Letters, Sleep, and Memorization

Here are some fun things I want to remember:

1. I have been working with Clara on letters and numbers lately. Whenever she gets put in timeout, she has to count to ten before she can get out. We count literally everything - coins, toys, scoops of flour, bathtub bubbles...you name it. We work on letters on a daily basis, one letter at a time. Whenever we work on a letter we post it on the fridge so she can look at it for a couple weeks. A few weeks ago she went up the "A" picture and pointed at it and said, "Alligator." Yes! I thought, it's probably working! "Good job Clara!" I praised. "That is the letter A." "A?" she asked a little bit confused. "Yep the letter 'A'," I confirmed. She thought about it for a second, looked at the picture again, and then it was like a lightbulb went off in her little brain. She then turned to me proudly and said, "Mama, A, nine, ten!" When I laughed, she just looked at me like, "Why aren't you telling me I'm awesome?" Wow, how I love that little girl.

2. Abigail has been sleeping in her own room now for a few weeks. For the first little while I wasn't sure if it was good thing or a bad thing. There were certain periods of the night when she just wasn't tired, or the binky would fall out every few minutes. When this happened, either Joe or I would get out of bed, walk down the hall, put it back in her mouth, walk back and by the time we'd gotten back in bed it'd fallen out again. Desperately praying for a way to get her to sleep so that we could get some normal sleep again, I suddenly was impressed with the idea to start putting her on a schedule. DUH! I thought to myself. With Clara I'd been so good about getting her on a sleeping schedule during the day so that she would be tired enough at night to sleep through the night. And if you are wondering, yes, the Lord even listens to the prayers of a frazzled, sleep deprived mother. When she started sleeping through the night after just a couple days of the new schedule I was ready to scream "Hallelujah!" Sleep is good.

3. After listening to Elder Scott's talk from Conference we decided that we need to do better at memorizing important passages of scripture so that they can be "recalled" to our memory in times when we need them. We decided to start with the Articles of Faith. I was a little embarrassed at how many I'd forgotten. I started working on the first Article with Clara. She has it memorized, but she likes it when I say it with her. Whenever we finish saying it, she looks at me and says, "Again Mama?" So we say it again and again, until I try and work on the second Article with her, by then she is usually ready to stop. There are some much harder words in the second one too. It is amazing to see how much so loves and cherishes those fundamental truths and doctrines of the Gospel - that we believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His son, Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost.