The secret to stopping time.

Since there is no special secret this is what I do: I take (literally) hundreds of pictures a month. So when Cache is 16 I can look back and remember the morning that he was so determined to get himself ready all by his big boy self.

I try my best to enjoy every moment. I write things down. I blog about it. I facebook it. I hold him tight. I listen so carefully to his little, deep voice telling me stories. I try to soak up everything.

...but I still wish I had a time machine to take me back so I can actually relive those moments. 

:)

I think...

that this is very important and I never want to forget to do this.

One-a-Day Compliments

One day I was visiting with a mother of seven grown children, all active, confident members of the Church. As a young mother anxious for help and advice, I questioned her about her secrets of success. One of her most impressive answers was: “I tried to genuinely compliment each child on something he or she did well every day.”

How often we ignore the good behavior of our children and comment only on their mistakes and misbehavior! To grow to be of value to himself and society, a child needs to think well of himself. He needs to see himself as an important person and know that he has abilities and skills.

Compliments go a long way toward improving a child’s self-esteem. Following are some ways to encourage a positive self-image in children.

1. Provide opportunities for growth. One of the first phrases a toddler learns to say is “I can do.” He likes to feel capable of performing different tasks—feeding himself, dressing himself, or pouring his own juice. Other challenges follow as he develops his abilities. He needs opportunities to perform. Parents have the responsibility to create these opportunities for growth and allow children to do as much as possible for themselves.

2. Encourage them. Children will often become whatever we tell them they are. If they feel loved and accepted if we center our attention on what they do well rather than on their failures and mistakes they will feel a sense of accomplishment and self-respect. However, if we fail to reinforce a child’s good behavior with encouragement, he may become discouraged and misbehave to gain attention. Often parents discourage children very innocently. For example, four-year-old Mary wants a drink of milk. She takes the carton from the refrigerator and begins to pour some milk into a glass when mother walks in. Mother quickly snatches the carton from Mary and says, “Here, let me do it. You’re too little. You might spill it.” If this kind of reaction is common, Mary will probably see herself as “too little” for a long time.

3. Compliment them. Compliments help children believe in themselves. But compliments must be genuine and specific to effectively influence behavior. Telling Johnny he is a good boy will not have the same effect as telling him how happy you are that he mowed the lawn without having to be reminded. Simply remember to notice your children’s good behavior and let them know how it honestly makes you feel.

As children grow up, they feel small and inadequate in the adult world. They make mistakes and are very much aware of their failures. But if we will remember to supplement their development daily with learning opportunities, encouragement, and sincere compliments, we can be assured that we are nourishing their self-esteem and potential for growth.

 Linda Turley Turner, Heber City, Utah

what would it be like...

Today when I came home from work I decided to just let go of my task list of things to do. Definitely not like me. But, I had to. I looked at Cache and I couldn't help but notice how much he has grown. It was overwhelming.

I know it sounds cliche, but I don't care. Lots of people tell me that it will go by so fast, I just never really knew just how fast they meant. This realization may have been coming from all of our friends having babies. Every time we go into the hospital, I swear I was just there with Cache. Then I look at Cache and he is almost 2! 

Fast? What an understatement!

So today I decided to just hang out with Cache. Not just hang around him, or play with him on and off between projects, work and chores. We had some major bonding. Another Cache and Mommy day. 

I am SO happy that I get to spend more time with him. I know that I will never get the opportunity to have him as a baby again. I need to take the time everyday to note the little things, take pictures, videos and just enjoy him. I want to go to bed every night and know that I took advantage of the best opportunity ever...being Cache's mom.  Cache is little still and he is the sweetest little rascal. I hope he is always sweet, I think he will be, but I swear he is going to tower over me in the next 12 years. So staying little, not going to happen.

 Right now hearing Cache say, "Please, daddy." has to be my favorite. Steve's too (obviously). But you have to hear him say daddy, it is heartwarming. 

Have you heard the Taylor Swift song, Never Grow Up? It is one of my new favorites. I was thinking, and listening, to this song a lot today. 

Your little hand's wrapped around my finger

And it's so quiet in the world tonight

Your little eyelids flutter cause you're dreaming

So I tuck you in, turn on your favorite night light

To you everything's funny, you got nothing to regret

I'd give all I have, honey

If you could stay like that

Oh darling, don't you ever grow up

Don't you ever grow up, just stay this little

Oh darling, don't you ever grow up

Don't you ever grow up, it could stay this simple

I won't let nobody hurt you, won't let no one break your heart

And no one will desert you

Just try to never grow up, never grow up

Always so fast, he usually turns into a blur in photographs.

Flipped

Once in awhile we read something that changes our perspective on life. We put our book down and we are changed.

I just had that experience, and no, it was not with the Hunger Games series (though it really got me thinking), this book is a cute little book called Flipped.

I opened it up and it was love at first sentence. I loved the way the author described things and the way he brought the characters to life. It seemed refreshing....or maybe it was because I had been reading about children killing other children...any-who, it was adorable.

Here is the basic plot:

Little Julie Baker is in LOVE with Bryce Loski. He does NOT love her, I mean in 2nd grade don't all girls have cooties? Bryce does everything he can to avoid her. Well years later things 'Flip' and Bryce finds himself falling for her....and Julie, well she doesn't think he is too great. This is how someone explained this to me and I thought, oh that's cute. Then I read it and there is SO much more to it. 

First sentence of Bryce's Chapter: All I've ever wanted was for Julie Baker to leave me alone.

First two sentences of Julie's Chapter: The first day I met Bryce Loski, I flipped. Honestly, one look at him and I became a lunatic.

*The author writes this story from Bryce and Julie's point of view. 

I loved this book because the message was so... wonderful. I was reminded of what is truly important in life, it also made me think of my actions. I put the book down thinking, "Do I look at things in proper lighting? Do I look at the whole picture?"

(Those are lines from the book. This is not about photography people).

One of my favorite parts is when Julie is talking to her dad while he is painting a picture. She is remembering when she told her dad about why she loves Bryce and she talks about the older she gets the more philosophical her dad would get. Here is the paragraph:

Mostly the things he talked about floated around me, but once in awhile something would happen and I would understand exactly what he had meant. "A painting is more than the sum of its parts," he would tell me, and then go on to explain how the cow by itself is just a cow, and the meadow by itself is just grass and flowers, and the sun peaking through the trees is just a beam of light, but put them all together and you've got magic.

Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen

One of my new FAVORITE books. The messages in this book will stick with me for always.

***Side note: Hunger Games Series is a FABULOUS series!!  I do like it ;)

Little Children

The story of Ethan Stacy makes my heart ache. I wish I could've or someone else could've saved his poor innocent body from all the hurt. I was reading more about the story tonight and the tears were flowing from my eyes. My heart felt so low and then I found this:

If Ethan's experience or any like his are troubling you, maybe this will help 

Thomas S. Monson, “A Little Child Shall Lead Them,” Ensign, Jun 2002, 2–7

During the Galilean ministry of our Lord and Savior, the disciples came unto Him, saying: “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?

“And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them,

“And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

“Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

“And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.

“But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” (Matt. 18:1–6).

The Many Faces of Child Abuse

Some time ago, as I read the daily newspaper, my thoughts turned to this passage and the firm candor of the Savior’s declaration. In one column of the newspaper I read of a custody battle between the mother and father of a child. Accusations were made, threats hurled, and anger displayed as parents moved here and there on the international scene with the child spirited away from one continent to another.

A second story told of a 12-year-old lad who was beaten and set on fire because he refused a neighborhood bully’s order to take drugs.

Still a third report told of a father’s sexual molestation of his small child.

A physician once revealed to me the large number of abused children who are being brought to the emergency rooms of local hospitals in your city and mine. In many cases guilty parents provide fanciful accounts of the child falling from his high chair or stumbling over a toy and striking his head. Altogether too frequently it is discovered that the parent was the abuser and the innocent child the victim. Shame on the perpetrators of such vile deeds. God will hold such strictly accountable for their actions.

Children Are Precious to the Lord

When we realize just how precious children are, we will not find it difficult to follow the pattern of the Master in our association with them. Not long ago, a sweet scene took place at the Salt Lake Temple. Children, who had been ever so tenderly cared for by faithful workers in the temple nursery, were now leaving in the arms of their mothers and fathers. One child turned to the lovely women who had been so kind to the children and, with a wave of her arm, spoke the feelings of her heart as she exclaimed, “Good night, angels.”

The poet described a child so recently with its Heavenly Father as “a sweet new blossom of Humanity, fresh fallen from God’s own home to flower on earth.” 1

Who among us has not praised God and marveled at His powers when an infant is held in one’s arms? That tiny hand, so small yet so perfect, instantly becomes the topic of conversation. No one can resist placing his little finger in the clutching hand of an infant. A smile comes to the lips, a certain glow to the eyes, and one appreciates the tender feelings which prompted the poet to pen the lines:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home. 2 

When the disciples of Jesus attempted to restrain the children from approaching Him, He declared:

“Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

“Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.

“And he took them up in his arms, put his hands upon them, and blessed them” (Mark 10:14–16).

What a magnificent pattern for us to follow.

We Can Bless the Lives of Children

Several years ago my heart burned warmly within me when the First Presidency approved the allocation of a substantial sum from some special fast-offering contributions to join with those funds from Rotary International that polio vaccine might be provided and the children living in Kenya immunized against this vicious crippler and killer of children.

I thank God for the work of our doctors who leave for a time their own private practices and journey to distant lands to minister to children. Cleft palates and other deformities which would leave a child impaired physically and damaged psychologically are skillfully repaired. Despair yields to hope. Gratitude replaces grief. These children can now look in the mirror and marvel at a miracle in their own lives.

In a meeting, I once told of a dentist in my ward who each year visited the Philippine Islands to work his skills without compensation to provide corrective dentistry for children. Smiles were restored, spirits lifted, and futures enhanced. I did not know that the daughter of this dentist was in the congregation to which I was speaking. At the conclusion of my remarks, she came forward and, with a broad smile of proper pride, said, “You have been speaking of my father. How I love him and what he is doing for children!”

In the faraway islands of the Pacific, hundreds who were near-blind now see because a missionary said to his physician brother-in-law, “Leave your wealthy clientele and the comforts of your palatial home and come to these special children of God who need your skills and need them now.” The ophthalmologist responded without a backward glance. He has commented quietly that this visit was the best service he ever rendered and the peace which came to his heart the greatest blessing of his life.

Tears came easily to me when I read of a father who donated one of his own kidneys in the hope that his son might have a more abundant life. I have dropped to my knees at night and have added my prayer of faith in behalf of a mother in my community who journeyed to Chicago that she might provide part of her liver to her daughter in a delicate and potentially life-threatening surgery. She, who already had gone down into the valley of the shadow of death to bring forth this child into mortality, again put her hand in the hand of God and placed her own life in jeopardy for her child. Never a complaint, but ever a willing heart and a prayer of faith.

Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles once shared the pitiable plight of many orphan children in Romania—perhaps 30,000 in the city of Bucharest alone. He visited one such orphanage and arranged that the Church might provide vaccine, medical dressings, and other urgently needed supplies. Certain couples were identified and called to fill special missions to these children. I can think of no more Christlike service than to hold a motherless child in one’s arms or to take a fatherless boy by the hand.

We need not be called to missionary service, however, in order to bless the lives of children. Our opportunities are limitless. They are everywhere to be found—sometimes very close to home.

How Children Bless Our Lives

Several years ago I received a letter from a woman who had emerged from a long period of Church inactivity. She was ever so anxious for her husband, who as yet was not a member of the Church, to share the joy she felt.

She wrote of a trip which she, her husband, and their three sons made from the family home to Grandmother’s home in Idaho. While driving through Salt Lake City, they were attracted by the message which appeared on a billboard. The message invited them to visit Temple Square. Bob, the nonmember husband, made the suggestion that a visit would be pleasant. The family entered the visitors’ center, and Father took two sons up a ramp that one called “the ramp to heaven.” Mother and three-year-old Tyler were a bit behind the others, they having paused to appreciate the beautiful paintings which adorned the walls. As they walked toward the magnificent sculpture of Thorvaldsen’s Christus, tiny Tyler bolted from his mother and ran to the base of the Christus, while exclaiming, “It’s Jesus! It’s Jesus!” As Mother attempted to restrain her son, Tyler looked back toward her and his father and said, “Don’t worry. He likes children.”

After departing the center and again making their way along the freeway toward Grandmother’s, Dad asked Tyler what he liked best about their adventure on Temple Square. Tyler smiled up at him and said, “Jesus.”

“How do you know that Jesus likes you, Tyler?”

Tyler, with a most serious expression on his face, looked up at his father’s eyes and answered, “Dad, didn’t you see His face?” Nothing else needed to be said.

As I read this account, I thought of the statement from the book of Isaiah, “And a little child shall lead them” (Isa. 11:6).

The words of a Primary hymn express the feelings of a child’s heart:

Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear, Things I would ask him to tell me if he were here. Scenes by the wayside, tales of the sea, Stories of Jesus, tell them to me. 

Oh, let me hear how the children stood round his knee. I shall imagine his blessings resting on me; Words full of kindness, deeds full of grace, All in the lovelight of Jesus’ face. 3