The Visiting Teaching Guide

This is one of the movies we showed at our Visiting Teaching Conference.
Be prepared to laugh & cry!

Life Through the Eyes of Children

My Aunt Dede sent this to me, and it was so cute, I thought I'd post it here. ENJOY!

1) I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked! As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat, 'Mom, that lady isn't wearing a seat belt!'

2) On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a note from his mother. The note read, 'The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents.'

3) A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup out of the jar. During her struggle the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone. 'Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the bottle.'

4) A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the women's locker room. When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover. The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, 'What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a little boy before?'

5) While taking a routine vandalism report at an elementary school, I was interrupted by a little girl about 6 years old. Looking up and down at my uniform, she asked, 'Are you a cop? Yes,' I answered and continued writing the report. My mother said if I ever needed help I should ask the police. Is that right?' 'Yes, that's right,' I told her. 'Well, then,' she said as she extended her foot toward me, 'would you please tie my shoe?'

6) It was the end of the day when I parked my police van in front of the station. As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking, and I saw a little boy staring in at me. "Is that a dog you got back there?" he asked. 'It sure is,' I replied. Puzzled, the boy looked at me and then towards the back of the van. Finally he said, 'What'd he do?'

7) While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. She was unfailingly intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, 'The tooth fairy will never believe this!'

8) A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, 'Daddy, you shouldn't wear that suit.'
'And why not, darling?'
'You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning.'

9) While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his 5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin. Feeling that proper burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting , then dug a hole and made ready for the disposal of the deceased.
The minister's son was chosen to say the appropriate prayers and with sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his father always said: 'Glory be unto the Faaather, and unto the Sonnn, and into the hole he goooes.' (I want this line used at my funeral!)

10) A little girl had just finished her first week of school. 'I'm just wasting my time,' she said to her mother. 'I can't read, I can't write, and they won't let me talk!'

11) A little boy opened the big family Bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of thethe object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages. 'Mama, look what I found,' the boy called out. 'What have you got there, dear?' With astonishment in the young boy's voice, he answered, 'I think it's Adam's underwear!
_____________________

I had to make a few comments about a couple of these, because I could really relate from my own experiences with children! I will list the number of the part I'm referring to, then the comment. I'd love to hear all your comments, or funny stories, too!

#2: I love this one, I think I'll send a note like that with a few of my children!! :) It reminds me of how often your children's school and Sunday school teachers know more about your family than you really want them to! I've heard some really interesting things back from my children's teachers at times!!

#3: This one reminds me of the other day. The phone rang, and I saw on the caller-ID that it was our dentist's office, calling to remind us of our appointment that day. I had just put lotion all over my hands, so I didn't want to pick up the phone. I told my son: "Just tell her that we know about the appointment and we're coming." So what does he say on the phone? "My Mom can't come to the phone right now . . . she has lotion all over her hands!" I laughed and laughed...and the secretary got a kick out of it, too!

#7: That one is soooo cute! I don't have an experience like it, but I can exactly picture my 6-year-old saying it! :)

#8: This one is like when I'm fixing my hair or putting on makeup. More than once, any child who comes into the room says, "Where are you going?"

#10: This is great! Funny, but that's the one thing my kids always have mentioned in Parent-Teacher Conferences. Talking too much! And can you believe, several of my children have gotten criticized by teachers for READING TOO MUCH in school! Wow, I'll take that one! Usually that's their #1 problem, trying to get the kids TO read!! :)

#11: This one reminds me of the time my daughter found a $20 bill in an old Bible of mine that she was reading. She brought it to me, wondering who's it was. I told her she could keep it as a surprise reward for reading her scriptures that day, after all, I told her, it's like they say, you can find treasures in the scriptures!

Hope you enjoyed these as much as I did!

How Mothers Get Sidetracked

Okay, so this morning at 7am I'm enjoying a nice hot bubble bath and reading an interesting book. I know you're wondering -- how does a woman with seven children take a hot bubble bath at 7am? It's not easy, but you have to be creative to find personal time with seven young'uns running around! :) Here's how I do it:

I get up at 6am, send my husband off to work, and have breakfast with my teenagers. After helping with hair, finding misplaced assignments, and giving reminders about their afternoon schedules, etc, they run to the bus stop at 6:45am.

Since my gradeschoolers don't need to catch the bus until 8:15am, I let them sleep until 7:30am before getting them up to start the cycle over again. SO -- If I'm not so dead-tired that I fall immediately back into bed to get an extra 45 minutes of sleep, and IF we haven't made so much noise that my 2-year-old is up, I get an opportunity to take a luscious bubble bath!

SO -- to start over, here I am laying in the bathtub enjoying a great book. This book is so great, in fact, that it gets me excited about new things I can do in my life. You have to understand, I can be a bit of a perfectionist at times, so I'm always looking for ways to make my home, family, and myself better. So as I'm reading along, I get so excited that I decide to get out of the bathtub early and get going on my new ideas!

Wow, this will be SO GREAT! I can visualize it already, a cleaner home, smiling faces, a newly-excited-and-refreshed-me that can conquer anything!

So I get dressed, pick up all the towels neatly, straighten the bathroom, (see, I'm doing better already!) and head to the kitchen with a bath towel on my head. I ring the stairway-mounted bell to get the two graderschoolers up and going, intending to get back to the bedroom in a few minutes to damp-dry and comb my hair.

One thing leads to another, and my new plan begins to get sabotaged. Here's how my morning went:

• Greet 8yo son good morning, check that he smells good, insist he put on his underwear which he's been refusing to wear lately, then help him find tennis shoes for P.E. today.
• I notice that the teenage girls left the flat-iron on, so I call my 10yo daughter in to flatten her hair before I turn it off.
  
• Next, I get 5yo daughter and 2yo son into the bathtub, since it's cooled down after my bath to be just right temperature. I wisely move all the shampoo bottles up high to avoid the disaster of several days ago when they dumped half a bottle into the bathtub (I'd had to spray them off with the shower head because there were too many bubbles to rinse off!)
  
• Next, I double-check my 8yo son's homework to make sure he put his name on it, discover several spelling and punctuation errors, help him sit down & re-write it. . .
• Now 10yo daughter is anxious because her fingers hurt. What's wrong with them? I ask? She smashed them somehow, I start to listen, but I miss exactly how it happened, because about this time I hear my 5yo daughter yelling that her 2yo brother is wasting shampoo in the bathtub
• I run in there wondering how-in-the-world he got a hold of any shampoo, and I see that I left a sample shampoo out. Oh, good, no real damage done!
  
• I head back to the kitchen where I check on 8yo's homework, (which is looking great by the way!) and I check the clock. He has 10 minutes until the bus comes, (whew!) plenty of time to finish.
• But then 8yo son reminds me that he hasn't eaten any breakfast yet, so I start to make him a fried-egg sandwich. I notice that my 15yo son left out the blender & protein drink mix this morning. This gives me an idea to make protein shakes, since the blender's already out.
• So I start making protein shakes and adding blueberries for a touch of fruit. I serve them out, recheck on the kids in the tub, recheck on my son's homework, (half done!) and head back to the kitchen wondering what I was supposed to be doing in there.
• About this time, my son says, "Hey Mom, are you still going to make me an egg sandwich?" Ah yes, that's what I was doing!
• About now I realize that I still have a towel on my head. Oh well, I'll take it off in 5 minutes when they leave! :)
  
• So I pop in the toast, fry an egg, add a slice of cheese, turn off the burner and put the lid on so the cheese will melt. Then I head into the bathroom to get the little ones out.
• They're having lots of fun and I notice that I accidentally left my exciting-and-motivating library book on the toilet seat when I got out of the bathtub, so it's covered with splashes. ugh. . .
• Luckily it's a laminated cover and it was laying with the pages face-down, so I wipe it carefully off, fuss at the kids for splashing, and run back to the kitchen to make sure no one is going to miss the bus.
  
• Everything looks good, son is done with homework, daughter is ready to go. Son asks if he can take a treat for recess. "Teacher says we can!" I grill him for a minute or two about the details trying to decide if the teacher really said they could, and determine that it will be fine.
• We can't find any snacks to grab easily, so I get some blue-corn tortilla chips and put them in a baggie for him. He sticks them in his backpack.
  
• My 8yo son grabs his sandals and starts to put them on when I remember about the P.E. shoes. I grab them quickly (amazed that I even know where they are!) and suggest he put them on.
• No, he wants them in his backpack and he'll put them on before P.E. So I put the shoes & socks in the backpack (how can he even carry this thing?), carefully making sure not to crush the chips.
  
• As I'm doing this, I notice 5 rolls of smarties that I know he took from my "treat stash" that I thought was hidden. But I don't want to make a scene about it and start off his day leaving home with a bad feeling, so I ignore it and mentally make a note to talk to him about it tonight.
  
• I kiss them goodbye. . . (pant, pant) I head back into the bathroom where I help the little ones get out of the tub, wrap towels around them, and set them into the la-z-boys to watch their "morning shows" on PBS (luckily they already had breakfast!). I decide to get them dressed after I have a BREAK!
  
• So I head for the office, barely glancing at the kitchen. I don't want to look at the mess! I know I'll spend about an hour getting in it shape, and I'm exhausted by now, so I set my timer and begin my normal schedule of 15 minutes on desk items, 15 minutes on active items.
• So I log-up the computer, still excited about my ideas from this morning, and anxious to write in my blog about them (though I'm beginning to forget what they were. . . hmmm).
• As the computer is logging up, I reach to get a pen from the desk so I can go through today's planner. I notice the BIC Wite-Out dispenser I had purchased at a recent shopping trip. Someone has pulled the tape way out rendering it useless! Grr. . . But, I'm used to things like this, so I pull it apart and try to fix it.
• So I spend the entire 15 minutes that I'm supposed to be setting up my day, reading scriptures & checking my email, instead messing with this dumb thing. (by the way, the above picture is after much work...)
  
• I re-set my alarm to give myself another 15 minutes :)
  
• So I work and work, and I just had to show you my COMPLETED fix-it project! Whew! You wouldn't believe how hard it is to fix this dumb thing. So I erased a bit on yesterdays' planner just to test it out (see picture below).
  
• I had fun with it for a few minutes, knowing this may be the last time I use it. If another kid gets a hold of it, I may just throw it out in digust! Obviously the people who design these don't have kids or there'd be some kind of a lock on it.
• p.s. When my husband read this blog, he told me that he'd found this contraption in out in the yard! He was the one who put it in my desk drawer. Sometimes you have to wonder what kids are thinking! :)
  
• 
• About the time I got all of this accomplished, checked on the little ones, got them dressed, tidied up the kitchen, and wrote what I have so far on today's blog, I realized...HEY! I STILL HAVE A TOWEL ON MY HEAD!!!
  

No wonder mother's get discouraged! When people give lip-service to the fact that "being a mother is the hardest job of all", sometimes I wonder if anyone really understands.

But I know that there are thousands of mothers out there, like me, who work their tails off all day and sometimes feel like they aren't getting anywhere at all! It's like being on a treadmill, but instead of getting in shape, you get fatter and older and crabbier! :)

It's after 10am now. So much for my great ideas. . .I'll have to re-read that chapter to remember what I was going to accomplish today! :) The little ones just finished their snack, (no, I haven't been writing this straight through, it's been 15 min. writing/15 min. with kids & house!) and now they're blowing bubbles on the front porch. I guess I'll go join them.

After all, when I chose to stay home from the workforce 15+ years ago, I did it to spend time with my children, not because I wanted to be a housekeeper! Sure, an orderly home makes a place more conducive to peace and good times together. But sometimes you just have to throw up your hands and say, "forget it! For today I'm just going to be the funnest Mommy around. Heck with the house!"

Funny, as soon as I typed that, I heard a little knock on the front door. It was my 5-year-old daughter holding the bottle of bubbles, with my 2-year-old son close behind.

"Mommy, will you come outside & play with us?"

Amazing.

"Sure I will honey! Just give me 5 minutes. I PROMISE!"

So, off I go to blow bubbles. . .