How Do I Love Thee?

"When using social media, we tend to broadcast the smiling details of our lives but not the hard times at school or work. We portray an incomplete life—sometimes in a self-aggrandizing or fake way. We share this life, and then we consume the “almost exclusively … fake lives of [our] social media ‘friends.’....How could it not make you feel worse to spend part of your time pretending to be happier than you are, and the other part of your time seeing how much happier others seem to be than you?”¹² 


Well, Elder Cook, we shall be guilty as charged.  But our guilt stems not from a desire to paint a false picture of perpetual hollyhocks blooming thickly round the Collings cottage.  It is only to spare our readers from a week of sleepless nights with a 7 month old and her ear infections; from a root canal Monday morning for the matron of the family and the disfiguring facial swelling resulting from the infection in her jaw; from the stream of missed appointments due to brain fog and ill older children.  In short, we will skip blithely from last Sunday to Friday, noting only that Julia advanced from her classroom to the school spelling bee, and that all three girls managed to attend their school Valentine's parties despite however much absenteeism they exhibited during the week.  (I cannot pass before theorizing that someone in our family might have a blaming problem:  "And how did your Spelling Bee go, Dear?"  "Terrible!  And it's all your fault!  Why did you always tell me that patio had two T's when it only has one?"  Mmmm-hmmmm.)

So, Friday.  Friday held as much gorgeous weather as the rest of this February has.  After Katharine got home from school we picked Justin up from work, picked up $5 worth of chow from McDonald's and headed to a park we've passed a few times but never played in.  It was AMAZING!!!!  I loved it, and highly recommend Manila Park off Pleasant Grove 100 East to anyone looking for a great place to play.  (I think it's 100 East--that road by the Purple Turtle.)  After at least 25 minutes on the normal swings and some careening through the wooden fortress, Katharine spotted a true find.  A large, green, wholly unoccupied tire swing.  "Tire swing!  Abdiel, do you want to go on the tire swing with me?" she asked, running joyfully toward it.  "Oh!  Yeah!  Tiger swing!"  Abdiel bounced.  Settled securely in his corner, Abdiel immediately began belting at the top of his lungs, "Bahm!  Bahm, bahm, bahm!  Bahm, bahm bahm!  Bahm bahm baaaaahm baaaahm bahm!  Risin' up!  Back on the street!"  The perfect ditty for an afternoon sway on a ti[g]er swing.

After school, the girls had a play date at our house, a highlight of which was their playing True Colors.  Julia left the game elated, not only because she won outright, but also because she won the most votes for the question, "You have to travel through the Amazon.  It's an unpredictable and dangerous journey.  Whom would you take with you?"  (She also decisively won the question, "Who does enough worrying for the lot of you?"  Not sure if the two answers are connected.)  Another cause for elation was the gorgeous bouquet of flowers delivered during the game.  "Mommy!  You have a secret admirer!" a little voice enthused.  Justin wasn't sure what to think about that. Justin's parents stopped by later in the day to deliver their Valentines to the older kids, the highlight of which was a Spiderman puzzle for Abdiel.


Saturday was another fantastic day, especially for Julia.  She woke up early, made us heart shaped pancakes for breakfast, had the tapes taken off her violin at her lesson as she moved into Book 3, and then babysat while Gwyn slept and the other kids watched a movie so Justin and I could go play tennis for an hour.  She's growing up in so many ways!  Unfortunately Gwyn didn't sleep very well so the hour was one of those really short sort, but we played long enough to determine we can make this a lifetime sport since we're starting at about the same point.  

At two o'clock our two girl-family friends dropped their three oldest off for a little Valentine's Day service project.  While the three youngest girls rolled out sugar and chocolate heart cookies, the three middle girls made signs for a dance choreographed by the three oldest girls.  They used Nat King Cole's "L-O-V-E" as the song, taught it to the younger girls, and then we went off to perform.  Our widower neighbor, the 95 year old widow across the street, and our elderly home teacher and his wife were tickled a festive pink by the show they got on their front lawns! 

And here I am at a loss.  Shall I tell you that Abdiel was in his pajamas until 4 pm and ate so many cookies and ran outside unshod to such a degree that he woke up ill and had to stay home from church?  Or shall I make you all jealous revealing that we capped the weekend with a trip to the gym and studying languages side-by-side?  If your skin tends toward a greenish hue, please read the first sentence only and congratulate yourself on being a far better parent than I.