Coming Home

John, Glo and I have been eagerly anticipating this summer for one reason:  everyone is coming home!  Ethan and Rebecca will be living with us since they've graduated and have no good reason to stay in Utah, no child is serving a mission including Mark, and Hannah will have finished her freshman year at BYU.  Such an exciting time!

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  Everyone is home, and boy has it been a whirlwind...and a HUGE adjustment for me.  I've never had problems with my kids coming and going, but I think The Three Musketeers (John, Glo and I) have gotten used to our routines and the quiet of the household.  Having four adult children all move in at once has taken some flexibility, something which I have not as yet mastered.  There are good AND bad things so here's a short list of some of the gems I have learned so far:

Adult children do what they want, and no amount of guilt, persuasion or begging on my part will change their minds.  Really, this just all comes down to Mark.  We knew at the beginning of the summer, he was considering going out to Utah to spend time with Niki.  I threw every reasonable dart at him as to why this would be a bad idea, but with no hope.  He was going.  Everyone felt badly about it, especially John, Ethan and Glo, but it didn't matter.  He was going.  Unlike being the parent of a young child, or even a teenager, I cannot control his actions.  This has been a hard lesson for me.

Adult children motivate themselves (and take the pressure off me).  Within days of getting here, Ethan, Mark and Rebecca had jobs.  Not part-time, maybe-I'll-make-some-money kind of jobs, but 40 hours/week jobs.  It's AWESOME, because I don't need to do anything.  They find them and secure them all themselves.  Woot!

Just because you raise a child to act a certain way, don't think they will continue all of those habits into their adulthood.  You know, some children get it--keep your room clean.  You will feel better about yourself, and your mother will feel happier about putting you up for the summer.  Makes sense, right?  Hmmm, not in the minds of some children.  Okay, not in the mind of Mark.  And don't even get me started on Ethan and his constant use of his phone.  We like to tease him about his statement, made just one day after he was released from his mission:  "Technology is evil."  Right....

Adult children are not clones of your adult self.  Just because I feel a huge responsibility to wake early in the morning and start my day, my adult children do not feel the same (especially after staying up well past midnight either playing video games or talking over Skype to girlfriends).  The trick for me is not welling up with anger as I take care of every household chore before they even roll out of bed.

Adult children return less selfish.  Ahhh, the not-so-good-old-days when my teenagers had a hard time rejecting the natural egocentricity of teenage dom.  Now, when I head out to weed the garden, it's not just my two hands, but four or five other sets of hands.  I can come down in the morning and find the kitchen cleaned up and the house tidied from the night before.  They are happy to attend their sister's end-of-the-year concerts. I can have too many things to do at one time, and Hannah will step in and take care of anything that needs to be done.  And all of this is done with nary a single eye-roll, or sigh (something that we can still see and hear from our dear Gloria) :-)

Adult children are insanely fun to have around.  This may be something personal to each household in how this works, but because my kids aren't in school, they are happy to play games at the drop of a hat.  Or chime in on a belted-out, three-part chorus of "Let It Go" with the windows down, while dropping off their little sister at school.  Or go bowling.  Or take naps!  They laugh at our dogs and cats too (reminding John and me that we actually DO love our menagerie).  They are up for anything and everything.  I love it.

Puppy bench pressing.  Well, Hootie was grabbed into the mix, but I'm not sure he was too happy about it.  And I do believe Rebecca was lifting a much larger heft....

Adult children can be motivational to have around.  Each morning, I hope and pray that Hannah and Mark will accidentally sleep in so that I don't have to go to the gym.  Nope, they always pop up at the last minute, dressed in their work out clothes.  Have I ever been able to say "no" to them?  Nope.

I don't remember how far we ran that day, but judging by our crazy, sweaty bodies, it was a good distance!

Adult children eat far more than their former (aka smaller) selves.  And add to that they eat much healthier food.  Those weekly trips to the grocery store when there are only three of us at home?  Uh yeah.  Those are a thing of the past (at least until school starts again).  I can hardly keep the fresh fruit in the fruit bowl, and leftovers are rare.  There's a huge sense of relief when John offers to take us all out to dinner!

It's all been good.  We've worked it all out, coming back together again.  Except that Mark left us yesterday for the summer, and Hannah has already started working at Interlochen for the summer.  No doubt, I will be crying the day they all leave and return to their own lives again.