This is my Chance

Maggie is becoming quite the vocalist, if you know what you are supposed to be hearing. She can say, “Sippy,” “Cookie,” “Diaper,” and “Tickle.” Mia, in possession of a decent vocabulary at this point, is learning to say, “Undesirable Citizen.”

Our lives since traveling back from Arizona have been filled with various ups and downs. The ups have been hilarious – Mia giving us an impromptu concert where she sang a made-up song about a giant, finishing with a grand, “Hi-ho the merrio, the Farmer in the Dell!” or Maggie discovering she has a rabbit speed and trotting laps through the house, grinning maniacally the whole while.

The downs… those have mostly involved the changeable nature of both of our children. Mia is so particular about things that she is likely to erupt into a volcano of unintelligible howls if we happen to not pull her underwear up separately from her pants after a potty break, Maggie has a deep desire to be fed RIGHT NOW and woe to your eardrums if you delay!

I suppose this is just part of the growing up process. But Isaiah and I keep looking at each other and questioning how we can be so irritated, plus so in love, all within a span of 14 seconds. It’s bewildering to us.

I feel like I’m writing a boring update right now. Sorry – but I’ve been more contemplative in the past few days than sarcastic.

I’ve been thinking about the choices that we have as we face each day, choices about our attitudes, our activities, our impact. I think that we all know that our mental stamina is possibly more important than our physical when it comes to surviving and thriving through the daily minutiae of irritations and successes.

I’ve been wondering how I would live my life differently if instead of people asking me, “How are you today?” they asked me, “What impact have you made today?”

That’s a totally different story, that’s a question that shifts the onus squarely on to my own shoulders and jogs me out of my own self-centered little monologue of what I am entitled, what I should expect, what I need to accomplish. It makes me pause and recognize that even though I wish it were, this life is NOT about ME.

As I talk with the college students I keep hearing a pattern of statements about how they will do this or that when they graduate… when they are married… when they are parents… What’s popping out to me is that very few of the conversations center about what they are doing with their lives today, what are they doing during the time that they are waiting?

I am convinced that we would not have to wait for so many things if it did not develop some sort of character trait in us. I just can’t quite put my finger on what character traits “waiting” develops? I know that I am trying to teach my children to wait, to save that yummy chocolate horse they got for Christmas so that they can have one bit a day for a lot of days (as opposed to Mia who ate TWO entire Pez dispensers full of candy in 4.3 minutes and then has been hounding me for days to eat all of Maggie’s Pez!). I teach them to wait their turn while going down the slide with other kids at the playground.

Waiting must be an important skill for us. Our cultural dissatisfaction is often traced by psychologists to our “now” mentality – credit card debt is a sign of a generation which chooses not to wait until they can pay in full, but instead get it NOW. And it seems that there is a sense of peace in the older generation of people who are used to saving for things.

At Thanksgiving my mom mentioned that some people probably considered their week-long vacation in Branson a “once in a lifetime” experience. It really struck me – for my family, week-long vacations have become the norm. But there are many people who are grateful for two-days… or any days at all! When I traveled with Semester at Sea the sights of China, Japan, South Africa, Brazil – these places filled my senses and gave me an insatiable desire to travel more.

But, let’s be honest, shall we? I’m certainly not going to strap my 2-year-old and 16-month-old into a pack and walk the streets of Italy any time soon! (Visions of losing Maggie at the Trevi Fountain in Rome are filling my head. That was the fountain I threw a coin back over my shoulder and believed wholeheartedly in the superstition that if you complete that act of throwing you will return to the fountain.) My traveling plans are indefinitely put on hold. But what if I never use my passport again? Will I allow that unfulfilled dream to consume me with dissatisfaction or be grateful for the travels I have already experienced?

I read, with my OCD desire to know everything about childrearing, that it’s a good thing to give your kids choices about things. For instance, give them two outfits to choose from in the morning and let them choose. It supposedly allows them the opportunity to build self-confidence and problem-solving skills.

Anyway, I have taken this choice advice to heart and have regularly given Mia choices about things. It’s now coming back in a slightly twisted form.

When we ask Mia to do something that she doesn’t like, she now looks at us and says, “No! This is my chance. I will have a chocolate now and a chocolate for dinner. That’s my chance.”

Somehow in her brain she’s gotten choice and chance mixed up. I hadn’t really thought about that as anything other than a cute Mia-ism until my contemplations lately. What if I really think of my Choices as Chances? Would that make a difference in how I Choose to live my life?

So, that’s the update on my brain walks lately. If you’re still reading, thanks for sticking with me! I’ll be working toward more amusing anecdotes for my next post…