Sibling Rivalries

When you have a dozen kids, some sibling rivalries are inevitable.  Actually, when you have two kids, sibling rivalries are inevitable.  The reason for this is simple; children are evil little beasts.  Don't get me wrong, I love them, but that doesn't mean that they aren't evil.  In fact, the way that such perfect evil shows up in such an adorable little package that steals your heart before you even have a chance to defend yourself, only reinforces just how wicked these little beasts are.  Only pure sin could come wrapped in such an innocent looking package.  Now, before you leave nasty comments, click the back button, and decide you'll never read another of my blogs, please allow me to explain.

A couple mornings ago Esther and I were in the bathroom getting ready for the day.  Eve and Isaac were also sharing this space with us.  Eve sat down whatever object had been occupying her time and Isaac quickly snatched it up to have some of his time occupied.  If you have ever been around midget demons, you know what happened next.  Upon seeing Isaac with the toy that had so recently been in her possession, well she suddenly found a whole in her heart that could only be filled with the discarded toy that her inconsiderate, hovering, vulture of a brother had so recently and rudely stolen.  Well believe me, she had no intention of letting this atrocity stand.  She would see justice done.  She marched across the bathroom floor and recovered the recently abandoned toy from the younger hands of her tyrannical brother.  As parents who are committed to teaching good moral character to our children, we made Eve return the toy to her younger sibling and commenced the farcical, empty, ritual of SHARING.  We made Eve let Isaac play with the toy for his "turn" after which she could have her "turn".  We institute this instructional activity so that Eve will learn to not be so consumed with things and rather to value people.  Eve proved an ideal student.  She allowed Isaac to play with her beloved toy and she responded by following him around, hovering an inch over his head, watching every move her younger brother made, and praying with all the fervency of her two-year-old heart that he would drop the toy so she can "legally" claim it.  Our educational plans were were working perfectly.

God seems to favor the prayers of fervent two-year-olds because within a minute or so, Isaac dropped the toy.  Eve reclaimed the discarded treasure faster than her teenage brothers can inhale restaurant leftovers.  Since she had shown such incredible patience and had resisted the temptation to use the force that was available to her due to her advanced age and development over Isaac, to simply take the toy, we allowed her to have her "turn".  Isaac was not cool with this plan.  He reached for it with complete assurance that she would return it, and she didn't.  He looked confused but apparently decided it was a mishap on Eve's part and tried again.  Again Eve would not relent.  He practically dove for it.  No dice.  This is when it happened.  From my vantage, I could see rage, yes rage and even rage's sister fury, climb into his face and his wee little fists balled up and started into a full windmill of punches.  His fists turned to claws with which he attempted to pull Eve down to his level.  He had forgotten the toy and simply wanted to punish the taker of the toy.

Within seconds Isaac was distracted from the toy and he and Eve were playing happily and no blood was shed, but I was forced to contemplate the outburst.  Where did Isaac learn that, his Mother?  Not me.  To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever attacked Isaac to steal something from him.  He's only one, so I don't think he picked it up from watching violent cartoons or playing violent video games.  Truth be told, I don't think he learn it at all.  That's just who he is.  That's just who we all are.  Isn't it funny we don't have to teach kids to be selfish.  We don't have to teach them to lie.  We don't have to teach them to take what's not theirs.  Those things come natural.  Goodness has to be taught.  Kindness has to be nurtured.  Generosity must be fostered.  When I watched Isaac try to attack his sister to get what he wanted, I saw me.  I saw all the desires that I have that I wrestle with every day; desires to retaliate, to take what's not mine, to be remarkably selfish.  I'm broken.  We are all born broken.  Can we really point fingers at others for their brokenness?  If I'm willing to wrestle my inner demons and to overlook and work with the evil midget demon that lives inside my adorable little son, can I do the same for others?  Good question.

The Beloved Gift

Things I've Learned From My Kids

I am, by nature, a teacher. My wife, children, friends, and some total strangers often tease me for feeling the need to turn each and every experience of life into a teaching moment. All of these adoring fans call these my "Life Lessons". I have a coffee cup that says, "Dad's Answering Service. Lectures given while you wait." I received this gift as a compliment for my intuitive ability to see beyond the ordinary, mundane, shallow, outer layer of life, to the soft underbelly of meaning, purpose, and design. OK, truth is, I like to hear myself talk.

One day, while walking through Target with my two older sons, I was inspired to discuss economics and biology with a touch of psychology and philosophy thrown in for good measure. In other words, I was telling my kids that it was illogical (philosophy) to invest great deals of money (economics) into clothing for a growing body (biology) just so that you can look like everyone else and feel good about yourself (psychology). Trust me, this was not like the dry, Charlie Brown Teacher, lectures that your dad gave. As I remember it, I was riveting. The boys were hanging on my every word. They were scooping up every priceless jewel that fell from my mouth. It was a beautiful moment. Then, a beautiful friend of ours, who happened to have been working at Target at the time, who had been following us for several minutes without our knowledge, who was doubtlessly scooping up the random pearl of wisdom herself, says, "Does everything have to be a Life Lesson with you? Can't your kids just get some school clothes?" We laughed. We hugged. I'm still working through the forgiveness process.

I say all this to say, I like to teach. It's what I do. But, I must also say that as an eternal teacher, I am also an eternal student. I can only hope that I teach my kids as much as they have taught me.

The Things that I've Learned from My Kids (part 1)

1. Kisses have magical healing properties (as an enlightened individual, I must assume it has something to do with the enzymes in saliva)

2. Cleanliness is a facade.

3. Silence may not be golden, but it's pretty dog-gone valuable (and far too rare).

4. Saying "I'm sorry", despite the absence of saliva, has healing properties.

5. I am a hypocrite. I am forced daily to punish of behavior that I have gotten away with (and occasionally continue to get away with, i.e. drinking out the milk jug).

6. Floaties left in my drinking water by young children, though gross, are not poisonous as I had assumed for years.

7. Selfishness is a great evil, and comes far too naturally to all of us.

8. Girls and Boys are different, and not just in the cool ways.

9. Love is risky, hard, wrenching, exhausting, and the best investment one could ever make.

10. Sleep is actually deeper, more peaceful, and more restorative after Good Night Kisses. (as an enlightened individual, I must assume it has something to do with the enzymes in saliva)

11. No matter how hard you pray, the Brothers Grimm story about the little elves that show up in the middle of the night to do all the work for the Shoemaker is a filthy lie from the pit of Hell. The little elves never show up!

12. Tough doesn't stand a chance against Cute.

13. No matter how much you swear on all things holy that you will never say the things your parents said, you will one day yell at the top of your lungs, "Don't make me come in there!". I don't think that God holds these vows against us because as a child we don't realize that the shouted threat to "Come in There" is only made because the shouter is actually to worn out to get out of bed and actually "Come in There". Fatigue makes us do crazy things.

14. Boys can be dealt with using Reason and where Reason fails, Intimidation. (I have not yet learned what works on Girls. I suspect it is Chocolate)

15. Sometimes, an arrogant, self-absorbed, busy dad has to say, "I'm Sorry" and ask forgiveness of a child. (and mean it)

16. The Brothers Grimm's dirty little elves do show up to help children make a mess of a house.

17. Skin color doesn't matter as long as you can both pretend that the world is a magical place and we are all invested with super powers.

18. You can never watch a good Disney movie too many times.

19. The world is a magical place and we are all invested with super powers.

20. When asked for forgiveness, and child forgives.

The Chocolate Bacon Cupcake

The Infamous Picture That Made My Chest Hurt (see "the grinch grows a heart")

Chocolate and Bacon

Esther just made toasted coconut cupcakes with a chocolate-bacon buttercream frosting, topped with toasted coconut and a piece of perfectly cooked bacon. I don't get it.

Maybe you are up to speed with the new bacon craze. Candied bacon, chocolate bacon, bacon ice cream, bacon pudding, bacon doughnuts, and probably way more than I've heard of. I must begin by asking the obvious question. Who in the world started this? Hopefully it was discovered by a starving man. You know, the kind of guy that set out to camp by himself for the weekend, got lost in the woods and had to survive for seven days on the meager provisions that he had packed in his backpack. I imagine him reaching the point when he has nothing left to eat but a few leftover scraps of bacon that had melted into one of the last ill-fated marshmallows which had originally been intended for campfire smores. I can see the disappointment on his face as he notices that his main course has been ruined by his dessert, and his dessert ruined by his main course. He may even have decided to pass on this miserable last supper, until the hunger won out that is. He grimaces, takes a tentative bite and his face does the classic transformation from expecting something awful to a tiny, glimmering hint of hope to the dawning of full blown enjoyment, tinted slightly by a garnish of surprise. Of course this man would have to be rescued, and in his prime-time news interview, he tells the world that he had survived on marshmallow-bacon and it was surprisingly good. The bacon community would never be the same.

I doubt it happened that way. More than likely, it was discovered by one of those freaky people that think cooking is a hobby and the scientific method is to be applied to the world of food. I assume the thought process goes as follows:

Current facts- Bacon is good. Chocolate is good.
Question- Since bacon is good and chocolate is good, would chocolate bacon be good?
Hypothesis- Chocolate bacon would be good.
Experiment-
1) fry bacon
2)melt chocolate
3)dunk fried bacon in melted chocolate
4)let chocolate cool
5)try chocolate bacon (for description of facial expression during initial test, please read paragraph from earlier)
6)repeat steps 1-4 and have about 100 other people try chocolate bacon
Theory- Chocolate bacon is good. Therefore, bacon should be blended with all good things to make them better.

I'm sure that many of the culinary delights that have brightened my life were discovered in this way. But I have to ask, what is the dietary laboratory going to come up with next? White Chocolate Covered Hotdogs? Sushi Smoothies? Buffalo Flavored Breakfast Cereal? Tofu Pad Thai?

Maybe this is a pointless rant about weird people trying weird stuff in the kitchen. Or, maybe it strikes a nerve because in a big family like ours, we sometimes feel like God's Test Kitchen. What happens if you put a "night owl" with a "morning person"? What do you get when you put a practical thinker right in front of a deep conceptual thinker? How would it look if let a guy have five boys, (my prayers began to sound a lot like the pharisee from the Gospels, "Thank you Lord that you have not made me like the pathetic saps that have girls"), then throw him a girl. Would the house explode if you put four girls in the same room (for the record, the answer is yes. No chocolate covered bacon in that experiment). What happens if you fill the kitchen with a bunch of cool blooded Germans and a bunch of hot blooded Irish. In short, with 14 people living in the house, the pantry is full of possibility.

OK, so the bacon flavored cupcakes are good. Great in fact. Likewise, I love most of the dishes that God has created with the ingredients that He's thrown into my house. Believe me, your life might not always make sense, but neither does Chocolate Bacon. Sometimes it's best to just let God cook, sit down at the table, try everything he puts before you, and be prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

The Grinch Grows a Heart

It's the last inning of the kid introductions. Hopefully this won't go into extra innings. I actually fear this part. Honestly, I fear it. How do I write about my three youngest daughters? If one of my sons were commissioned to write this post, it would be titled something like, "Introducing The Ones That My Dad Loves More Than Us Boys." This isn't true of course, though I must admit that I fully understand where they get their perceptions.

If you have never seen The Grinch, with Jim Carrey, you probably won't understand the title or this paragraph. There is a line in Seuss' famous poem that says, "And what happened then....? Well, in Who-ville they say, That the Grinch's small heart, Grew three sizes that day." In Howard's movie, The Grinch, played by Carrey, thrashes around on the ground clutching his chest in pain as only a Carrey character could (That was a remarkably fun alliteration). Well, as I'm sure you have guessed, having three girls in a row has caused my heart to grow, and for the record, Carrey did not over-exaggerate the pain that this kind of growth causes a grinch like me. So, though stalling from fear would be nice some might say, If I hope to move on to more blogs some near day, I will have to press on to the end 'fore I leave, and let you meet Gracie, Rebekah, and Eve. My apologies. I am no Dr. Seuss, but I had to give it a shot.

Grace Sophia came to us in a time when we needed both Grace and Wisdom (Sophia is the Greek word for wisdom). She was the most beautiful baby girl that there has ever been, and this is coming from one of those men that really can't see why people make such a fuss about new born babies. In my opinion, most newborns look like a miniature of an 80 year old man. Not Gracie. OK, stop that. Stop it! I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that all dads think that their daughters are the most beautiful babies in the world, but I'm not one of those guys. In fact, I don't really base my conclusion about Gracie's beauty on my own opinion. Everyone that held this particular baby remarked about her uncanny beauty. As an infant she was captivating. It was at this point in my life that my chest started to experience growing pains. The only thing that tempered the ache was the realization that this heart-breaker was someday going to be a young woman, and I was most likely going to be an incarcerated murderer. To this day, Grace is beautiful. She knows no strangers. No one in our home makes strangers feel like family as quickly as Grace. She is my girlie girl and through her we have learned Grace and some Wisdom.

I could probably have Rebekah write this paragraph. She is three, but she has a bigger vocabulary than I do in every area other than swear words. She only knows half the swear words that I do. Rebekah is my second chance (there is a long story hidden in that statement, but I will have to save it for future blogs). She is ridiculously smart and is a great communicator. She started talking early and was making short sentences when most babies are starting to talk. She has a gorgeous round face, with perfectly chubby cheeks, crazy blond curly hair, and a smile that drops this Grinch to the pavement. Honestly, I used to have a picture of her on my phone that actually caused pain in my chest when I looked at it. PHYSICAL pain. I can't explain it, but it was affection so deep that it hurt. I'll try to post the picture if I can find it, and figure out how to add pics to the blog. It was incidentally this picture that gave Esther the idea that my chest pain was my heart growing like the Grinch's. Rebekah has changed our house. She adds light to every room she is in.

Eve is a tiny little squirt of a girl that channels the spirit of Dennis the Menace on a good day, and Adolf Hitler on a bad one. She has straight bleach blond hair that hangs just into her eyes. She has clear blue eyes, and a adorable little smoker's voice. As far as we are aware, she has never been a smoker, though we bought her a nicotine patch just in case. Eve snuggles me. If you have never been snuggled by a blond-haired, blue-eyed, mini girl, I strongly recommend it. I actually managed to make it to my 11th child still impervious to the power of the snuggle. It was simple. Mom was for snuggling. Dad is for wrestling. Now, please know that I rocked my share to sleep, and I comforted the scraped knees, and gave the hugs and kisses. It's not that I am unaffectionate. I'm actually quite affectionate. But I'm talking about deep in the evening, drawing towards bedtime, drag in the blankie, purposefully climb into bed and curl up into a ball with dad's big arm protectively covering the little turd, type snuggling. Yep, you got it; nightly chest pain. Eve also has a temper. It's her mother's temper and it is barely counter balanced by how stinking adorable she is.

Isaac makes it a dozen. His name means "laughter" and you have never met a baby that smiles more easily. At the time of the writing of this blog, he is five months old. Just in case you have no children, five months is more than enough time to fall completely in love, especially when the object of you love is wrapped in baby fat. Isaac is a boy. This is not just an anatomical statement. He really is a boy. Even at five months old, he doesn't cry as emotionally or scream as ferociously. He loves being wrestled around and at five months old, he is beginning a rudimentary crawl. I have got to tell you, it feels good to have a baby boy in the house again. Isaac is incredibly easy. If you have to have 12 kids to get an Isaac, I recommend it for everyone.

So there they are. My kids. There are 12 of them. Josiah, Matthew, Elijah, Joshua, Zechariah, Hannah, Noah, Samuel, Grace, Rebekah, Eve, and Isaac. And for those of you who are wondering, yes it was as difficult to put down my feelings for my girls as I had feared it would be. If I was more comfortable with those emotions, I probably wouldn't be having these chest pains. Until Next Time...