Darais Days

I had a really wonderful Sunday. Honestly, I was feeling a little bit foggy and stressed, but all in all it was a very blessed day. I did my monthly values meditation this morning, but I didn’t choose to keep going very long, I think, in part, because I was so tired.

But it was a nice way to start the morning and Lily and took a nice and slow start to the day.

Early in the day I played play-doh with Lydia. She’s here with me now and she wanted to comment on our time together.

“This is Lydia speaking. Dad and I had a really fun time playing with play-doh. He also started to teach me how to make pizza. It’s hard. No to you dad.”

Play-doh really was fun with her. We listened to songs like “The marvelous toy” by Peter Paul and Mary, and we made things like clothes and food with the Play-doh. It was so fun to hang out with her and I’m so grateful that she came to me and asked me to play. Towards the end, we rolled out Play-doh in the shape of a pancake and I tried to remember how to twirl pizza like I did when I was a cook at Gepetto’s. I tried to teach Lydia also. It was very fun.

Home church was very nice today. We listed to “Spirit of God” by Voice Male to open, listened to Paul Cardall’s “I Know that My Redeemer Lives” while I prepared the sacrament and shared thoughts/feelings/testimonies after the sacrament. Georgia shared a beautiful heartfelt testimony. I talked to the children about recent miracles I’m grateful for like that Georgia didn’t break bones when she fell, Lily is feeling a bit better, Lydia’s breakthrough with the harp, my work going well, and Mary’s super nice notes (Ammon, Clarissa and Lily weren’t present).

After that, I cleaned my grill deeply. I’ve only done a solid clean on it once in 5 years, and I’ve had a couple grill fires lately that I think were from all the grease and gunk under the grill. I took about an hour to watch a video, dismantle it, and clean it and re-assemble it. It was a joy to cook on it after that. I LOVE SALMON AND PINEAPPLE. Today we brazed the pineapple in molasses and it was DELICIOUS.

Lily and I set up a lamp for Ammon so he could play with his toy as he drifted off to bed.

After putting the kids down, Lily and I watched the first two episodes of season 3 of Designated Survivor. We just watched Contagion and loved it and now we are on a bit of a Pandemic kick!

On Saturday (and maybe Sunday as well) Georgia was entertaining children in her room by seeing how many hats people could stack on their head. Georgia and I each got 13. I think I heard one child got 14! Anyway, I’m having trouble uploading photos, but here is at least one that uploaded of Lydia.

Lily and I are both rebalancing. I’ve been so focused at work, and Lily has been so focused on her health goals, and it has left us both stressed and exhausted to our bones. I’m taking Monday and Tuesday off and Lily is going to back off a bit on her exercise and eating restrictions. She read The Obesity Code today and we both learned about the incredible power of fasting to restore the body to a healthy insulin level and set body weight. With only broth, water and multivitamins (and in some cases, even without) people can fast for even a month at a time healthily to get the body back to a health insulin and weight level. Lily and I were both amazed by what we learned, and Lily wants to try some fasting, but she’s going to do it when she is not feeling quite so stressed and when she’s recovered from the strain of all her recent efforts.

First, a cute picture of Clarissa. 🙂

And now about Lydia and the harp. For four years, I have watched as Lily and Lydia have spent so many hours wrestling over the harp. Lily trying to get Lydia to practice, and Lydia resisting or struggling with tears through her pieces. Finally, this week, Lily told Lydia that if Lydia wanted to keep doing the harp (and if we are going to buy her next harp required to continue at $10,000) that Lydia would need to take the initiative to practice on her own. Lily made a 100 chart for Lydia and said if it is complete by the end of August (that gives Lydia Sundays off and 8 or so freebie days), then we would continue harp and buy her next harp. We even told Lydia she could pick out her next harp if she decided to stick with it.

To our amazement, the very next day, Lydia was at her harp early in the morning knocking out her harp practice without anyone asking her to. And this has been going on for a few days now, where completely on her own initiative she gets it done. This IS a miracle. Lydia is so special, and Lily was so inspired to change the dynamic in this way. It reminds me of when Lydia and I went on a walk recently (Lily and I walk around the block multiple times almost every night, but one night, I did rounds with just Lydia), and Lydia told me that if someone asks her to walk she wont want to, but if she’s able to just walk as much as she wants on her terms she could go forever.

In addition to this practicing breakthough, we had another breakthrough in her performing. Lily got a video of Lydia playing today to submit for a competition. Lydia played remarkably.

Here is the link to the video.

Here is a message Lily posted on facebook about it.

“These are Lydia’s festival pieces. Can I please just say that I am SO PROUD of this girl!! As a perfectionist, she struggles a lot a lot a lot during harp practice and over the years has probably spent at least a hundred hours just weeping at her instrument. (Actually that’s a gross underestimation.) We have given her multiple real opportunities to quit. But she has so much grit and even though she does not like practice, she loves the harp and always chooses to keep at it. Also she has the best harp teacher, Anamae Anderson, and I feel so grateful she has patiently and diligently invested so much into my daughter.”

Lydia got so many comments and likes on Facebook. I am soo proud of Lily for getting Lydia to this moment and especially proud of Lydia for sticking it through and now taking ownership to find mastery in this beautiful instrument.

I.Love.My.Family.

Today through the rest of the week, I was very exhausted from my exertions at work. Thank goodness for my upcoming vacation! Today after work, I just went outside and hung around the kids to keep an eye on them. The played in the sprinkler and at one point disappeared into the garage. Ammon came out and announced that Clarissa had found my stash of tootsie rolls. The bag didn’t have that much in it, and I was too tired to feel like controlling the intake, so I just decided to let them have at it. I think it was very very fun for them.

Here is a link of Clarissa talking about her candy.

Lydia has a wide range on the quality of work she turns in from school. On the “just get it done and check the box” side, Lily told me an adorable anecdote of when Lydia ran down the stairs and the following conversation ensued:

Lydia: “Mom, I need to plant a seed for my school assignment. Do we have any seeds?”

Lily: “I’m not sure that I have any seeds to plant honey. Maybe we get get some a little later.”

Lydia: “No mom, I want to do it right now. I just need any seed. Oh, look, a lemon. Can I have a lemon seed?”

Lily: “Darling, lemons are tropical and won’t grow here. That seed won’t grow.”

Lydia: “It doesn’t matter mom, this will be perfect, thanks!”

Lydia then grabbed the lemon seed, went outside, plucked it in the dirt, and came back inside victorious. Haha, I thought that was hilarious.

On the other end of the spectrum, the “I can create beautiful, thoughtful, outcomes when I really want to” is the nature collage she spent hours on which you can see here:

Here is a comic she made a couple weeks ago, which resides somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. As usual with Lydia, it is very sweet, smart and adorable.

On other news from the day, I was already running late to a meeting when Lily hollered for me from the yard because she needed my help. Ammon got stuck between the springs of the trampoline and she couldn’t get him out. I have to say, at this stage of life it feels like Ammon is constantly breaking things, getting hurt, crying, fighting, or getting into predicaments. Some recent things that come to mind: Ammon putting rocks in my my garden planters, Ammon putting a shovel in our basil plant pot and dumping the dirt all over the patio, the cabinet door mysteriously falling when Ammon was sitting right in-front of it with no one watching (Lily said he often kicks that door), and lots of fights with Clarissa. There is this difficult cycle with him, when Lily or I will ask him to do something, or not do something, sometimes repeating ourselves multiple times. Then he will go and do the exact thing opposite of what we instructed. Then we will scold him, and then he will cry big alligator tears. And then we will hug and try to explain for the hundredth time, that we wont get mad if he will just simply do what he is supposed to. It’s hard to tell if he’s not processing instructions, or acting out to get attention and the eventual tender make-up that follows the scold. There probably is a more elevated way than this to parent, but right now it’s where I am. I need to be kinder because sometimes I really lose my patience with him, which I think is why sometimes he doesn’t tell me the truth when he does something wrong. Yesterday, (May 2, I’m writing this blog from the future), I felt exasperated even at a time when he was barely doing anything wrong and said, “Ammon, stop being a problem!”. I felt awful and apologized profusely, and later repented on my knees and got myself a better place. I need to give myself a little bit of a break for being hard on him at times because I’ve been very stressed and right now it seems like he is creating problems or situations a lot, situations that are hard to deal with gracefully when I’m tired or already stretched. But that doesn’t make it right. And I want to parent better, and it was a good opportunity for me to reflect about how to be better. I need to give him a break and find a way to be more kind and understating to that sweet boy, so he can always feel my love. I’m going to really try to get myself to a better place to not get frustrated with all of his energy, playfulness, and curiosity that so often results in messes to clean, things to fix and situations to resolve. I’m so glad in this situation, even though it made me late for work, I had the sense of humor to grab some photos. He really is so innocent, adorable, and good natured. I adore that boy, and in this situation, because my perspective was right, he really gave me some much needed amusement during a stressful day of work, even though it made me later for a meeting. Boy he gives me so many opportunities to smile if I’m just wise enough to enjoy it.

Lydia and Mary have been going nuts with the monkey string that Lily got for them today and they made lost of jewelry with it that they put on Ammon and Clarissa.

How beautiful!

Here is a video of Clarissa with her jewelry.

What a fun guy!

Here is a video of Ammon in his jewelry.

You might be wondering where Mary and Lydia produced all of this jewelry. Well, in their jewelry shop of course!!

Lily and I both picked out some jewelry from the shop.

I got my new planter box in the mail recently and here Ammon and Clarissa helped me to fill it with soil. It was messy, chaotic, and very very adorable.

This is a selfie of me and Lily resting together. I love our new bedroom! It reminds me of of when we were first married. It’s like we have our own little private apartment while still having the ability to listen in to the whole house with our cameras and Alexa. I think Lily is gorgeous in this sweater, and I love this stunning Vogue shot of her. I had to include it!

After I rested, I noticed there was wind outside so I tool all the kids to fly kites.

It was an extremely intense activity. It was 90 minutes of deep focus. Ammon let go of his string at one point, and fortunately the reel got caught in a tree and I was able to climb a fence and save the kite. I got more upset than I should have with Ammon, but I think he was happy again when I returned his kite and apologized for my reaction. Lydia was completely melting down because we weren’t able to get her bigger more complex kite up in the sky (not enough wind). And Clarissa was a handful at times. It was a lot to deal with and I spent a lot of energy trying to talk Lydia through her negativity about not getting her kite up. All in all though, I was so thrilled to be flying kites with the children, and had so much fun getting kites in the air and watching their joy (when their was joy), that the stress didn’t really bother me. It’s amazing what fun, joy and wonder can carry you through. It was so fun that I took them back to our spot to fly kites again the very next day.

Today was a gorgeous day and the kids had a wonderful time playing in the sprinklers:

Lately, our household has been incredibly busy. My work has been going very well (from a productivity, not billing standpoint), and I have been exerting extremely hard and driving myself into the ground somewhat. Becoming aware of the meltdown I was headed towards, I scheduled two days off of work May and May 5.

Lily has been equally busy, and equally stressed. She has been going no-stop with her exercise, dieting, house-cleaning, home-schooling, german etc etc. Just look at her list! I’m writing this almost two weeks later, and I can report that both Lily and I have decided to take life at a little bit healthier and slower clip. We were just driving ourselves into the ground with the pace and there is so much in life to be enjoyed right now if we have the presence of mind to enjoy it (which is hard to have when we are overextending.)

Here is a random picture of our beautiful daughter Lydia.

Mary too has been exceptionally busy. Not only does she have piano, eye-exercises and periodic doses of laxatives to help her figure out her poop accidents that are still happening, but she also got very behind in school when we first transitioned to school from home and Lily was extremely sick. It took us a long time to figure out what she was behind in, what her assignments were, where to find the, etc etc. Once that all got straightened out, Lily and Georgia have been working with her double-time to catch up. As a result, Mary has also been very very very busy. Sweet girl.