Electronics and Church

Photo courtesy of www.lds.org

Repeat after me, "I, [state your name], love my young child enough to not let them take electronics to church."

The night before Mother's Day, and an impending church service the next day, my son tried again to re-initiate a negotiation with me.  He insisted he needed to take his electronics to church.  He stated that it was allowed by his teacher.  His teacher lets all the boys play their games until the other teacher returns from the library with the study materials.  Then class starts and they put their games away.  To which, I responded, "I'm glad your teachers have rules, however, I love you enough to not let you take your electronics to church."

I was pretty wishy-washy on what our rule should be for a long time.  So yes, the Kindle came to church because he had a copy of the scriptures on it.  He gave me his word that he would not play games.  Of course I knew what would happen -- but I tend to experiment on my children, giving them just enough rope "to hang themselves".  So... a few things DID happen.  I had to struggle with him during sacrament (chapel service) to take it away when he played games.  I got a report from one teacher that they couldn't get him to put it away.  He claimed he wasn't playing games -- only shopping for them.  On another day, his was playing a stickman game where the stickman jumps off the building, and you try to pick the right trajectory so as not to kill it.  He had the attention of six children in various aisles around him as they all laughed during sacrament.

I'm also a mother who has brought lots of snacks and other distractions to **attempt** to not have mass chaos in our pew.  Anything can distract a kid -- but coloring books and crackers are a little less involved.  The kids still look up when they hear someone they recognize.  But my kids are now 5 and 8 years old, and its time they start paying attention.  If they can hold an adult conversation, then they can listen to an adult speak for at least a few minutes.

Last night I told my son that those 10 minutes when other kids are playing games, are a great time for him to listen to the Spirit and how he feels while he's in church.  Its a great time to just listen.  It would also be a great time for him and his teacher to get to know each other better.  He got mad and went to bed without giving me a hug and a kiss.  But today, in church, he listened to two talks.  In my mind, that's a fair trade.

The Worm

As I walked across the parking lot today, I saw a worm struggling for life in the middle of the blacktop.

It not knowing of the inevitability of its death.  I not knowing what misfortune had brought it here.

I mumbled, “I don’t know why I’m doing this,” as I threw the worm into the soft, wet dirt.

And yet, I knew.  Because in the moment previous, I had completely identified with the worm.

Why Kids Don't Need to Wear Jackets in the Autumn

I mentioned to Pint-sized that before she leave the house for school (this was last week), that she should take her jacket.  I got distracted and forgot to verify that she followed-through.  When we got to school, and the sun was shining, she made the point of telling me she was right.  "See Mom, I was right, I don't need my jacket.  Because the earth moves and the sun rises in the sky and warms the earth.  So, I'm warm and don't need my jacket."  Me, "Really?  Duh!"  [I'm thinking, while we're at would you like me to calculate the orbital movements of the earth for you?]

Orbital Mechanics and Radio Frequencies

Kids Viewing Solar Eclipse - Some Know Where to Look

My daughter is 4 1/2 years old.  What I share below has two caveats:

1. Before you post criticisms regarding my science answers, know that I don't care.  I've got two degrees in engineering and I don't remember everything I ever memorized.  This was after work, driving on the freeway, and I was trying to answer honestly, simply, and quickly before my daughter lost interest and returned to playing her Leapster (which she did at least once).
2. I am not sharing this in order to brag.  I'm sharing this for posterity, so some day I remember the good moments, and the unique challenges of raising my particular children.  Also, to share with everyone that no child is the same and no parent-child relationship is the same.  I have a testimony that children and parents are assembled in families with intent by God, "to help us become what He wants us to be" [The Family Is Of God, by Matthew Neeley].

Yesterday, my daughter was in the back seat of the car and asked, "Mom, when the earth moves what happens to the penguins?"  

I gave a lousy answer because I couldn't put words to my thoughts.  I wanted to say that we're small and the earth is large and we don't feel the movement of the earth as we ride on it.  I instead said, "The earth spins on its axis [with hand motions], but the penguins get to stay on their icebergs." 

Pint-sized, "Icebergs?!?" 

Me, "Yes, on their icebergs OR frozen tundra." [figuring even if I was wrong on exact environment, I'd take the chance to expand her vocabulary]

So, today I tried to fix it during our commute home.

Me, "I want to talk to you about penguins."

Pint-sized looks up eyes-wide.

Me,"Okay, pause your Leapster."  "Yesterday you asked what happens to the penguins when the earth moves.  It's like us.  We are small compared to the earth so we don't feel the movement. Okay?"

Pint-sized, "Okay, but my question is ... what keeps the earth here?" [exact wording]

Me, "Ah, well the earth moves in an oval or circle -- oval, about the sun.  And while it moves in an oval it also spins [with hand motions].  [I briefly think about mentioning precession, but I don't.]  But it moves around the sun due to gravity.  Gravity is a force that prevents us from floating through the air.  Remember your brother learned about mass in science? [shakes head no]  Well, the sun has a lot of mass or particles which means it has a lot of gravity."

Pint-sized, "So, can we stand on the sun?"

Me, "Well no, because its hot we'd burn up.  But even if it wasn't hot, it doesn't have any land to stand on, its just gas.  So, we'd go right through it."

Pint-sized, "So, can we put a house on the sun?"

Me, "No, because there's no land to build it on, it'd go right through."

Pint-sized, "But ... if it has gravity, we can't go through the other side."

Me [a little teary-eyed], "Yes!  You're right, the gravity means you'd go to the center and stay there, you can't go through.  And we need to look in your space book when we get home because I'm not sure if the sun has a solid core or not."

[I'm making an edit here because I forgot a portion.]
Me, "You know there's other planets that rotate around the sun.  There's Jupiter and Mars.  We think Jupiter is all gas.  Mars has land, we've sent rovers and science experiments there.  But we don't think it has any air to breathe."
Pint-sized, "But if we had space suits we could breathe."
Me, "Yes, we could, but we haven't gone to Mars yet."
Pint-sized, "Why not?"
Me, "Well, its a long trip and its further from the sun so we need more energy to get out there.  More fuel in our rockets."
Pint-sized, "Why can't we just go under the sun?" [with hand motions]
Me, [explaining again] "The sun is here, the earth is here, and Mars is further out.  So we go this way."
Pint-sized, "But why can't we go under it like this?" [Again with hand motions]
Me, "Ah!  From earth the sun looks very close, but its not --  its just very big.  But if we saw the sun in the sky we'd probably go the opposite direction."[she was satisfied, even though I basically did to orbital mechanics what Newtonian physics does to the real nature of the universe -- as in everyone learns the world according to the limited understanding of Newton before they learn Einstein's relativity]

[end of edit]

Pint-sized, "What about those big things at your office?"

Me, "Oh, the satellite dishes?  But they are actually radio signal receivers."

Pint-sized, "Radio signals?"

Me, "Okay, so the little particles in the air they start moving [wave motion with arm] and we listen, like on the radio station, and we hear music or other stuff."

Pint-sized, "How do we know the signals are there?"

Me, "Well, sometimes the particles move like this [slow wave] or sometimes like this [fast wave]."

Pint-sized, [giggle] "Really, really fast?"

Me, "Yes, that's called frequency.  So the radio stations assign numbers to those frequencies and we tune in and listen to those frequencies.  In fact, FM [pointing to the radio] stands for frequency modulation."

Pint-sized, "Okay, I'm done."

Me, "Okay, that was a good conversation."

Pint-sized, [eyes-wide, smiling] "Yes, that was a lot!"

Me, "Any time you have question."

Later, we were almost home, and out of the silence ...

Pint-sized, "You know 2 plus 2 equals 4."

Me, "Yes, what does 3 plus 1 equal?"

Pint-sized, [quiet] "It also equals 4!"

Me, "Good job!"

Pint-sized, "That's cause I used my fingers!"

Me, "Good!  You know you keep learning math and science and you can do a lot of cool things with the planets and the sun.  I use my math and science a lot at work.  I also use a lot of my reading."

The Twelve Days of Christmas (2013)

I imagine that most years I will not be able to blog in detail regarding our little tradition of anonymously delivering a gift each day for the 12 days leading up to Christmas.  But this year, our receiver is not web savvy, so I wanted to share the little things we've done for the sake of sharing ideas and for recording family history.

Day One:

On the first day of Christmas, Santa's elves bring you a little bit of nature to fill your house with its life and love.

-- The Elves

(The gift is a small, live evergreen with fake snow in the container.  I added miniature ornaments I collected from previous years of apartment-living.)

Day Two:

On the second day of Christmas, we bring you a fun reminder of the gift from yesterday.  It's not perfect, but its sure made with love. ;)

-- The Elves

(The gift is a Christmas tree made of stacked gingerbread stars and sugar frosting.  The kids decorated this one.  The kit was store bought.)

Day Three:

On the third day of Christmas, we bring you a hand-made craft made of Christmas cards.  Just a little bit of cheery color!

-- The Elves

(The gift is a flower vase made of Christmas cards.  The base is a pentagon, and the sides are all the same pear-ish shape, sewn together with thick floss.  Based on previous experience, this shape with a wider shape near the base is less top heavy and doesn't tip over easily.  Granny provided "the kit" with the templates.)

Day Four:

On the fourth day of Christmas, we bring you warm fuzzies.  We hope your day is filled with many "warm fuzzies" and no "cold pricklies".

-- The Elves

(The gift is six warm fuzzies.  You can see The Warm Fuzzy story is in the picture below.  The kids made the warm fuzzies of pom-pom balls, googlie eyes, pipe cleaner antennas, and index cards for feet.  Granny made "the kit" for us.)

Day Five:

On the sixth day of Christmas, we bring you ....  (I don't remember, it was lame).

-- The Elves

(The gift is clothes pin ornaments, again made from recycled Christmas Cards clipped to a strand of curly ribbon.  My son and I made these.  Granny provided "the kit", so that saved me lots of work.  This is a fun project because you get to pick out tidbits/smaller images from the cards and glue to the clothes pins.)

Day Six:
On the sixth day of Christmas, we bring you some homemade candles.  They look like Christmas trees, but smell like fresh pomegrani ates. (how do you spell that?)  May you enjoy the beauty of their light. 
-- The Elves
(I used a new technique when making these candles.  These were the only two that made it "successfully" through the process.  My husband thought the others deserved to be "re-melted" and made into different candles.)

Day Seven:
(The gift was a small box of Hickory Farms beef, cheeses, and mustards.)

A special note about Day 7:  Up until this point my kids had been the only ones to deliver gifts to the door.  On day 7, we got home very late due to a soccer team party, both kids fell asleep in the car, so I made the delivery.  I found a note:
"The Elves, 
Thank you for your kindness.  Your love is making [him] smile.  Could you please place any future items on [the] chair.  As he fell & broke his rib.  Can't bend.  :(  Tell Santa hello & thank you!
-- Daughter :)"
The greeting "The Elves" was circled and highlighted.  So, I'm guessing the note had been there since Day 5 or so.  Lesson learned: occasionally Mom or Dad Elf need to go to the door to check out the situation.  I felt terrible.

Day Eight:
Because of the note found on Day 7, I wrote a special note apologizing for not seeing his note earlier and explaining that the "delivery Elves" were quite small.

(The gift was three small paper chains made of many different colors of construction paper and stapled together.  My husband and I left for the day to finish shopping, and left this project to the babysitter and the kids.  Our receiver later hung each paper chain from his screen door.)

Day Nine:
On the ninth day of Christmas we bring you some fruit cocktail cookies and an elf-decorated ornament.  A pretty good likeness, eh?
-- The Elves
(Now, this was where it got rewarding as a mother.  We colored ornaments during church with the children that day as a Christmas craft.  Before I could suggest it, my son decided his ornament would be given as a 12 Days of Christmas gift and wrote on the back "From: ?".  I was tickled pink.)

Day Ten:
On the 10th day of Christmas we bring you some homemade banana bread.  With all the good ingredients of sugar & eggs, but no nuts.  One for now, and one for the freezer?  If it makes it to the freezer! ;)
-- The Elves
(So, I didn't think of this when delivering the cookies, but just in case our receiver had a food allergy -- I wanted him to know what was in it.  Of course, since the fruit cocktail cookies usually have nuts in them, so this note may have not mattered at this point.  Chuckle.)

A special note on Day 10:  My son came racing away from the door holding a huge tin over his head like it was the Stanley Cup.  It was a tin full of popcorn with this note:
Elves,
Thank you for all the fun, clever gifts enjoyed!  [He] left you a treat! :)  Merry Christmas.
My son truly thought he'd hit the jackpot.

Day Eleven:
On the eleventh day of Christmas, we bring you Pretzel Carmel Delights -- a Daddy Elf idea.  Thank you for the popcorn -- delish!
-- The Elves

(The treat was my husband's idea found online.  Pecan halves melted onto Rolo candies, melted on top of a pretzel. Didn't think of the nut allergy issue here, either.  ;)  But they are delicious!  Of course, when we went to make them, my husband discovered he had mistakenly picked up cheese pretzels.  They still tasted good, and we still delivered them.)

Day Twelve:
On the twelfth day of Christmas, we bring the fresh bounty of the season.  We have enjoyed this so much this year -- thank you.  The secret elves are ....  .....  still a secret. ;)
-- The Elves

Ah, day 12.  Some projects are just doomed.  So, this is Christmas day.  We had found two boxes of white Christmas ball ornaments at the thrift store for $2 each the week before.  We picked them up and I thought we could paint them with craft paint, and make them really cute.  My husband asked if the craft paint would stay on without lacquer.  Since I failed to pick some up, we switched to decorating with glitter pens.  I told the kids they would have to decorate lightly (this was 5pm already), so the glitter would dry in time for delivery.  Yeah, right!  So, we finished them ...... and then I quickly moved to plan B.  We created a fruit basket with mandarins, two red apples, a pear, and some cellophane.  It looked pretty, and pre-planned when it was finished -- thankfully.

When I checked the ornaments the next morning (we had discussed making a Day 13 delivery), I was glad we hadn't delivered them.  The glitter glue had pulled the white paint off the ornaments.  Basically,  they were silver ornaments with white paint on the OUTSIDE, and now the glitter and the white were coming off.

The Twelve Days of Christmas (Our Family History)

I am a former Camp Fire kid.  I was in the 2nd or 3rd grade and my family was knocking on doors in a local neighborhood, selling Camp Fire candy.  We met an older gentleman who had just been widowed.  I remember the porch, I don't remember his face, but I will always remember how terribly lonely he was.

Well, this struck a nerve with our little family, and my mom decided to do something about it.  She got the idea to do the 12 Days of Christmas for this gentleman.  And thus, a tradition was born in our family.  Every year for more than 25 years (~1985 to 2010+) my parents and whatever kids were still living at home, did the 12 Days of Christmas for a recent widow, someone who would be alone for Christmas, or someone we admired who needed a little pick-me-up.  And last year, this working mom with two kids, got the courage to try this with her own children -- yes, with a little bit of planning, we have a handmade or small purchased gift with a note from "The Elves" and deliver it after school each day for twelve days.

It has also produced additional family stories.  We've been "caught" very early, like on Day 2 or 3.  We've been "caught" halfway through.  We've had people leave us a gift on the last day of Christmas (nice, but not expected).  We have fallen running between our car and the receiver's house.  We even had a year where we delivered half the gifts to the wrong house -- Ooops!  (That sometimes happens when you have two different drivers, and one doesn't give directions very well & the other doesn't remember numbers -- love you Mom & Dad.)  And now, my mom and I have both had an experience where months later, our unique handmade gifts get us "caught".  My mom uses some unique yarn in her crocheted gifts, and made some sample for a church talent show -- a 12 Day receiver noticed the same yarn as her gifts.  And to my surprise (not), I guess many people don't make handmade candles in Mason jars.  I made some candles as prizes for a church activity, and I too, got caught.

As a mom, this has been a very rewarding experience!  My children who do not lack for toys, food, or clothing are learning to give away that which they have made.  They are learning they don't have to keep everything.  They are learning to make things with their own hands.  They are learning to be surprised, and to give anonymously.  And for the last two days, they have asked why they can't give to a different person each day for 12 Days.

See my next blog for details on this year's 12 Days of Christmas.

Tithing

Tithing is the practice of giving one tenth of your increase.  I am a Latter-Day Saint, so I pay one tenth of my increase to my church.  My church uses the tithes to build more churches & temples, increase the missionary work, repair & support Church historical sites, etc.  The Church has separate donation categories for humanitarian aid and offerings to help the needy.  (See Malachi Chapter 3 for more background on tithes.)  I have met more than one person not of my faith who pay one tenth of their increase to a non-religious charity or multiple charities of their choice.

I've been trying to encourage my son to read chapter books.  He is six years old.  Also, he desperately wants a Nintendo DS, but some weeks he changes that wish to an iPad or "Candle-Fire".  So, about a year ago, I told him I'd pay him $5 for every chapter book he finished.  Until this week, I've only had to pay up once -- and believe me, I've tried.  He has recently read "Diary of a Whimpy Kid" and "Diary of a Whimpy Kid, the Ugly Truth".  So, I went to pay him this evening.

I stopped myself and said, "Here's the $10 I owe you for reading.  If you choose to pay tithing on this, the tithing would be $1.  And $1 is one tenth or 10% of this $10."

He giggled and said, "I'm choosing not to pay tithing.  I will pay tithing AFTER I get my DS."
"Is this what you think Heavenly Father would want you to do?"
"Yes."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Okay."

This caused me a moment of reflection.  He's 6.  How many of us act like 6 year olds?

• Thanks God, for the 100% of everything I have.  After I get what I want, I'll be happy to show You my gratitude and give You back 10%.
• I know I should "give back" to my community.  I'll do that later, after I buy the new TV, and go to Target for $100 worth of stuff, and Costco for $300 worth of stuff.

I am by no means advocating shirking your responsibilities to feed and clothe your family or pay your bills.  But, maybe this year as we approach the holidays & a new year of resolutions, we consider doing a little better and sacrificing a little more.  Let me work on that.