Category: September

Well, I crossed into the next decade of my life! It is a little weird. I remember my Grandma June in her 40’s. I remember my mom’s 40th birthday, several of my aunts. For a while as a kid, all adults were in their 40’s. Now I am. So far when I have entered a new decade it hasn’t bothered me. It bothers Ryan and he is two years older so maybe I have a few years to prepare myself because he does it first.

There was a bit of a minor mid life crisis for Ryan. It is part of the reason he now drives a Tesla. I think I feel it a little bit too. It is hard to explain. I am not panicking about my age but I feel like I have moved into a different stage of my life. I find myself thinking and considering things differently then I used to. I’ve noticed it enough in myself to say that there is definitely something to a ‘mid life crisis’. It didn’t happen over night of course, I feel like the past year or two I noticed a few subtle shifts and changes in myself. Here are some of my thoughts as a 40 for one month year old.

Emotionally and socially I have become more comfortable with myself and settled more into knowing what I am and want. I definitely feel plenty comfortable cutting out the crap and negativity I don’t want in my life. I am a people pleaser and I still like to please people but I am much better at not expensing my desires and wants ALL the time. My confidence has increased, would be a good way to say it in one sentence. I have solid friendships that are into their second decade. For me this is quite a feat since until 2008 I moved a minimum of every 2 years my whole life. I can be social or be alone-by myself or in a group. I am comfortable with myself and I know more of what I want and don’t want to spend my time doing and who I want to spend that time with.

I am no longer the young person in the room in anyone’s opinion. I have enough life experience to not be ‘just a baby’ or ‘just getting started’ or whatever else other people say. Instead people ask me how I did it when I was younger. In my head I’m thinking, “When did I not become younger?” I know enough to know I don’t know it all or even very much. I realize all the things ‘I will get to someday’ are going to be off the table at some point instead of forever available. Youth and health are not a given and guaranteed permanence. When I see someone the age of 30 they look young, 25 year old’s barely look like adults and 18 or younger look like a baby.

Physically my hair, skin, nails, and a dozen other things have changed a bit at some point in the last few years. I get a glimpse of what ‘old’ people mean when they say ‘my (fill in the blank) isn’t like it used to be’. Instead of my hair just being healthy and shiny, I have to condition it more or pick a new style because it is thinning. Instead of washing my face and throwing on a little moisturizer I have to use a toners and serums and twenty other products to help maintain, shape, elasticity, smoothness and firmness and whatever other properties my skin maintained on it own until now. Moisturizer is now bought in bulk. It is like magic that you start noticing aches and pains when you exercise…or don’t exercise.

I can see how these things and more cause someone to want to do a dramatic change around this time in their life, whether it is plastic surgery, or a trip, or buying something extravagant. I get it. Maybe in five or ten years my thoughts and opinions will change-actually I am sure they will but for now my plan in to live and enjoy my confident 40 self and age naturally and gracefully with the aid of topical creams. 😂

As I mentioned earlier, Ryan’s mid life crisis manifested as a new car. Mine will be manifesting itself in 25 days and I am VERY excited! Stay tuned!

After almost ten years with my van, I decided it was time to get a car with a few less miles and years on it. For the past year I have been researching and keeping my eye out on what I might want. I haven’t been able to decide if I wanted to get another van or an SUV.

Hands down a van is the best family car out there. There isn’t an SUV out there that can compare to the amount of people and luggage space plus comfort that a van can. The sliding doors on a van alone are worth their weight in gold. SUV’s are going to be good for people hauling or stuff hauling-not both. The “mid size” SUV’s are basically a tall car, which is fine but I need something a little bigger still. That narrowed my search down quite a bit right there. Van, or three row SUV. I don’t want a suburban or the huge SUV’s either. I don’t want to feel like I am driving a tank. That narrowed my field even more. There were really only 3-4 SUV’s that fit my criteria. One of those was a Tesla which of course Ryan was promoting. It had a third row but when I sat in it myself it seemed like a pretty liberal description to call it a third row. I am only 5′ 5″ and my knees were under my eye lobes. The lifting side doors while they sound cool, were not as cool in functionality. To finish narrowing it down I picked based on reviews, price, and looks. It left me with the choice of a new Honda Odyssey van, or a Honda Pilot SUV.

After a few more months of debating, I ended up going with the Pilot. If my kids were younger I would have gone for the van again, but since they are bigger they can get in and out on their own and sadly, it won’t be to many more years before they start driving themselves places or going on missions, or college. It was a little weird while I learned all the new buttons and things for a week but I have now adjusted and am comfy and loving my new car.

We didn’t trade the van it. We decided to sell it on our own and get twice what they were offering us for it at the dealership. We debated making it Matthew’s car but I would rather find him something a little smaller. So it hung out in our drive way for a week or two while we decided what to do with it. This past Friday I caught up on my other things and getting the van ready to sell moved to the top of my list. Coincidentally my neighborhood was having their annual Fall garage sale weekend. I decided that since we would have a lot of people driving through the neighborhood I would put a sign on it and see if I could sell it that way before I put it online. I cleaned it out, took it to vacuum and wash it and put the signs on it. On my way home from washing it, I decided to see if Roger and Rhonda would mind if I parked it in their driveway instead of mine for the weekend because they live on the street that leads into the neighborhood. I parked it in the drive way and went inside to ask. We were chatting and less than 5 minutes after I arrived someone rang the door bell. Roger said he didn’t know who it would be and I said it was someone wanting to by my van. It was! They asked to look at it, drove it around, and then said they would buy it! They left to get a cashiers check and two hours later I met them at the house again and they drove off into the sunset with it.

I was pretty excited. I thought it would take a little more effort and work to sell it but it didn’t. I wouldn’t even say I cleaned it all the way. It was neat, but I wouldn’t call it clean until I had worked on it a few more hours. Instead of that, it was sold in about 5 minutes.

Later that night I had a similar experience like I did when I donated my blue rocking chair. I didn’t cry but I had some nostalgia while I remembered all the trips and things we did together as a family in the van. It handled a lot from us. It took us all around KC, Florida, Alabama, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Tennessee, South Dakota, Nebraska, some of those places many times and others I don’t even remember. We sang hundreds of songs, played games, caught up on our days, ran errands, watched Christmas lights, plowed through snow, splashed through huge puddles. It handled our dirt, food, crayons, markers, vomit, spilled milk, soda, water, slime, pee, poopy diapers. It had countless names, words, hearts, stick figures and boogers smeared on the windows. It was a great little van. It never broke down on us. The alarm system was a bit touchy. I had to DRIVE home from a baseball practice once with the horn honking none stop because it didn’t like that I unlocked it with a key instead of the key fob. Much to all of our embarrassment it honked over and over none stop until I got home and found said key fob. Despite my best efforts sometimes it only locked me out of it 1-2 times. It was a good little van. I sold it so fast I didn’t even think to take a final picture of it but I will have fond memories of my black Honda van.

Earlier today Matthew and Allison were progressively raising the volume of their voices as they yelled insulting ‘but true’ things to each other. It was started by Allison telling Matthew that cheerleading is harder than playing football. He was momentarily dumbfounded and stared at her in complete shock until he told her that was the ‘most dumb’ thing she had ever said. Of course Allison was then dumbfounded herself because she was truly shocked that Matthew didn’t totally confirm her statement. They then proceeded to yell at each other different ways that one was better than the other. One that made me chuckle in particular was when Allison was explaining that football players get to run around so the wind cools them off. Cheerleaders stay in pretty much the same spot and don’t create wind so they are hotter. It continued to progress to who gets to drink more water and then sputtered out when I started dancing around the room to music from Aladdin.

Their next argument started not to much later when Allison, who has started reading the Harry Potter books for the first time and is about half way through the series, tried to challenge Matthew who has read all the books three times and watched all the movies at least twice, on some Harry Potter trivia. It progressed much like the argument before until they noticed that Emilee and I had sat down and were getting ready to eat dinner, then they joined us.

The reason I am sharing these little tidbits of sibling interaction is because this past weekend Lauren and I went to a parenting class called ‘Simply on Purpose’. It was a good conference. The presenter was fun to listen to and had some good information to share. It included lunch too which is always nice. I have been trying to practice some of the things she said the past few days. Some of it I have already heard or know but it is nice to have a reminder and reset sometimes. I also learned how to do somethings in a better way. Some of the main points I took away from her conference in no particular order was;

1. Sibling rivalry and how it is actually good for siblings (as long as it doesn’t get malicious, which is actually more rare than you think) and their development. It teaches them correct social behavior, compromising skills, learning to endure, learning to forgive, and builds a bond.
2. Behavior can be broken up into inconsequential, or consequential. Most behavior actually usually falls in the inconsequential category unless you are someone that ‘loves to sweat the small stuff’.
3. Behavior is mostly a product of its environment. As the parent, I control the environment of the home and can create the environment I want my children to have. Home is your kids safe place, not the ‘real world’. Be in control of yourself, teach your child, look for the good, and ignore inconsequential behaviors.
4. Use your resources of time and energy to teach what they SHOULD be doing, not what they shouldn’t be doing.
5. Misbehavior is usually because they are not effectively taught, or their environment is reinforcing misbehavior.
6. Use rewards as an incentive, not a bribe, and when they earn their reward, focus on the effort and work they did to get the reward, not just the fun of the reward.
7. Create behavior momentum by using positive interactions, (they are always doing a good job breathing if you can’t find anything else positive to say😊) praise them for behavior above what they are doing to guide them in the direction you want them to go. Creating good behavior and environment eliminates 80% of negative behavior.
8. IGNORE inconsequential behaviors. This is not being lazy or negligent. It is, not reinforcing a conditioned behavior. Purposeful ignored behavior will be 81% gone in 30 seconds or less, and 94% gone in 1 minute and 45 seconds or less. If it is hard to ignore, start timing to distract yourself.
9. Traps that parents fall into are; back talking (ignore then calmly state what you expect them to do IF they haven’t already done it). Threats (instead of ‘If you don’t…then’ use encouragement statement, ‘If you do…then’). DO NOT ask them a question about their behavior in the heat of the moment (they don’t know and you will never be satisfied with their answer) only talk about behavior with them when both parties are calm. The last two traps parents fall in are forcing and controlling. Both of these lead to resentment and avoidance, not long lasting relationships.
10. Parenting is NOT social, it is personal, spiritual and emotional. Don’t parent based on other people’s expectations.
11. Tattle-telling; have them brainstorm solutions to solve their own problem, pick one and go try it. If they come back and say it didn’t work, pick another solution they suggested and try again.
12. Always offer positive attention and acknowledge their positive behavior.

So, the past few days when someone starts whining or fighting I try and remember some of these tactics. I try and change the momentum, stay calm, stay positive, and ignore the attention seeking inconsequential behaviors, however obnoxious they may be. I don’t always do it, or execute it perfectly, but I have noticed that it works when I do. When Emilee starts whining I do something else, or talk with someone else. Then as soon as she stops I make sure to give her positive attention. When the kids start fighting I will try and change the momentum by doing something silly or distracting them. In the case of the two arguments I started this post with, I didn’t interact with Matthew or Allison and within the minute and forty five seconds their fight had died out and they both had moved on, or noticed that Emilee was getting positive attention and came over to join us instead.

The kids fight fairly often but I have a little different perspective on it this week. I try to see how they are learning and practicing the things that sibling rivalry teaches them. It is almost interesting now to listen or watch them interact. I’m sure that will not always be the case, but for now it is a nice change from feeling irritation and anger at them for fighting a lot.

I thought I was ignoring behavior before but I actually wasn’t. Most of the time I would inadvertently acknowledge it and then ignore it, so I was actually reinforcing the behavior. It is a lot harder to purposefully ignore something than you think. It takes a lot more concentration then addressing the situation does.