'My laughing is my prayer,' she said

 Getting ready for bed is anything but silent, except for Ashlyn, who usually knocks out to the lullaby of Brielle's expressed irritation that Melía is being so hyper (hyperactivity noise eclipsed only by that of Brielle's expressed irritation).

But this night, Ashlyn had the giggles. And we were trying to pray.

When it came her turn to say words to the Almighty, she laughed instead, and said, "Amen."

"My laughing is my prayer," she observed.

Indeed. And maybe a better one than most.

As Meister Eckhart, 14th-century German mystic and theologian, said, "God created out of the laughter of the Trinity."

Of the truth of this proposition, Ashlyn is awfully good evidence.

Quote of the day: I want you to

Tuesday nights, I come home late. Melía knows this, and waits up for me. Every Tuesday.

This Tuesday, the moment I closed the front door, I heard her suck in her breath all the way down the hall. It's the same noise her mommy makes when something destructively messy is about to happen. Or when she's really excited.

I stepped into the hallway, tentative, knowing what I'd see, but pretending not to know. She was out of her bed--grounds for a time-out after she's been put down--and squatting in the hallway outside her door, wide-eyed and beaming like I'd just come home from Iraq or something.

I stalked her, trying in vain to open my eyes as wide and blue as hers, singing, "I'm gonna catch you, you better run. I'm gonna catch you, here I come" (as made famous on Noggin by Laurie Berkner).

Normally Melía RUNS from this. She loves to run, especially from Daddy. Most fun for both of us is the instant when I catch her, scoop her tiny frame up in my arms, and kiss her tummy.

But tonight, she just said,

"That's OK."

I stalked closer in mock menace, wondering when the regular game would take hold. "I'm gonna catch you, you better run. I'm gonna catch you, here I come!" I sang, upping the intensity of my threat.

"That's OK," she said again, motionless. "Because I want you to."

Of course, my arms melted around her. I kissed her cheeks, her hair, and the bare forehead that now shines below her self-styled bangs. I put her back in her bed, and before I could say bedtime prayers, she told me once more. "It was OK that you catched me. Because I wanted you to."

Here's to daddyhood and daughters--to the chase, to the flight and to the times when more than anything else, she just wants to be caught.

Quote of the day - I love Satan

Melía was going through the motions of bedding down last night--a prelude to her hour of requests, potty breaks, talking to self and to knocked-out twin sister, playing and patiently enduring the silence before sleep sneaks in and takes her away.

With no visible provocation, she announced:

"I love God and Satan."

I was disarmed, not sure what to say. I'm not sure now what I did say. Maybe I said, "You do?"

"Yeah," she said, pleased with herself. "I love Satan!" She giggled, aware of the scandal of these words, but sticking to her guns.

Knowing Melía's heart, I sensed this declaration--dark as it may have sounded from other lips--was worth celebrating. "That's good, Melía. Do you think God loves Satan too?"

"Yes!" said Melía.

"No, He doesn't," Ashlyn protested.

"Really? I think He does love Satan. Because Satan is His child, and even though he does bad things, God loves him anyway, just like He loves us when we do bad things," I said.

"Yeah!" said Melía.

"Everyone is His child," said Ashlyn.

Amen and amen to living in a universe run by Love big enough to encircle the old friend-turned-enemy who crucified Him.

And amen to living in a house with little hearts big enough to get it.

(Click photo at top or PLAY arrow at left to see a short clip of Melía speaking for herself on the topic of God's unconditional love.)

Padre nuestro, part 3

The Lord's Prayer (in Spanish) is the last thing my kids hear from me at night -- at least the last thing before they hear, "If your foot touches the floor you're on time out. I love you. Go to sleep. I'll miss you till the morning. Do you want to go to time out? Buenas noches, Melía. OK, I'm getting it. Cow's milk or soy milk? I DID warm it! OK, I'll dry it. There. Now go to sleep. Te quiero muchísimo, preciosa. Melía! You're on time out...."

OK, so the Lord's Prayer is ONE of the things they hear from me in the last half-hour of their day.

Anyway, I was sharing what this nocturnal last rite looks like on a typical evening, and then began reflecting on what the prayer means to me as I'm saying it.

Don't let any of this lead you to believe that I am actually thinking about the prayer each night. Some nights, it registers as gibberish even more to me than to my monolingual daughters, just a familiar game-over chant tantamount to the fat lady's song. Sometimes I literally forget the words and have to rehearse and start over to get to the Amén.

But often enough, a phrase strikes a chord, a word revives a dead branch of my soul. To use Jars of Clay's verbiage, the prayer can be "shelter from the rain or the rain to wash me away." Those nights, the words come alive on me. Or something in me comes alive on them.

Sometimes not. But often enough, I reconnect with the One who taught me to pray this way just enough to keep trying.

Santificado sea tu nombre (Hallowed be your name)

Kneeling beside my daughters' beds -- or scooting back and forth between them -- I realize once in a while that this is more than an acknowledgement that God is amazingly holy. That God is holy is plain enough to them, and to me.

They could tell you that God is taller than the roof, that He can fly, that He knows everything, is everywhere and can do anything. He is strong enough to carry all of us and our sleeping loved ones to heaven, and will when the time comes.

I could tell you how much God has grown up in my mind since I had all the answers, somewhere around adolescence. Bigger than my denomination, bigger than the Bible, bigger than Christianity, He is much taller than the ceiling under which I've often kept Him.

He is holy, and wholly other. Unbound by my expectations, unlimited by my anthropomorphizing bent, unaltered by the glass through which I see Him dimly.

I get this.

But the prayer is not saying, "Yo, God. Guess what? You are one holy Deity." This would be redundant, though not totally unhelpful. We do need reminding of the basics. Often.

But the prayer does not do this. It uses "sea" (read "SAY-uh"), the subjunctive mood of the verb be, which is nearly unheard of in English. It's suggesting, wishing, lobbying in favor of the Heavenly Father's name being holy. Maybe it's something more like, "God I want your name to be holy. I wish it were holy. Would that it were holy."

Is this blasphemous? I mean, of all things that need no intercessory prayer, you'd think God's holiness would be one of them.

But want to know why I do intercede for the holiness of God's name? Because to my princesses, I bear that name. I have the radical blessing of being "father," the metaphor God was crazy enough to use for Himself throughout the New Testament.

Like I said last time, I find peace saying, "Our Father in the heavens," because it reminds me that my kids have a Father more reliable than me. But the fact remains--their relationship to their Heavenly Father hangs heavily on my portrayal of the role of "father" in their world. If the earthly father is condemning, they might assume, how much more judgmental must the omniscient One be? If earthly Daddy is prone to rage, just how scary must the Daddy in Heaven, in all His power, be on a bad day?

Father God forbid.

God of Daddyhood, with all that I am, I dream that my fatherhood might do more good than harm to the hallowed name of "father." Whatever mistakes I may make, whether indecency, bankruptcy, idocy or whatever -- just let my girls grow up knowing that being in the arms of a Father is a good thing.

I don't know why you chose "Father" to sum up Who You are to us, Lord. I'm honored and terrified by it. But tonight, I beg You: Please let Your name, the name "Father" -- as I embody it -- be holy.

Padre nuestro, part 2

Last post, I described what it looks like when I'm praying the Lord's Prayer (el Padre Nuestro) with my girls at night. This time, I want to begin sharing some of the things that have gone on in my head as I've said that prayer with them.

As a teen, I was devoutly anti-ritualistic. People repeating the Lord's Prayer in unison seemed ridiculous, and totally missed the point, I was convinced. Praying exactly the words Jesus gave his disciples seemed about as literalistic and lame as someone wearing a tunic and walking around with fisherman in an attempt to do what Jesus did. Obviously, I contended, Jesus was offering us a pattern to follow, not a liturgy to repeat.

These days, I've come to appreciate memorized prayers. After a day of work and parenting, sometimes it's nice not to have to drum up a prayer that is natural yet appropriate, heartfelt while setting a good theological example for the little listening souls.

Actually, we pray both, beginning with homemade prayers from the Mommy and the Daddy and whoever else is game. But often, the prayer that ushers in the most peace--and not just because it's the one closer to the end of the exhausting bedtime dance--is the one that comes straight from the 1960 Reina-Valera (think Spanish King James) Version of Matthew 6:9-13.

Padre nuestro, que estás en los cielos.... (Our Father, which art in heaven...)

Thank God I am not the only Daddy they have. Hard as it is to explain that I'm their father and so is God, what a relief to know my limited resources are but the hint of the aroma of the crust on the tip of the iceberg of their strength. After hours trying to love, discipline, feed, teach, referee, encourage, correct, clean up after and play with my beautiful brood of princesses, it is a grace to realize that at the end of the day, I do not have to be king.

"Our father." In these words, my wife and girls and I are on our knees together, equally childish, equally helpless to defend or make sense of ourselves. Not Brielle, Melía, Ashlyn, but it's me, oh Lord standing in the need of prayer. We all need Your Fatherhood.

With one Father, in a sense we are siblings. Sometimes the idea of being big brother to my girls seems more desirable to me even than Daddy. It allows me to love, protect and guide while acknowledging that the little ones and I have one Source. More than teacher to them, I am peer tutor, still a student, as needy as ever for wisdom from the Master.

I've always been intimidated by Bible heroes' abysmal records as fathers. (See Fathering fears, then and now.) Adam, born in perfection, raises a murderer. Noah, the one who found favor in the eyes of the Lord, ends up cursing a son and his descendants after waking up on the wrong side of the bed. David, man after God's own heart, raises one son who rapes a half-sister and another who starts a bloody rebellion against David.

I was talking through this uninspiring "cloud of witnesses" with a friend and mentor named Tracy. "I get a little freaked out realizing that most of the biggest heroes in the Bible really sucked at being fathers," I laughed nervously.

Tracy looked back at me, never missing a beat, and uttered the words that may have done more than anything else to put my heart at rest. "You're going to suck at it too, Mike." (Did he actually say that? I wondered.) "And by grace, they are going to be OK anyway."

"Padre nuestro." I am so deeply grateful that these little girls are not stuck with just this frail human father.

They have One who is in the heavens. And the old-school Spanish reminds me that it is not just "Heaven" singular, that far-away paradise where God sits on a chaise lounge with his iced tea while we suffer down in our ghetto of sin. It is "los cielos," "the heavens"--all three of them, including the sky above us and the air around us, even the breath I breathed to say this prayer. He is the Father whose kingdom is not of this world, but absolutely is in it--a kingdom within us, among us.

Our true Father is in heaven. And He is closer to us than our skin.

Thanks, Lord. I needed that.

Padre nuestro, part 1

I had this bright idea that I'd teach my kids Spanish. I'd spent years making myself into a bilingual, and I wanted to save them the sweat. Kids' minds are sponges, right? I used to take infant Brielle for walks, describing all I saw in Spanish. For a long time, it was virtually all I spoke to her.

But as the only Spanglophone in my family and among the people we usually hang out with, speaking Spanish became to my kids yet another one of Daddy's strange and generally annoying quirks. I'd try to read a book in Spanish, translating on the fly, and Brielle would reprimand me, "It's not in 'panish, Daddy!" And the books that were in Spanish she did not want to hear. The more fluent she became in English, the more adamant she was that I not speak Spanish.

One day, I considered what was probably a false dichotomy: raise a daughter who was bilingual but distant because, over her protests, I always talked to her in her weak linguistic suit, or throw in the towel and let her learn Spanish the old-fashioned way--earn it. Figuring she'd have enough to tell the therapist about her weirdo father without this, I dropped the one-man immersion agenda and switched to a new tack.

I would try to make learning Spanish seem cool.

I'll let you know how it goes.

But one last vestige of my Daddy-as-Spanish-teacher days is that at night, after praying in English with the girls, I say the Lord's Prayer in Spanish, stroking their hair and kissing cheeks along the way. In the twins' room, I walk back and forth between the beds to deliver this affection as I pray. It looks something like this:

"Padre Nuestro, que estás en los cielos--" I lightly scratch Ashlyn's scalp and walk over to Melía, who is lying upside down in her bed.

"Santificado sea tu nombre." I turn Melía upright and smooth her curls back out of her eyes before walking gingerly back to Ashlyn, hoping not to tred upon one of the many homeless toys littering the floor.

"Venga tu reino, hágase tu voluntad--" After squeezing Ashlyn's cheek tight against mine, I return to Melía. I try to run my fingernails over her scalp without pulling it out of the ponytail, since this may be the hairdo she has to live with tomorrow, depending on how late we're running.

"--como en los cielos, así también en la tierra." Back at Ashlyn's bedside, I am either amazed at how fast she falls asleep, or at my foolish commitment to praying over the kicking, screaming fury that has been the storm before her calm since babyhood.

"El pan nuestro de cada día, dánoslo hoy." I walk back across the room, stretch Melía's beloved purple Tinkerbell blanket over her and just for kicks (literally), I try pulling the nice plush bedspread that grandma made up over her legs, just to see if she'll notice. "No! Not dat wow! I don't lite that bwankit!" Duly chastised, I return the comforter to its regular location bunched up at the foot of the bed.

"Y perdónanos nuestras deudas, como nosotros también perdonamos a nuestros deudores." I come back to the face side of the child and sneak as many kisses onto her cheek as I can respectably squeeze into the middle of a prayer. Melía is OK with this.

"No nos metas en tentación, mas líbranos del mal." I tiptoe back across the room. Ashlyn is nonresponsive now, either because of her ongoing pre-slumber fit or because she's already out. If it's the latter, I get to lay some kisses on her round cheeks. In the case of the former, I really get into this line of the prayer, for temptation is nigh.

"Porque tuyo es el reino--" I pause and make the perilous three-step journey back to Melía and plant a single kiss on her cheek.

"--y el poder--" Back to Ashlyn, who also gets a kiss on the cheek, whether she's dreaming or tantruming.

"--y la gloria--" Melía knows we're in the homestretch now, and is finalizing her plans for how to delay the end. Will it be another trip to the potty? Or a request for a beverage, followed by requests to warm/cool/dry it? Maybe both. I hug her, knowingly.

"--por todos los siglos." Ashlyn gets an indulgently tight squeeze. Unlike her skin-and-bones sisters, her solid frame feels like it can take it. And anyway, she'll sleep through it.

"Amén." One last kiss on Melía's forehead, and I tuck her in under the purple blanket, which she has mostly shed by now. I slide back over to Ashlyn.

"Amén."

A final kiss on Ashie's head, and I am the luckiest man in the world. I have three beautiful angel princess monkey daughters.

And they are now asleep.

Amén.

Prayer-time prayer

Lord, help.

I want our evening prayer time to be fun. But I also want my kids to stick around for the fun. They do have fun during prayer time; it's just fun completely unrelated to the prayer process. They laugh, play, box, squirm, bounce, wrestle, bite, kiss, tickle and wiggle, and that is fun.

But how do I crack down on these innocent activities so destructive of the focus I'm going for without wreaking another kind of destruction even less desirable than playing during prayer? I can explain to Brielle that God loves fun, and loves to hear us laugh, but sometimes He likes us to take a break from laughing so we can talk to Him about things that are not just laughing things. I think it made sense to her, but it sure felt like saying, "Talking with God is the vegetables, and the stuff you really want to do is dessert."

How do I draw their attention to the need for reverence, for silence, for respect, for awe, without raining on the parade of their God-given joy? Shoot, how do I even get through a modest-length bedtime prayer without sending someone to timeout or sounding like a self-interrupting idiot?

Melía, for example, has learned to pray the way we have modeled, even when there is no competing noise. "Dear Jesus--I'M PRAYING! Thank You for this wonderful--I'M PRAYING! Thank You for Mommy and Daddy and--I'M PRAYING! Thank You for Brielle and Ashlyn--MOMMY, I'M PRAYING!" These Tourette's-like utterances punctuate her prayers, just as they do ours. But, Lord, it is sad. What can we do?

OK, let's brainstorm options:

1. Ignore the bad behavior and hope it goes away.
2. Send all offenders to timeout on first offense, even if it means we're down to Mommy-Daddy prayer time with screaming children in various corners of the house.
3. Don't miss a beat; simply swat children as I pray for God to help us love people even when they are not nice to us.
4. Best of #1 and #3: Ignore misdeeds during prayer (as inaudible as they may render the prayer itself), swat child after we are all done praying for love.
   
5. Scold children via God by praying for divine intervention to control their misbehavior (my least favorite option because of how often my parents prayed things like, "And please help Michael not to scratch his brother's face while we are praying to You," after which I would insist that God ignore any such entreaties).
6. Give up on bedtime prayers till the children act appropriately (i.e. potentially not until our funeral).

I have tried all of the above except #6, and let me tell You, Lord, that one gets pretty tempting sometimes.

Maybe this all bothers me so much because I know how hard it is to settle my own soul down to pray. I have my own versions of squirming and giggling and fiddling and fussing that derail my soul from focus on its Creator: phone calls, self-congratulation, self-condemnation, NPR, blaming, worrying and Figuring It All Out, just for starters. I'm sure God has tried a list much longer than the above to get me to have the kind of fun that talking with Him can be, but so often I settle for lesser diversions.

Parents are wont to push their offspring to succeed in ways they've never been able to themselves. I guess this is a wholesome drive at times, but often it's no more than a lust for vicarious accomplishment. It's not about the kid; it's about me.

Maybe I'm so desperate for them to get this prayer thing now because I fear I've never really gotten it myself.

Be that as it may, Lord.... Help me help them. Help them. Help me. Help!

Amen.

Bedside prayer

Last night I put Brielle to bed an hour late.

This is hardly an aberration. But usually it happens because they’ve fought more, kicked the pajamas off an extra time or two, gritted the teeth harder than normal through tooth-brushing time, and come up with more creative excuses to keep us waiting on them once they’re in bed.

But this time, child and parent both lost an hour of sleep just because I could not resist lingering with Brielle for the sublime conversation she had to offer.

The twins were down, and Mommy was down the mountain at her women’s Bible study, leaving just Daddy and the girl who first named me that. Kneeling by her bed, I had just told the parable of the talents, and had broken down how God shares so much good stuff with us, and wants us to use it, not bury it.

Brielle was pensive. “We use a lot of God’s stuff,” she observed.

“Verdad, Brielle. All the stuff we have is God’s, and He likes when we use it for good things,” I agreed.

“Yeah.” She laughed and stared ahead, lips pursed, her deep thinking evidenced by the tiny movements of her cheeks and jaw. “And God is even a girl too.”

I smiled. “Yeah, Brielle. God is way too big to be just a boy or just a girl. He is everything,” I chimed in, delighted that she had already surpassed most of the Christian church in her thinking on the gender of God, but wondering how.

Somehow the topic turned to the Second Coming of Christ, more popular than ever since losing two Papas and a kitty. I said something about the nonlinear growth we would experience when Jesus came and completed our ultimate transformation. Only I think I told her we would not do bad things anymore or have ouchies anymore because Jesus would do magic on us.

At this, her eyes glowed, cheeks swelling the way Ashlyn’s do when she is imagining herself to be a bride. “I can’t wait for God to do stuff to us. He might even give us wings, I think.”

“Maybe He will. Or maybe He will teach us to fly without wings, like Jesus can.” I have this irrational burden to prevent her from disillusionment if heaven’s transformations do not include wings.

Presently we were on to angels. She pointed at a spot on her pillow about six inches from where she sat. “Our angel is RIGHT-THERE,” she said, the last two words running together. She grinned—“RIGHT-THERE,” and giggled. “Our angel is right next to us and God is in our heart. And God is everywhere. God is even in my shirt.” She pulled her pajama top away from her and spoke through the neck toward her belly button. “Hi, God! Where are you? God! Where are you?” She giggled some more, and then turned back to a more sober question.

“Why is God everywhere but we can’t see Him?”

No response from Daddy beyond a mystified sigh.

“Daddy, why is God everywhere but we can’t see Him?”

I wasn’t going to get away with pleading the fifth. “I don’t know, Brielle.” I searched my heart for what I really believe about this, and realized that to this question I have no satisfying answer. Another sigh. “Maybe it’s because God is so big and strong and bright that it would scare us if we really saw Him. It would hurt our eyes. We can see God in people when they love like Jesus does. But sometimes I really do wish I could see God more right now with my eyes.”

“I think when we go to heaven God will give us eyes that are strong so we can see really bright stuff and it won’t be ouchy.”

“Sí, Brielle. I think He will. Jesus even told us that if our eyes are good, our whole body will be full of light. But if they are bad our whole body will be full of darkness.” As cool as that verse is to me, it was kind of a non sequitur here, I realized, so I didn’t bother preaching it further.

Brielle offered me another paradigm. “I think God is like electricity.”

I liked this. “You do? Why?”

“Because electricity has power and God has power.”

“Yeah, Brielle. That’s right. And even though you can’t see electricity, it works—just like God.”

“Uh-huh,” said Brielle, relieved, I’m sure, that I was catching on.

Somewhere around 10 p.m, the back door opened and Rachelle walked in. Sheepish about how late I had our daughter awake, I moved toward prayer.

Actually, we moved our prayer on to its next breath.

Ideal vs. Real

Plato conceived of a world of Forms or ideas whose reality transcends that of the material world that we can see. In this tradition, Gnostics glorified the perfection of things spiritual while shunning the fallen world of flesh. Stephen Covey hints at the same notion when he writes of the mental creation that precedes any physical creation. William Glasser calls it one's "Quality World," which we constantly compare to the world we actually experience.

All of the above have made clear the difference between “Ideal” and “Real”—but not a clear as my kids make it each night at bedtime. Here’s what I mean....

IDEAL Monday evening schedule:

5:00 Daddy arrives home, kicks off shoes and puts away mail and work stuff.

5:05 Turn on music, dance, play while Mommy prepares dinner.

5:30 Sit down to dinner, bless food.

5:35 Eat food.

6:00 Clear table, load dishwasher, talk about the day with wife while children play.

6:30 Children put on own pajamas for bed.

6:45 Children brush own teeth.

7:00 Parents sing praises of cooperative children, with accompanying high-fives.

7:05 Children gather on parents’ laps to listen with rapt attention to stories .

7:20 Go over lesson from Tiny Tots class at church as spellbound children absorb it like dry sponges, making mental notes for application to their future behavior.

7:25 Practice memory verse so for once they don’t have to cheat to get their sticker for saying it at church.

7:30 Say prayer as a family at bedside, each girl taking a turn to talk with God while others listen, enthralled, with all five voices closing with a unified “Amen.”

7:35 Parents kiss girls good-night, sing chorus of “Jesus Loves Me” and “Miss You Till the Morning” (by Kevin Brusett).

7:45 Parents tidy house, set out clothes for next day, get ready for bed, talk and/or engage other in extracurricular activities.

9:00 Parents retire.

Is this too much to ask of three little girls and two adults in a span of four hours? Apparently so, because this is what actually happens:

REAL Monday evening schedule:

5:00 Daddy arrives home, kicks off shoes and drops mail and work stuff in middle of living room because all four girls are too cute to pass by on the way to the proper storage locations.

5:05 After hugs to the two girls willing to receive them (Rachelle plus a randomly selected one of the three daughters), Daddy breaks up fight between other two, assigns time-out to the one who committed most blatant act of violence. During time-out, Daddy lectures other participant on how she can avoid provoking similar acts of violence in future.

5:08 Daddy releases convicted daughter when time-out sentence is complete, insists on apology.

5:10 Daddy sends daughter back to time-out after two minutes of badgering daughter to apologize correctly (i.e. looking at victim of violence, saying her name, using the word “sorry,” and naming offense for which she is apologizing, all the while avoiding silly or baby talk).

5:11 Daddy attempts to trash as much junk mail and pay as many bills as possible while child is on second time out, gets distracted by incoming email, forgets that time-out is over despite resounding beep from microwave timer, until prisoner shouts, “The timer is going off, Daddy!”

5:15 Daughter released from time-out offers apology that is adequate (or at least close enough to avoid re-sentencing).

5:16 To victim of violence, Daddy expounds the value of forgiving offender, finally abandoning effort after realizing the apologizer has moved on, already having forgotten what she apologized for in first place.

5:20 Daddy returns to email and other online business.

5:30 Mommy starts feeding 1.6 children, begins begging Daddy to eat food while hot.

5:35 Mommy reminds Daddy food is getting cold and she’s already reheated it twice.

5:40 Mommy gets a few bites of food in other 1.4 children, allows tones of desperation to enter voice as she insists Daddy eat what she has prepared.

5:42 Ashlyn sows handfuls of granola throughout kitchen.

5:45 Daddy eats cold dinner while assigning Ashlyn to clean up her mess, under threat of time-out.

5:48 Daddy puts Ashlyn on time-out for having scattered granola with broom rather than sweeping up.

5:50 Mommy checks her email, relieved to have someone else in the house so she can at least read words from other adults.

5:51 Daddy releases Ashlyn, sets microwave timer for 5 minutes, after which Ashlyn will be back on time-out if granola is still on floor, explains this deal to Ashlyn.

5:59 Ashlyn returns to time-out as Daddy laments the diffusion of granola through dining area and living room as well.

6:02 Ashlyn comes back to kitchen and works with Daddy to sweep granola as Brielle holds dustpan. Daddy realizes Ashlyn does not know how to use a broom, wonders how we’ve allowed her to get by this long without cleaning up her legion messes.

6:04 Melía hits Brielle for refusing to share dustpan, is sent to time-out.

6:05 Melía attempts escape from time-out, gets swat on hand from Daddy, is returned to time-out, screaming bloody murder.

6:08 Melía released from time-out, followed by forced apology to Brielle.

6:10 Daddy and Ashlyn continue to work on sweeping kitchen, a project that would take 3 minutes if done by adult, but which takes 30 in order to teach Ashlyn that she must clean up messes she makes.

6:40 Ashlyn dumps dustpan out onto floor, scatters it again, setting back cleaning job by a quarter hour.

6:45 Mommy has phone conversation and Melía instinctively whines at her for her attention until she cuts conversation short.

7:00 Daddy and Ashlyn finish sweeping floor, dump dustpan into trash, give high-fives.

7:05 Mommy and Daddy notice that children have barely eaten, but that it is time to get ready for bed anyway—they have to learn to eat when it’s eating time or miss out.

7:10 Daddy hunts through house for matching Disney princess pajamas that have hope of being acceptable to twins.

7:20 Daddy finds two matching sets of pajamas, pants on floor in twins’ room, one shirt in drawer, one on couch arm in living room.

7:21 Daddy walks toward Melía, she swings toy in protest of imminent bedtime, with only mild degree of malice, but hits him in privates, lightly, but not lightly enough to avoid time-out.

7:22 Daddy channels pain and rage into task of creating a walkway into twins room by kicking toys into corner behind princess castle.

7:23 Daddy grabs Ashlyn as she runs by in hall, wrestles her into pajamas.

7:25 Ashlyn kicks pajama pants off, gets a swat on the leg. Daddy puts pajamas back on as Ashlyn screams.

7:32 Melía reminds Daddy, “Set da timer, Daddy! Set da timer!” Daddy sets microwave timer for two minutes.

7:33 Daddy puts toothpaste on toothbrushes during time-out

7:34 Melía released from time-out.

7:40 Daddy calls for Melía to come, counts to five. She comes two seconds too late, is sent to time-out again, screaming bloody murder.

7:43 Melía released from time-out, now agrees to get ready for bed but throws tantrum because Daddy detached Velcro tab on Pull-ups (overpriced, underabsorbant diapers used to make toddlers imagine they are making progress potty training) while she wanted to don them with tabs attached.

7:44 Daddy attempts to help Melía with Pull-ups, but is chastised till she has finished tantruming enough to accept assistance.

7:46 Ashlyn goes into bathroom, actually opens mouth before Daddy’s threatening counting (“1…2…3……4………5”) runs out, allowing him to brush teeth with vibrating mermaid toothbrush without knocking any of her pearly whites out.

7:47 Mommy somehow convinces or forces Melía to brush teeth somewhere else in house.

7:48 Exhausted by this effort, parents call a late-4^th-quarter time-out for themselves and work in kitchen and bedroom, preparing for tomorrow while children engage in hyperactive play with energy inversely proportional to that of parents.

8:25 Realizing the kids have got to get to sleep, parents try to rally children in one bedroom for prayer (too late for stories or lesson). Children argue over whose room will host bedtime prayer.

8:30 Mommy and Daddy put twins in bed. Daddy goes to kitchen to clean rancid sippy cups in anticipation of upcoming milk request.

8:34 On return to twins’ room, Daddy catches Ashlyn nibbling on a piece of thread she yanked from blanket (a favorite snack of hers). He confiscates blanket and replaces it with a blanket that is less appetizing to Ashlyn. She screams bloody murder and begs pitifully for the original blanket.

8:36 Mommy and Daddy pray with twins over their screams for blanket, milk and in general protest of our abusive habit of putting them to bed at night.

8:40 Mommy brushes Brielle’s teeth. For once, she cooperates like an angel.

8:45 Twins get out of bed to come and ask for something to drink, violating the law prohibiting rising from bed after being put down. One is put in time-out on traditional chair in corner, other placed behind door in hallway.

8:48 Microwave timer sounds, twins returned to bed. Daddy breaks them the news: we are out of cow’s milk—only water or soy milk. Melía agrees to soy milk after a couple minutes, Ashlyn screams bloody murder at the announcement that cow’s milk is not an option.

8:45 Daddy pours and warms soy milk in sippy cup for Melía, brings it to her room. Ashlyn cries for her soy milk until calming down enough to ask nicely.

8:48 Daddy returns with warm soy milk for Ashlyn, who accepts it resignedly.

8:49 Daddy snuggles and kisses both girls. Mommy, who was supposed to be in bed an hour ago because she is terribly sick (I have no idea what kept her from falling asleep in our placid home…) finally crashes. Daddy prays with twins now that they are quiet enough to hear it, first in English, then the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish.

8:55 Daddy remembers the girl who’d drawn the Easy Kid lot for the night (mercifully there is usually one), and goes to Brielle’s room to pray with her too, thanking God and girlie both for her relative cooperativeness this evening.

9:01 Daddy tells sick Mommy good-night, puts off cleaning messy kitchen and great room till morning, sits down and writes blog.

John Lennon wrote, “Life is what happens to you while you are busy making other plans.”

Thank you, Lord, for life with our little ones. Help us work and pray our way toward our plans for the ideal; and meanwhile, deliver us from begrudging the real.