Memories

I remember when I was almost five. I think that's when my most sturdy memories come about. I remember my mom telling us that she was going to have a baby and being soooo excited. I remember sitting on her big pregnant belly and her singing me songs. I remember when Brandon was born and how he was the only thing I could think and talk about at school. I remember sitting on the bar-stool at the kitchen counter while my mom made me a sandwich before afternoon kindergarten. I remember my mom's soft voice almost as a narrator through out my memories. My mother was an exceptional mother, full of love and patience towards me. I was a pretty difficult, emotional, dramatic child and I really can't remember a loud voice from her.

I had a realization the other day that Joseph is now the age I was when I can remember my first real memories and a TON of things flood through my head. Am I being as nice to him as my mother was to me? Will his memories be happy ones? I hope his memories are grand. He will will never remember a time before Hyrum and maybe even before Eliza. I want his memories to be full of fun and love and voice full of compassion, love, and conviction. Not yelling and questioning.

I wish that I can offer him all that. I am a work in progress. I can be a pretty high-strung, anxious person. So when things aren't going my way or something is out of order I become someone I am not especially proud of. I am working on ways to just shut my frustrations down. When the house is a wreck and all I want to do is tidy it up but the baby is crying and the boys are emptying the toy box on the living room floor for the second time that day sometimes it doesn't seem to bother me and other times it does. I know the difference between the two.

When it really really bothers me and I start to feel like I have steam coming out of my ears and I start to yell and get angry it's because I am ONLY thinking of myself... I think, my house is a mess, I just want to clean it, I want to get out of the house, I want to put the kids in their car seats so they can just be still for a minute.... and so on.

When it doesn't bother me at all is when I am thinking about the kids. They are having so much fun getting that thousandth toy out! They are loud and racing up and down the halls, playing with each other. When the baby cries I get the opportunity to pick her up and and have a conversation with her eyes and hear her sweet little voice.

I want my children's memories of me to be good ones. I want them to not care about a dish in the sink, but for them to remember me singing them songs and dancing with them and playing with them. I am still trying to figure this parenting thing out and I hope that someday I can, hopefully while they are still young. So my resolution today is to care a little less about what I want and a little more about what they want, I will try to get a little muddy with them and chase them around the yard,  and I will talk in a softer more understanding voice, because those are the memories I want them to have.