a long line at ticketing and wasn't even at security yet. (Amazingly, she still made her flight.)

So this time, I asked the 15- and 11-year-old to call me when they got to their gate. But time went by and they didn't call and they didn't call and they didn't call, and also didn't answer when I tried to call them. About 30 minutes before their flight was supposed to take off, my phone rang, and I prepared myself for the worst when I answered. 

"Sorry," my 15-year-old's voice said, "We've been sitting here for like an hour and I just realized I forgot to call you."

These people are trying to kill me.

—7—

Just a reminder from the Internet that I thought was worth repeating. This comes from a blogger named Mommy Cusses, but I took out the cuss (sorry, Mommy Cusses).

To be honest it is a little jarring when your first kid turns 18 and you have that "Wait, was that their childhood?" moment that feels a lot like having to hand in a final exam before you had time to check your work. 

But you really should stop putting so much pressure on yourself. For your kids' whole lives, you've done the best you could with what you had at the time, and because you're the mom you're going to keep on doing that. And it's going to be great.

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