My fridge...

My fridge:

The bottom third of my fridge is covered in alphabet magnets, animal magnets, bendable monkeys with magnets on their feet and hands, magnetic wooden plank painted art projects with sparkles poured on them that Kara proudly painted, and 3 big ABC magnets that click and have colorful beads in them to roll.

The bottom third of my fridge is scratched up from little hands sliding magnets with rough edges along the front of it.  There are sticky smudgy fingerprints everywhere.  There are lines of water that have dried but left their water spots from when Kara has over filled a glass from the dispenser.  There are bite and chew marks on the animal magnets. 

The bottom third of my fridge has been staked and claimed by my children.

Occasionally I will sit down, take off all the magnets, open up a canister of Clorox wipes, and sanitize the heck out of all of the magnets on that bottom third, as well as the front of the fridge.  I'll then put all the animal magnets back on the left door, trying to make as many animals fit as close to each other as possible creating a Pangea of magnetic wildlife.  Then I will alphabetize the alphabet magnets in 2 straight-as-an-arrow lines, 13 letters on each line.  The 3 big ABC magnets are arranged in an arc, trying to resemble a rainbow.  The flexible monkeys are contorted into the shape that I think best resembles a frolicking monkey, and then they're placed above the 26 alphabet letters.

I spend no less than 20 minutes on my keester performing this cleaning, restructuring, and organizing ritual.  The bottom third of the fridge looks great when I'm finished.  It's shiny!  There is order! It's germ free!  Alike groups are tightly bound together!  All things are in their proper place! 

I stand up and proudly survey my work.  Immediately, from the other room, Kara and Leah's mommy homing beacon starts beeping and they levitate to the kitchen against their will.  The intoxicating smell of sanitation wipes draws them closer.  They feel off kilter. They realize that something is not right.  No, no, not right at all.

And then they see it.

They both lunge, jumping horizontally at the bottom third of the fridge, not caring for the belly flop that they will sustain in 1.2 seconds, and not 5 seconds after I had given myself a proverbial pat on the back for my cleaning and organizing victory, they each eradicate the newfound alphabetical and wildlife order with one fell swoop of their extended sticky hands.  Letters fly left and right. Animals that can't fly are now airbound heading towards the oven, countertops, and pantry.  The flexible monkeys have magically come to life and are trying to climb to higher ground on the fridge by scaling up it to escape the ensuing carnage. After Kara and Leah bounce up from their belly flops, each girl grabs one of the big ABC magnets, throws it down as hard as they can just in front of their feet making it bounce and leaving a dent in the lineoleum, and do an endzone victory dance.  They then ask me for a string cheese, turn on their heel, and walk out of the room, going back to whatever they were playing with before. 

They, too, believe everything has a proper place.  And that place is on the floor.  Every single bit of it. 

Now allow me zoom in on my fridge, to this, the upper right hand side:

There is order.  Pictures and magnets are squared off and aligned as to be pleasing to my eye.  Multiple times per day as I purposely, yet sometimes mindlessly, make my voyage to the fridge to open it and retrieve whatever sustinence I'm craving or my children are pleading for, I always look at the upper right hand side before opening the door. 

I see my 3 children forever frozen in their perfect newborn state in the form of a birth announcement that my wonderful friend Ashleigh created for me for each of them. 

I see Dean's refrigerator chiropractic conversation magnets that he received in a packet at an orientation for Palmer.  We used to have a ton of them but they've gotten lost or thrown away or somehow lost their magnetism through the years so now we're down to these 6, which are very fitting. 

I see the picture of Dean and I holding hands while each holding one of our daughters with the ocean in the background.  That was at out first ever Davis Family Reunion in October of 2011 in Port Ludlow, WA.  We rented an oceanfront house on a cliff that had a gorgeous view and a tiny living room.

I see 3 different German word magnets from a German conversation magnet set that I bought Dean at an LDS bookstore in Logan, Utah when I was helping take care of my Mom in 2007.  They say "Honig" which is what I call Dean and it means "honey", and the other 2 are "Sonne" and "Monde" which mean "sun" and "moon".  Dean said he put them by me in the pictures because I'm his sun and moon. Awwwwwww.

I see my "I Love My Mommy" picture frames that Dean gave to me last Christmas with a picture of each of the girls in them, Leah with crazy bath hair, and Kara making a sweetie cheesey face.  I'm a sucker for small things like that, i.e. my childrens' handprints, footprints, art projects, etc. 

I see the picture of us when we were just a family of 4 in front of the Salt Lake City Temple, taken from atop the Conference Center across the street.  We had driven down to Utah to attend our friend's funeral, and we stopped in Salt Lake to go take the Conference Center tour, to walk around Temple Square as a family, and to see the Christus statue. 

I see our Washington D.C. thermometer magnet that Dean and I bought in D.C. just a few weeks after we started dating in 2004.  We've never walked as much as we did that vacation, and we learned that the Capital lawn is a good place to just lie down in the humidity and let your heel blisters breathe.

I see an old fashioned photo strip of Dean, Kara, Leah, and I that was taken in the arcade on Pier 57 in Seattle in March 2011 when my sister Tawny was here visiting. Leah was only 6 itty bitty months old in that picture.  Sigh.

I see the picture of us in a corn maze at Maris Farms in Buckley, WA.  We went with my sister-in-law, Chelsey, her daughter Tenley, and my mother-in-law, Terrell.  We had a great time talking and laughing and gossiping throughout the maze, which took way too long to get through, and we were happy to have finally made our way out of the muddy maze. 

I see the square flowery background magnet that Terrell gave us that says "Mothers hold their children's hands a while, and their hearts forever."  Amen.

And in the middle of all those pictures and magnets and frames and baby announcements is a plain white piece of computer paper that I took off my Mom's fridge after she died and we were cleaning out her house.  The paper has been cut down, laminated, and had a sticky strip magnet slapped on the back.  It has a generic Microsoft Word boarder around the edge of it, and the font is nothing special.  It's what's printed in the middle of it that makes it beautiful.

"Wherefore, be not

weary in well-doing,

for you are laying the

foundation of a great work.

And out of small

things proceedeth

that which is great."

D&C 64:33

 

 

Weary. Well-doing. Laying the foundation. Small things.  Great.

Beautiful and powerful words.

 

There are days that my children make me weary, oh so weary  The days where they obliterate their bottom third of the fridge.  The days where I organize their toy bins so that just the train tracks are in one bin, the Marble Madness pieces are in another bin, their books are arranged from biggest to smallest from left to right in the 3 top bins, but my girls dump everything out 2 seconds later.  The days where I can't find my toothbrush that Leah was playing with but later find it shoved in the dishwasher.  The days where they have a full-on-melt-down-fight over who gets to use the Monsters, Inc. spoon and not the cruddy Cars spoon.  The days where Kara spills an entire cup of juice all over the ground and then purposely steps in it to splash it everywhere.  The days where I can't seem to get one second to myself no matter what I try, or where I try to stealthily sneak off to. 

 

The days that they make me weary, I look at this simple magnet with this powerful scripture, and I try to remember that even though my children are demanding and narcisstic and tempermental and sticky and naughty, they are also sweet and giving and forgiving and snuggly and thoughtful and hilarious and perfect.  I am laying the foundation for who they are going to turn out to be by my small deeds and service for them.  I will keep putting their toys away because eventually they will catch on that it's better to have a house of order than a house of chaos.  I will keep wiping up their spills because they will see that a nice clean floor is better than a sticky floor.  I will keep letting them play with my toothbrush because I want them to not be afraid of the toothbrush and to establish good oral hygeine.  I will keep having days where I want to scream because I can't get any time to myself, but eventually I know I will be the one going to them for attention, and not vice versa.

I want to help them become great in whatever aspect of their lives that they want to.  It is the small everyday things I do for them, the experiences I provide for them, the laughter that I provoke from them, the hugs and kisses and praises I give them for a job well done, and teaching them about all things spiritual and good that will help them become great.  I have such an essential and almost overwhelming duty and privilege to raise my children correctly.  There will be bumps and chaos along the way, but I get one shot, only one shot, at raising my babies.  I don't want to look back when Kara is 10 years old and say, "Man, I really wish I would have paid more attention to her instead of always being on the internet wasting hours each day or watching mindless tv or distracting myself with a million other things that could have waited."  Of course I'm not perfect and I have found myself distracted or wasting time, but Dean and I are making a concerted effort in our lives to remove more and more distractions, and we're finding ourselves feeling more and more fulfilled with our family life, even though it has its' expected stresses. 

When my children go kamikaze on the front of my fridge and annihilate my cleanliness and organization that I try to provide for them, I sometimes walk away from the magnetic chaos for a little while, but sometimes I kneel down with them and have them help me put everything back on, magnet by magnet.  And we don't organize it, we don't put everything on left to right, there is no rhyme or reason to how everything is put back on.  But that is how my kids like it, that is what makes them feel more comfortable.  They are teaching me that it's ok to have chaos at this stage in my life, that my world will not end.  And in the cleaning effort it helps to bring me down on to my knees, to their eye level, where I am suddenly one of them.  And I can see the world from their view, and without fail every single time I get down to their level in front of my fridge, they run at me to give me a full on hug and tell me they love me.

So I'll keep organizing those magnets for them because I really get the better end of the deal in the clean up. 

I'm sure one day when my kids are grown and gone, I will find a gallon ziploc bag of alphabet magnets and magnetic animals and flexible monkey magnets in a storage bin that's been on a high shelf in our garage, untouched for years.  I'll go sit down on my kitchen floor, open the bag and dump everything out, clean them with a Clorox wipe, and put them on the bottom front of the fridge from left to right and in proper order and groups.  Then I'll look at them, smile, and then attack the front of the fridge, scattering and sending all the magnets airborn.  And then I'll sit there, I'll smile, and cry.