Sean:  Dee dee, dee dee [little brother in Chinese]!  Here’s your envelope I made for you!
Jonas fumbles with the envelope.  Sean patiently waits while Jonas tries to figure it out.
Sean:  Dee dee, let me help you.
Sean shows Jonas the opening and lets Joans open it.  Jonas opens it slowly.  Sean excitedly grabs the contents.
Sean:  Look dee dee!  I drew you a train with a boxcar.  Do you like it?
Jonas:  Whoa!

I wish I could have videotaped that moment.  It was too sweet.  It just reminded me how sweet Sean is.  He has such a kind and compassionate heart.  He loves to make others smile, and he is oftentimes thinking of doing things for others.  I hope he never outgrows his generosity towards others, and I hope that he gets double the blessings from others in return.

I love you Sean, for all you kindness and sweetness.  You catch me by surprise how caring you are.  Thank you for making the day so special to me.  I love you, mom.

Yeah, we watch lots of football at our house.  Yup, our boys like football. 

When we die, and go to heaven, Jesus will give us new bodies.  Then, we’ll never get sick; we’ll never get old, and we’ll never die.

Needless to say, my husband and I were blown away.  I think we’ve read something like this in Sean’s Bible, but we haven’t talked about our new bodies in quite some time.  Great theology Sean!

Then, yesterday, things got more complicated.  My husband went to a meeting for “School of Choice”, and I knew most of the things except when he started talking about the Magnet and gifted programs.  The three magnet programs in our district have three magnet schools have extra funding and are focusing in different areas:  1)  science/math, 2) government and democracy, and 3) international education.  My husband and I weren’t very excited about the government and democracy school, but the science/math and international education peeked our interest.

The science/math peeked our interest because we’re both computer scientist and we’ve excelled in the areas of science/math.  However, just because we’ve excelled in those areas, doesn’t mean Sean will excel, or more importantly enjoy those areas.  My husband also worried that the school would draw typical “engineers” and a child that might not be naturally interested in those areas would feel out of place.  The international education school was interesting only because they teach all the children Mandarin.  I would like all of our kids to go to Chinese school at some point, so it might be nice for our kids to get that in school rather than going an extra day on the weekend.

The question of whether or not we should consider a Magnet school has caused me some stress.  Both my family and my husband’s family have emphasized an importance in education.  My husband and I both think that education is important as well, and we do expect our children to go to college.  Our hope is that we would encourage our children to do the best to their potential and not compare them to their siblings, peers, or our expectations of how they should do.  We want to foster an environment where their education is important, but not the most important thing.  I’m realizing this is a fine line that I know that we’ll be walking.  I have a tendency to think, “Of course I’m going to give my child the best and give him the best opportunities!  Of course we’d want our child to explore possibilities in magnet schools, extracurricular activities, gifted programs, and good school districts!”  However, I know that I will need to suppress some of those tendencies because 1) I don’t want to live vicariously through my children, 2) put pressure on my children, 3) make my children feel that in order for me to be proud of them they have to do well in school, and 4) most importantly realize that my children’s education is NOT the most important thing.  I don’t even know if giving my children all these opportunities will actually help them in the long run or give them an edge when applying or going to college.  Sure, maybe as they get older it might help, but maybe not.  I think back to what both my husband and dad said, “If your child is going to be good at school or anything, they will be able to succeed wherever they are.”  I think there is some truth to that, but there I know that there are benefits to peers that will drive you and an environment where you can feel challenged.

With all this being said, I think I am leaning more towards not putting Sean in a magnet school right now.  I’m not sure I’m convinced that these specialized areas will benefit Sean before he’s in upper elementary except for being exposed to Mandarin.  Also, I don’t really want to pigeon-hole Sean into a certain type of curriculum when I’m not sure what Sean likes or will excel in.  He’s only going to be in kindergarten after all!

I wanted to end with the point I made above my child’s education is not the most important thing.  First of all, I can’t believe that Sean is going to start kindergarten next year!  Where has the time gone?  I feel completely unprepared for the reality of Sean being in school the whole day, though I’ve been looking forward to this time for many years.  Second, I need to remind myself that Sean, Jonas, and Karis’ education is not the most important thing; that their lives are not the most important thing to me.  I need to remind myself that my relationship with God and Jesus Christ is the most important, my relationship with my husband is second, and my relationship with my kids comes third.  I truly believe that if I live my life this way that my children will not feel shortchanged, but in fact benefit from seeing that God and my husband are more important than them.  Knowing myself, I can foresee how easily I can get wrapped up in my kids education and extracurricular life and let that be my focus.  If I let myself become that way, I know that when we finally have an “empty nest”, I’ll be looking at my husband and wondering, “What happened to us?  Who are you?  Who are we together?”  So, I do not want to get wrapped up in my children.  I want to be an advocate for my children; I want to create a loving environment where my children can feel supported (whether they succeed or not); I want to show them that getting a good education is valuable.  I want to do all these things not at the cost of my relationship with God or my husband.  We’ll see how this goes in practice the next 18+ years, but I’m thankful that I have a husband with the same ideas as me.  I know it won’t be perfect, but hopefully, my husband and I will be constantly working at improving our marriage while leading our children.

Sean:  Mommy, I’m crying because you’re so beautiful.

I had to stifle my laughing. 

I think parenting young children (and old ones, I’ve heard) is a little like climbing Mount Everest. Brave, adventurous souls try it because they’ve heard there’s magic in the climb. They try because they believe that finishing, or even attempting the climb are impressive accomplishments. They try because during the climb, if they allow themselves to pause and lift their eyes and minds from the pain and drudgery, the views are breathtaking. They try because even though it hurts and it’s hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that  most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.

My occupation as stay-at-home mom is certainly not glamorous.  Yes, it’s worth all the time I put into it, but it’s by no means beautiful or easy, especially day to day.  Just today, I’ve had two sick kids, all of the kids screaming and crying at the same time, the baby pooping out of her outfit, all the while trying to maintain some sort of order in the house.  It has been hard to be patient and loving after multiple meltdowns from all the children in a span of a few hours.  But, I know it’s worth being there with my children and for my children because they will know they are loved and cared for no matter what.

Each day, I feel that I definite have many chronos moments – eagerly awaiting naptime, my husband coming home for lunch and dinner, and bedtime.  I look forward to the end of the day, much like the mom who wrote the article.  It’s a success when we reach the end of the day and everyone is in bed and alive. 

I, am, however, encouraged to look for more kairos moments of each day.  Today, when I was nursing Karis, she reached for my face and smiled her beautiful smile.  I thought, “What a beautiful happy girl I have!”.  Sean and Jonas both played quietly for 20 minutes – Sean engrossed in his book and Jonas lining up his cars.  I wish I could pause that moment as I watched each of my boys being content with simple things.  Even though Sean and Karis are sick, I praise the Lord that all of my children are healthy and developing great.  It is such a blessing to have three healthy kids.

Jonas
I’ll start with Jonas because I think our middle child definitely should get to be first some of the times!    Jonas’ vocabulary is growing in leaps and bounds.  It seems with each passing week, Jonas is able to communicate better and use his words to tell us what he needs.  While we were in Houston, Jonas picked up on one Chinese phrase – “hua ju-an”.  “Hua ju-an” is a steamed bun that both Sean and Jonas really loved eating, and they often had it for breakfast.

Jonas is becoming quite the copy cat – mostly copying his brother.  Jonas’ latest trick is climbing into his bed.  It used to be that when Jonas would get upset because he couldn’t get his way, he’d run into Sean’s room and throw himself on his brother’s bed.  He learned this behavior from Sean as that’s what he did.  I don’t what changed, but Jonas now has changed to running into his room and climbing into his crib.  I didn’t know he could do it the first time until I found him crying in his crib when I thought he was playing.  My husband observed how he gets in – he climbs on his mattress, swings his little leg (it barely goes over the top of his crib), and then proceeds to head drive into the crib.  Luckily for us, Jonas has some self-preservation because he has not attempted to climb out of his crib by himself.

Karis
I thought I’d be writing that she’d be crawling at this point because she started rolling over so early (3 months), but she isn’t.  I have to remember what our old pediatrician said, “Babies grow and development at different rates.  Sometimes they focus on one area for some time, like fine motor, before they grow and develop in another area, like gross motor”.  Karis isn’t crawling, but she’s able to grab objects pretty well and put them into her mouth.  She loves her exer-saucer, so she spends most of her time in it jumping up and down and grabbing objects.  She doesn’t mind being on the ground, but the girl is a mover and doesn’t seem to have the patience to sit up by herself for long periods; as soon as she’s on the ground, she lunges forward to grab something and ends up on her tummy.  She doesn’t mind being on her back or belly – she’s often rolling or grabbing for toys.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t last too long because she gets frustrated that she can’t get to where she wants to be to get the toys she wants.  It feels like time is going both slow and fast at the same time.  I expect by the time she’s 9 months (in two months), she will be crawling, but it seems like she has a long way to go to get there.  At the same time, I can’t believe she’s already 7 months old already.  I’m eager to get to when she’s self-sufficient in mobility because I think she’ll be less frustrated.

Karis is becoming more aware of her environment, and she definitely is a social butterfly.  She knows when she is left alone in her exersaucer and the girl will squawk and cry to let you know that she is not okay with being left alone in the room.  She lights up when she sees her brother or us in the room as she jumps and bounces excitedly in her exersaucer.  If she’s lying on the ground or in someone’s arms, she’ll kick her legs excitedly and squeal with delight if she sees her brothers or us.  It’s quite a sweet moment.  Along with facial recognition comes separation anxiety.  Karis is starting to exhibit signs of separation anxiety, as seen with our first few days in Houston.  She was clingy and didn’t want anyone else to hold her except for me.  This was compounded by the fact that we were in a new environment and I think she was uncomfortable from teething.  Fortunately, she seems to adapt fairly well and was back to her cheerful self by the second and third day.

Sean
One thing that I’ve noticed about Sean lately is that he’s become more emotional.  When he gets frustrated or upset, he’s more apt to burst out into crying.  It’s a big surprise to me, and I don’t know if it’s a phase he’s going through, something he’s picked up from Jonas, or both.  It leaves my husband and I a little stunned sometimes because Sean is not generally a crier.  We hope that as we help him get through this period that he’ll start settling back down to his old self.

Sean has grown leaps and bounds with his fine motor skills.  He is able to write letters, and recently, he’s starting to draw pictures.  Some of Sean’s favorite things to draw are trains, trucks, and cars.  Are you surprised?    I love how Sean is now able to draw and label his pictures with the right word with right spelling.  He’s learning to spell more words, which I think is amazing.  He continues his love for words and art, and it’s evident from what he brings home from pre-school.