Kathy is a mom

Kathy put together a lovely brunch for our moms this year.  She gave each mom a bouquet of chocolate-dipped strawberries (she's amazing).  I told everyone that today Kathy cleaned the house and slaved in the kitchen, so it was just like any other day.  I almost got booed out of the room.

She rocks my world.  She keeps our house standing.  She teaches Claire Portuguese and ASL and sometimes English.  Claire can say "here" in Portuguese (aqui), "more" in ASL, and "doggie" in baby-English.

She's signing that we're "losers" because we haven't given her a nap.

It's just amazing that Kathy trusted me enough to take half of my DNA and make a little copy of the two of us.  I'm glad we chose each other.

Did you know that a woman can carry a child for nine months, suffer an excruciating labor for hours on end, deliver a perfectly healthy baby, and still feel like she hasn't done anything worthwhile?  Women are so weird.  But I love them, especially my two girls.

We need to celebrate the wonderful women in our lives, because they don't get paid for doing their jobs.  They don't get medals or honors for wiping snotty faces, potty-training, cleaning, and teaching.  They just get tired.

I feel like that guy who stands at the pulpit on fast Sunday, and tells his wife that he loves her.  What a lame-o.  Tell her, not the congregation.

I'll have Neal A. Maxwell finish this up:
"When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time. The women of God know this."

we're all growing up: an update

I swear baby girl grew up during her nap today—like she was a baby when I tucked her in and two hours later, she was taller, older: a little girl.

I'm not nostalgic (she's not THAT grown up: she doesn't walk yet and hasn't yet mastered the physics of spoons). I'm just realizing that every day is a serious gift.

We're trying to take advantage of those gifts in our own ways. A quick update:

Our not-so-baby girl recently conquered an ear infection and her fear of strangers while expanding her sign language vocabulary and capacity for at-home destruction.

Her dad sold his Xbox and used his freed-up time to start two new blogs, study for the GRE, and take up Arabic classes again.

Her mom wrote drafts of two new stories, read six books this month, and had a tickle-fest this afternoon with a certain baby who grew up so much during her nap that she can now put on her own sunglasses, thank you very much.

We're excited she's growing. We just hope she doesn't grow up so fast that she's a teenager by tomorrow morning.

a mom hangover

Baby girl and I got sick last week (simultaneously gross and wonderful: baby girl barfed everywhere and then just wanted to snuggle in my lap while I watched tv).

The stomach flu messed with our sleep schedule. Baby girl's back to waking up every two hours—just like a newborn. How on Earth did we function back then? I get up in the morning with a thrumming head and burning eyes. And everything that Christopher does while he's getting ready for work is SO LOUD. He says I have a mom hangover.

Which is fine. I so expected lack of sleep to be part of parenthood that I even wrote an essay about insomnia and mothers while I was pregnant (during which I discovered an incurable form of insomnia that's only made worse by sleeping pills, for real).

A lot of other things have happened around here—I had a birthday, we went snowshoeing for Valentine's Day, Christopher downloaded every free book he's ever wanted onto his new Kindle—and maybe I'll blog about them. But right now, I'll leave you with a picture of the cutest girl I've ever met and then I'm going to bed early. It's the best plan on a day you go to get your hair cut and fall asleep while your hair is being shampooed.

dinosaur burritos and parenthood

 












This might look like another braggy felting post. I'll own it—it kind of is. A three-year-old we know was having a dinosaur birthday party and how could I NOT make him a little brontosaurus with purple dots on the bum?

 But I've been thinking about more than just bragging: After I finished making the dinosaurs and their lake and berry bushes, I rolled them up in their felty home like a burrito and wrapped the whole thing in tissue paper.  

A few days later, I heard that instead of giving the dinosaurs drinks from the lake, or making them fight each other, or any other thing I imagined he might do with them, this adorable kid kept rolling up the dinosaurs and unrolling them—like, what else would you do with them, really? I think that's adorable. And it's one more tiny image I can tuck away in my brain to remind myself of something I keep needing to learn. . .

I don't feel like I adjusted to motherhood very gracefully (and if you ask my husband about our conversation on Sunday, you might get him to admit that I still haven't). I love it, but I keep forgetting that kids put a spin on life that you wouldn't have thought up on your own.

Which is awesome sometimes. Like last night, I made my baby girl laugh so hard she snorted and fell over just because I turned my face every time she touched my cheek. I'm not funny, so it was weird to make someone laugh so hard by doing basically nothing.

Other times, it's not so awesome. Life is a bit confusing for people whose teeth are just coming in, or just falling out, who haven't yet figured out how to walk or read or use the toilet. Babies want to suck on batteries when they have a pile of toys (how on EARTH did she find one when all the batteries are locked away?). Or kids do things mine isn't even old enough to think of yet—like draw with rocks on cars, or microwave their barbies.    

I'm not so good at rolling with punches, but turns out, neither are they! They fall down and do dumb things and don't know how to fix them. Parenthood involves witnessing and assisting in that learning curve—and hopefully doing both with kindness and a semblance of composure. Maybe this won't sound helpful or even make sense to you, but I the next time I feel baffled and all my plans thwarted by the littlest person in my life, I'll try to remind myself to think of things a little differently—to just roll me up some dinosaurs.

ringing it in with a brand new tooth

  We rang in the new year with a teething, feverish baby. Instead of partying, we took her home, put her to bed, and looked at pictures on the internet of Nic Cage as Everyone (go here!) and watched Spy Kids, which had randomly turned up in our netflix queue (it was a lot better than I thought it would be).

Later, long after our new year's bedtime, I got up to rock her while she bawled in her sleep.

And the day after that, we tried watching a movie with Christopher's sisters before they left town. But baby girl didn't want to, so she screamed nonstop for half an hour until we just gave up and went home.

Conclusion: Teething is a terrible idea.

I know lots of you have great advice (which you're welcome to leave in the comments). In return, I'll pass on the best advice I've ever received, which my sister-in-law's boyfriend said teasingly, and which helped me not take myself so seriously: "You know that every time a baby cries, it reflects poor parenting. You should take her screaming very personally."

Oh, I had. I had even worried we had ruined her somehow. I asked Christopher, "Is she normal? What did we do to make her scream like this all day long?"

We didn't do anything. Her tooth did—at least for a few days. And now that it's popped through the top gum, she's back to her adorable self. She even woke up from a nap happy yesterday instead of screaming—a thing she had not done for at least a week.

A happy new year, indeed.

Big and little devils

I've noticed a universal trend: All parents force their kids to eat vegetables.

I should say "try" to force. Kids are notoriously resistant to force, and will sneak, fight, or throw a fit to avoid it, like the cake story from hyperbole and a half.

I have seen this disturbing trend (even among awesome parents that Kathy and I admire and try to emulate) often enough to realize something was wonky. Then Elder Bednar spoke at stake conference a couple weeks ago, and his wife told a story about, you guessed it, forcing her kids to eat vegetables (It goes all the way to the top!). The prophet had come to eat at their house, and, it turned out, he didn't eat his vegetables either.

if you can name the game this picture came from, we can be friends

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This reminded me of an article I read in college by Melinda Sothern, Ph.D. Here's her ten steps to getting your children to eat healthy. My favorite are:

1. Don't restrict food.

3. Don't label foods "good" and "bad."

5. Don't nag.

6. Don't use food as a reward or punishment.

7. Eat family dinner.

9. Give your kids some control.

We may think our kids are little devils for disobeying us. But when we use force to compel people, even children, to do as we want, then we use Satan's tactics. And really, his tactics suck. So when your kids disobey your sucky tactics, they're really acting like little angels, or, more appropriately, warrior-angels who wield the sword of whining and throwing-fits to fight their demon-possessed parents.

Next time at dinner, when you feel like you're fighting a battle with your children, you are, and it began in heaven.

If you want to win the battle, use God's tactics. Allow your children to choose, have healthy foods available, and your children will develop a healthy relationship towards food.

everything's new

Baby girl is still new, so everything we do is a first, either for her (first smile, first hike, first trip to Ikea) or for us (first time we've felt okay about another person throwing up her dinner on us). A few highlights:

• First day at church. We dressed her in the gorgeous blessing dress my mother made 16 years ago when my little sister was born. And when baby girl's diaper could not contain her poop, I somehow saved the dress.
  

• We took baby gummi to her first craft fair to check out pretty pillows and paintings made by two of the loveliest ladies I know. She got a sweet nap in the stroller. And I got a belt made out of ties that makes my post-pregnant self feel skinny (it wraps around me twice!).
  

• My first Mother's Day. My brother (who just got back from India) gave the best Mother's Day talk I've ever heard. I had little tears in my eyes. And the other speaker? I couldn't tell whether or not he was trying to make women in the congregation feel like maternal failures for not raising ten children on the frontier as second wives.
  

• First time I've been without a camera for this long. Apparently, ordering a battery charger from Singapore is a bad idea, regardless of how much money it will save you. Ever since our camera battery died for good two weeks ago, we've taken lots of pictures with my laptop. How did I manage to snap a picture of baby girl's smile with Photobooth? Let's just say it's the first time she has ever heard me sound quite so goofy.
  

magic numbers

More than one veteran mother told me that six is a magic number: six weeks of new baby and then life will start to feel normal again. We must be slow learners at our house because today marks eight weeks since baby girl joined us. But regardless of the exact number, those mothers were right. Today I feel like I'm finally catching my breath. Today I feel more like myself. Today I'm loving this motherhood thing.

last night, when I sat down to feed the baby again...

Him: Didn't you just barely feed her?

Me: More or less. She ate two-and-a-half hours ago.

Him: Wow. That went fast.


I couldn't agree with him more. I feel like I've entered a zone where time is accelerated—no, not accelerated, just radically altered.

For instance, I know exactly how many days this baby has been alive (29), and exactly how many days until my brother comes home from a two-year mission in India (only 2 now!). But my mom has often had to tell me what day it is when she's come to see how I'm doing. And I failed to wish some important people happy birthday—not because I forgot their birthdays, but because I failed to really grasp that it was April until 3:30 this morning. Hello, folks—we're almost halfway through the month.

She looks so harmless. Who knew she was capable of bending time?