Creative energy applied elsewhere.

Have I been somewhere? I'm pretty sure it isn't here. Though I promise it isn't personal, I've been writing elsewhere... something that may or may not be read by someone other than myself. A story swimming around in my head for so long that I decided it needed to be told, so I'm telling it... in my head, and on my laptop at all hours of the day and night. That whole sleeping thing? Highly overrated. But that's all I'm gonna say about that. Really. Don't ask any questions. Questions may jinx the process. And I'm not sure I even know what the process is.

Sleeping AND exercising are overrated, cause I haven't done that second one in a while either. Over a month... I think it's been. Except for a 5K Josh and I ran on Valentines Day. Exercise isn't really all that conducive to the whole staying up late to write sorta thing... There IS a character in my story that runs every day. That counts, right?

So, in much less important and not even a little interesting news, my new house has a really deep sink. I love it because it can hold a lot of dishes... and I hate it because it can hold a lot of dishes... so many that I often delay the doing of dishes because I never run out of a place to put them. So then, on day three of antidishwashing mode, I find myself with a full dishwasher that I forgot to run, and a sink full of dirty dishes waiting to be loaded in the dishwasher. And no clean silverware. Or cups. By that point, the task seems so daunting and undesirable, it seems better to get in the car and go buy dinner rather than do the dishes so that dinner can be cooked. Sigh. I hate dishes almost as much as I hate toilets. Except I don't really hate them, because where would my life be without them? I hate cleaning them. That is certain.

Long time ago, President Thomas S. Monson gave a talk about giving your children compliments, and always being mindful that no matter how hard you try to distribute compliments evenly, when you say that one child is smart, and the other is pretty, the only thing they will hear is that they lack the quality that you lovingly bestowed on the other. He's absolutely right... I've experienced this with my own children. Once when I was tucking Sam and Lucy in to bed, I told Lucy that she was a wonderful helper that day... that I was so happy when she helped take care of Henry. Sam immediately sat up and said, "But Mommy, I'm a good helper too..." Of course he's a good helper, and I certainly didn't mean to exclude him, but when your fragile little ego is only five, a compliment applied to someone else that isn't extended to you is reason enough to fall down a few notches.

But herein lies the problem. I try to be a realist with my kids. They all have strengths and weaknesses, and they are very, very different. No matter how you spin it, some kids are more athletic, some more studious, some more prone to help out, willingly and cheerfully, and some more prone to wallowing in the floor with a leg that just won't stop hurting when it's time to clean up a mess. If Lucy is a good helper, and Sam is not, I'm not going to tell Sam he was, just to keep him from feeling low. If Sam is great at telling jokes, if Jordan is an exceptional student, if Henry is adorably all things delightful, I'm going to praise those things, individually. I think the key is to differentiate between complimenting an action that someone does, a choice that someone makes, and using a compliment to define value, or significance.

When children are in such crucial formative years, determining how they feel about themselves, discovering where they fit in to the grand scheme of things, words mean a lot... especially words that come from their parents. But I don't buy in to the whole "you're good at everything, you never mess up" school of thought... Coddling a child's ego does nothing to prepare them for a real, unmerciful world.

And now I feel I must throw in something random, because this post suddenly became a lot more serious than I thought it would.

Give me a minute... okay. How 'bout this?

My puppy is 98% potty trained. And she is 100% entrenched in the crazy fabric of my family. Love, love, love her and all her sweetness.

I am completely hooked on David Cook's new album. If Clay Aiken is unavailable, I would totally be good with him singing at my birthday party.

And this year, I want Danny to win.