Sing, Sing, Sing

This is another post that I started more than two years ago. The theme is just as pertinent though. Funny how some things change and some things never do.

I love music. I love to listen to it. I love to sing it, play it, and feel the harmonies and counter-melodies rising and falling, magically transforming simple sounds into a complex and wonderful expression of emotion.

Similarly, I love it when I see my children experience that same joy. I love to see their eyes and whole faces light up when they hear their favorite songs. I love it when they can't even keep themselves from dancing because the music makes them so happy. I love it when they sing at the top of their voices. But I also have to work really hard to keep from laughing at them.

When I started this post, two years ago, it was right after the primary program that year, when my older daughter enthusiastically sang her guts out for every song, easily doubling the volume of the rest of the primary. At first I was a little embarrassed, but then I started thinking about how much I love music myself. And I understood.

A year ago, we had a similar experience, this time with a son whose favorite song in the world was "Praise to the Man" because, really, what other church song has the word "DEATH" so prominent in it? So again, our family was a major volume factor in the primary program.

Which brings us to this year.

 

Today was another primary program. And the saga continued, but with a different daughter. She, too, sang her guts out, but she upped the ante by dancing and twirling in her spot while she sang. It was not limited to one song, but was instead a full dose of energy and enthusiasm gushing from her whole soul for the full length of the program.

 

I must confess, however, that a part of me really wanted to stand up and join her. Just like in the previous programs, there was a music-loving part of me that was just as excited to sing and hear those songs as my kids were. There is a part of me that will always and forever love music and love everything that comes with it, especially when it is combined with the privilege of watching my children love it that way too!

Thank goodness for music. Thank goodness for those who write it. Thank goodness for the patient music leaders who listen to my children project it. And thank goodness that I get to be there to hear it.

Goldfish in my Bed

This is a post I started nearly two years ago. Amazingly, the subject is just as applicable now as it was then, so I decided it is worth finishing. Hopefully, the fact that my husband and I share a bed is not a revelation to anyone, but if that makes you uncomfortable, you might want to stop reading now.

Perhaps you've heard the adage about how a goldfish will grow to a size that is proportional to the size of tank you give it. I can't say I've ever had goldfish, so I can't actually tell you if this is true or not, but I assume that there is at least some factual basis to it.

Related to this, I'm convinced that people are similar to goldfish in that way. If you give people a bigger house, they will eventually fill it with stuff, and they will NEED that much space.

I'm not here to talk about stuff filling up my house though. I'm here to talk about how a 2-year old can take up a king-size bed, all by herself.

My husband and I have not always had a king-size bed, mind you. When we were first married, and we were living in a tiny student apartment, we only had a full-size bed. An interesting fact about full-size beds is that if you put two people in a full-size bed, then each one has less bed width than if they were sleeping on a crib mattress. But you know, we were married, after all, so we really didn't mind sleeping next to each other.

Then we had kids.

When our first child was a toddler and would wander into our bed in the middle of the night, my evil strategy was to comfort him for a few minutes, put him in the middle, and then just scoot closer and closer to him until he had no room left to move. Then I'd explain that there just wasn't room in the bed for him, and eventually he realized that sleeping by yourself was totally worth it, if it meant you could choose to roll over occasionally.

Our second child was another story, but for the sake of brevity, I'll just say that there really wasn't room for him in our bed either. After a far-too-long transition period that involved boundaries like "you can be in my room on the floor, but NOT in my bed," he also figured out eventually that his own bed wasn't too bad compared to a blanket on the floor.

Our third child had fewer issues, possibly because we were still in a 2-bedroom apartment and she was sharing a room with two other people. But really, she has always liked her bed. Sometimes if she was sad, she would just tell me, "I think I need to go take a nap," and she would go snuggle under her blankets in her bed. No problem.

Then we moved. We bought a house. Hooray! And the former owners LEFT their king-size bed in the house rather than move it across the country. Hooray for a free bed! And because of the association of king-size beds with luxury and comfort, we again said, "Hooray!"

We are realizing, though, that a king-size bed isn't necessarily all that we dreamed it would be. The worst side effect is that the two of us can be sound asleep, together taking up less than half of the bed, and if a certain child walks in quietly enough, she can tiptoe in, quietly slip into the bed on my husband's side (since he sleeps like a rock) and stay there relatively unnoticed for most of the night. 

Until she starts moving.

And then it is like a goldfish has moved in, because she can turn sideways and flip and rotate until her tiny little body is taking up the whole bed -- the same whole bed that hours earlier was only half-full with two adults. 

So, yeah, sometimes in my delirium, the only thought I have is that maybe we should go back to a smaller bed. Maybe then the goldfish would stay away.