Happiness

I read in a blog (71toes.com) something about how to get along with your teenagers that I really liked.  The author spoke about “returning the volley” to our kids. When they are babies we are interested in what they are interested in. We say “that’s a cow” and “it says Moo” and the child says “Moo”. We say “yay!! Right!!” She suggests we do the same with our teenagers. Yesterday Asher commented- “the food I’ve been eating is so bland, I just want to cook something nice!” “Ok” I said “go for it.” He decided on crepes (one of his favorites), checked to see if we had some ingredients and then we had a discussion on how to separate the egg yolks and how they felt so weird when they did. All this from my 14- almost 15- year old. It was amazing to watch. I love my teenagers! They make me so happy- especially when they get along with each other. They aren’t perfect, but hey, no one is, right?!

When our son Declan was 4 he taught himself how to read. We should have seen that as a sign that he’s pretty bright. We- or at least I- didn’t at least. Sure we read to him every night but we did that with all our other kids and that hadn’t changed things.  And so fast forward almost two years later when he was given the gifted test. He scored very well on it and after a year of being bored in traditional  schooling (Covid didn’t help), we are on the hunt for a better and more challenging option. And being in Arizona we have the option of paid for charter schools. There are schools that offer an hour of homework for 7 year olds (what?) and schools that do separate groups for gifted students or mainstream or varied curriculum.  I feel kinda over my head with all of this but I hope that Josh and I will be able to sort all this out together.  And we will.

  Sorry I’ve been gone missing around here! A lot of important decisions were being made- like whether we should have any more kids and what kind of night time snack we should eat.  But I digress. 20 years ago Josh proposed a life of possibilities and adventure- one full of joy and hope and exciting times (spoiler alert- I said yes!) We knew that would be sadness and pain mixed in with this particular hope and joy and we were willing to risk it.  Just like in our pre-mortal existence. We knew before coming to this earth that there would be pain and sorrow along with happiness and peace and we were thrilled for the chance to experience it all. Not just happy to experience the good but thrilled to experience the bad too because it would bring us happiness and joy in the end. And that’s what this thing called life and marriage is all about. Happy 20th anniversary, Babe, of working all this out. I love you!