The Power of Prayer -or- “Faith Like an Adult”

Hannah and Eli asked to sleep in our bed tonight, under STRICT threats that if they played, talked, wiggled, or moved a muscle, it was back to their own beds.

Minutes after I tucked them in with the fourteenth warning, Hannah comes padding out. She looks at me with large, grave eyes.

“Mom, I talked and talked to God and I asked Him to make Eli stop playing,”–sigh– “but I don’t think even Jesus can do that.”

Sometimes I wonder that very thing.

The Things a Mother Does

I think I have stooped to a new low as a mother. Yesterday as I was putting Navayah down for her nap, I caught myself absently picking kernels of rice from her fuzzy head and eating them. It is one thing to eat the remaining food from a child’s plate. It is quite another to eat it from her hair. I think I need help.

While Dad’s Away…

n8 has Elder Board meetings every other Thursday. Just for fun, I recorded the events of my evening of single-parenting.

Hannah drove (rammed) her car into Eli on the pink and purple trike so Eli and trike tipped over, Eli into mud and water. His hands and head were damaged. Hannah was quietly jubilant.

They came in cold from outside and needed a bath. Hannah peeled in the bathroom. Mud and sand flew everywhere across the floor. I finally got both in the tub (Hannah had to wash their boots first, which muddied up their water…so drain the bathtub, shower-rinse both kids and tub, refill bath…). I brought Nayah into the bathroom because she loves watching the kids bathe. I returned. Her pants were wet. Her red long-sleeved shirt was DRENCHED on both sleeves and most of the way down the front because she insisted on reaching into the tub and splashing. I stripped her and put her in the tub. She immediately leaned down to slurp the tub water. And choked.

She sucked on a washcloth which she draped over the edge of the tub, mainly OUT of the tub making Hannah’s dirt/sand into mud. While she stood there, Eli scrubbed at and peered at her bottom, spreading her little cheeks like parting a curtain.

Hannah dumped a large cup full of water on Navayah’s head. Eli hugged Nayah backwards, his arms squishing her neck, till she tipped back and her face went half-under the water. She did not linger in the tub.

After the bath, Eli and Nayah played on our big bed. I left for 10 seconds to grab Eli’s pajamas. THUNK! “Waaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!” I returned to the bedroom. Eli was proudly holding a pillow and beaming delightedly at the edge of the bed. Thirty-six inches below him Navayah was laying on her back screaming. Eli had scraped her off the bed with his pillow. TEN SECONDS. I just needed her to be on the bed for TEN SECONDS.

I nursed Nayah to calm her down while Eli goes into the kitchen (still naked) and pulls a chair over to the stove, climbs up next to it, and begins “stirring” the hot chocolate by ladling it onto the stove and also into his mouth. Naked. Sticky.

I cleaned him, then fed the kids black bean soup. Since Nayah will not let me feed her, she was on her own. She dumped the bowl upside-down and painted her face, ears, hair, scalp, neck, and feet with soup. I have no idea if she actually ate anything.

SHE HAD JUST HAD A BATH!!!

I bring Navayah (newly rinsed with the sink spray hose) to bed, brush Hannah Kairos’ teeth, potty her, wash her hands, and scrub her face. I return to the kitchen for Eli. He has splashed cocoa EVERYWHERE. It fills a three foot radius space of kitchen. He had played this game: splash cocoa, wipe up with wash cloth. Repeat. At least he had put the milk-soaked washcloth in the sink! Milk spray-sprinkles cover chairs, the floor, the table, walls, windows… He cleans again while I check on Hannah Kairos who is four and “writing flowers” on her bedroom wall over her bed. I thought we were well past that stage!! Her brother had ripped the picture her friend had colored from the wall over her bed. Apparently she thought it best to draw that picture directly onto her wall without bothering with a new sheet of paper.

Two preschoolers scrubbing when the should instead be in bed.

I vacuum in an effort to resist the urge to scrub for them.

Things you thought you’d never say #43:
“Here Hannah. Here’s the wooden spoon. Now it’s your turn to discipline your brother.”
–”I’m gonna hit him in the knees.”
“Good idea.”
(Eli had smacked Hannah in the knees with the “hidden” (wooden) spoon because she had been bad, or so he claimed.)

When we read A. A. Milne at bedtime, Eli kept tilting his head up, smacking me on the lips with big, wet kisses because it was funny to him when I could not read with his head in the way. During prayers, things you thought you’d never say #44:

“No! You may NOT blow your nose on my face!”

He kept trying to lick my face while I kept trying to pray with him. It is very hard to be spiritual and to reverently pray when a two-and-a-half year old boy below your carefully bowed head is working to smear as many bodily fluids on your face as he can before you say “Amen”. Prayers tend to be quite abbreviated then.