Success is Loud

This is how I try to live. Whether I volunteer or it’s my job I try to give it my all. Do my best. If I do great it’ll get noticed.

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Make It A Great Day

Sometimes posts land in your lap. They come to you as if you were sitting in a taxi on Highway in Sao Paulo with guy who just jumped out because he was about to pee his pants. 

Sometimes they quietly tap you on the shoulder and quietly whisper, “Don’t get bitter, get better“. 

That sparked a memory. 

Once upon a time I taught 4th grade. The school I taught in televised their daily announcements every morning. Thanks to our vice principal, they always ended with,

Make it a great day. Or not. The choice is yours.

In our lives, the run of the mill, ordinary day, this holds true. Imagine if every little thing that went wrong in our day, ruined us for the rest of it. 

Crash often gets upset or angry over the littlest things and I ask him, “Did getting angry solve the problem? No? Then there was no need for it.” Granted, there are times when getting angry is necessary, when it will solve your problem. But the other 99% of the time, calm patience wins over. 

Is it a problem or is it a challenge? Problems create stress. They ruffle our feathers. They cause us to lose our patience. We twist more, we push more, we hammer harder. 

If we find our Zen we find that sometimes a whisper is louder than a shout. Sometimes gentleness is stronger. Sometimes the anger just isn’t worth it. If you make your problems into challenges to be solved, you can rise above them. You can solve them with ease and understand that it’s not the way you planned it, but it still works. The world won’t end because things didn’t go exactly as you envisioned they would.

Rise to the challenge. Make the change you need to make to solve your problem and move on. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it. Flight just got canceled? They don’t give two nickles how angry you are about it, they’re not going to uncancel it. Kids just dumped cheerios all over the backseat? Anger won’t clean up the mess. Employ the patience when it’s Kool-Aid or cheesie dust. 

If you read yesterday’s nonsense post, you know I had pretty much nothing to write about it so I wrote nonsense. I could be bitter about it. Why did I post nonsense when I could have posted nothing and just written today? Because sometime our practice, our training requires us to be subpar. We learn more from our failures than our success. Successes are much sweeter, though. Reflect on the failures to make your best better. 

Problems beget problems. However, challenges create champions. Be a champion. Or not. The choice is yours.

J is for… #atozchallenge

is for so many things. I’m being indecisive. I’ve scoured the J section of the Scrabble Dictionary. 

Jaculate – to throw; I’ll jaculate my kids into the river if they keep fighting, making messes, or leaving the hamster’s cage open.

Jenny – a female donkey; “You son of a Jenny” just doesn’t have the same insult factor as its cousin.

Jealous. I’m jealous of those parents who have their shit together. The ones who can honestly use the #ParentingWin and mean it.

Jackass. Sometimes my kids are mean to each other for no reason other than to be a jackass and piss the other one off.

Journey. I did that one last year. Besides, this journey called parenting is too much like Jacob’s ladder. It has no end. Or if you believe the biblical Jacob’s ladder, it leads to Heaven. Heaven doesn’t want me and Hell’s afraid I’ll take over.

J could be Jake and the Neverland Pirates or Justin Time, two shows Crash and Bang can agree to watch together.

In this thing called parenting some things are done better together. Showering isn’t one of them. Like classic peanut butter and jelly we stick together. Everyone’s awake, everyone’s been fed, everyone’s lunch is made, everyone’s ready to get their day started.

Perhaps our sandwiches are made with chunky peanut. Not everything goes smooth.

We have our bumps and lumps in the every day life. One kid can’t find all the stuff he needs for school which results in a meltdown. One kid has a coat sleeve turned inside out and can’t get his arm in. This, too, results in a meltdown. Perhaps we’re not as ready as we thought we were.

This is a joint effort. When one kid takes 45 minutes to fall asleep we call in the reliever. When the kids are on last nerves, we call for backup. When there’s readying to be done we’re there for the assist. Or the 9th inning 3 run homer for the win.

When there’s playing to be done, we do it right. Dirt diggin’. Tower crashin’. Lego buildin’. Soccer kickin’. Trampoline jumpin’. Igloo buildin’. Playgroundin’. Fun.

We try to stay on the same page with the disciplining, too. We try to give the kids a bit of consistency. Not that it always works, but we try. Sometimes the severity of punishment will depend upon how frustrated the one delivering the sentence is. No matter, we try to support each other’s decisions.

There’s no I in parent. But there is part. We’re part of a team. Part of our children’s lives. Part of their success. When our children are successful that’s a #ParentingWin.

 

Too Distracted

I skipped my book review yesterday in lieu of writing about my Jesus shoes.  I also want to write my Friday Fictioneers story from Rochelle. However, I’ve been too caught up in my first “viral” post to write anything.