Stuff My Mom Taught Me

• Grammar matters.
  
  
• Gifts should be personal and well-thought out. Listen carefully all year long to come up with the perfect Christmas gift.
  
  
• Study your kids. Know them. Know their interests, abilities, strengths, weaknesses, habits. Enjoy your kids at every stage.
  
  
• Lock the door. Including the deadbolt. All the time.
  
  
• Life should be narrated through songs. Life is, after all, a musical.
  
  
• Each of your children should have at least one unique and potentially embarrassing nickname (“Wee One”, “Squirt”, etc.)
  
  
• Manicure scissors work better than nail clippers on newborn fingernails.
  
  
• Be unashamedly affectionate toward your husband in front of your children.
  
  
• Auburn rules.
  
  
• Christmas music should be played from October through January, and the whole month of August, and random times in between.
  
  
• Pray without ceasing for your husband and your children.
  
  
• Never put your husband down in front of others. And even though you may disagree with him - and it is okay to voice that to him - in the end you support him. You are his biggest fan, ally, and confidant.
  
  
• If you don’t like your first name, you can change it and then refuse to answer to anything but the name you have chosen for that day. Rachel. Monique. Tessa. The list could go on indefinitely.
  
  
• Listen to people. Really listen to them. And give them feedback. Conversations are not one-sided. Encourage others every opportunity you get.
  
  
• Call when you get there. And when you’re halfway there. And at least two other times before you get there.

This is what my mom looks like (from Proverbs 31)…”The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not evil all the days of her life…She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue…Her children rise up and bless her; her husband also, and he praises her, saying: ‘Many daughters have done nobly, but you excel them all.’ Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.”

That’s what I want to look like, too.

Thanks, Mills, for showing me what a wife/mommy is supposed to look like.

Happy Mother’s Day.