09/23/13

Mondays, Mondays.  They are my longest days.  Up at 4:50 to get ready for seminary.  Then get the kids up and out for breakfast and scripture study, then the long marathon of lessons during the day, then orchestra in the afternoon.  Because of Mosey's and Brigham's overlapping schedules, I end up making two trips down there and don't get home until about 9:00 PM.  At least I had an hour or so in the afternoon to prepare for my seminary lesson so I was able to be in bed not long after 10:00.  Which I needed to make up for the 4 1/2 hours of sleep I got the night before.  :-(
Mosey had his chair test at orchestra.  He forgot his music at home-- the music we had marked with all his reminders.  Oh, well.  He borrowed music and said it was OK.  Brigham found out the results of his chair test last week-- 2nd stand 2nd violin, which is perfectly respectable.  Especially since this is his first year in that orchestra!  But I could tell he was disappointed.
School was OK.  Not super, but OK.  I managed to make Brigham cry before school even started.  I'm so awesome.  He is very competitive, and ultra sensitive to any perceived slights.  I'm giving out tickets for participation in seminary, and doing the same thing for my boys during our scripture study.  But Brigham can't help but count how many tickets I'm giving his brothers, especially Mosey, and then get very hurt and upset when I haven't given him as many as he thinks he deserves.
I can't stand this kind of competitiveness.  It pushes all the wrong buttons for me.  I know Brigham needs reassurance and compassion, but I just get mad.  I told him I'm not going to do tickets at all if they're going to cause so much unhappiness and contention.  Then he started crying.  Oh, man.  I struggle with knowing how to handle this part of my boy's personality.  He feels things very personally-- things that are NOT personal at all.  I find it frankly annoying, and so I tend to respond with frustration, which only feeds into his feelings of persecution.  It's tough.
I measured the boys again yesterday-- they were interested in knowing their BMI's so they could see who was the fattest.  Yep, competition again.  Turns out they are all within 1 point of each other, so not much difference.  But I was able to see that Joseph has grown another inch since June, and a good 4 inches since a year ago.  Mosey's grown almost an inch as well, but poor, poor Brigham hasn't grown at all since we last measured.  I know he is sensitive about this as well.  He didn't say anything, just walked off.  I personally love that he isn't growing up so fast!  I'm finding myself very emotionally conflicted about Joseph getting so big-- he's now 5'1" and 92 lbs!!!!!  And his voice is getting lower and lower- I hardly recognize him on the phone anymore.  So I'm loving that Brigham isn't growing up quite so fast, although I know it will be his turn soon enough.  It is hard to be a twin.
OK, time to get the boys up for the day and finish figuring out what we're doing for science today.
Here are some recent pictures.