Because we're cute!

About a month ago, we (finally!) got some new family photos. Huzzah!

There's this whole big story about the perfect outfits that I gathered and how they each perfectly represented each of our family and yet still managed to coordinate appropriately and actually work together and how it was going to be amazing and how that plan went out the window when I procrastinated and it got cold and all of those outfits were actually summer outfits and then I had to try again to find things we would all wear and sort of coordinate and then how I just gave up and tried not to have a nervous breakdown about it and then it got even colder for the day of the photos and how I really don't like that pink zipper in the pictures ... but I won't bother you with that story.

Instead, I'll just show you some cute pictures! We have about a gazillion, so it was hard to choose what to share, so I'll just post a few of my very favorites, including an individual shot of everyone. Aaaaaannnndddd...

[And it turns out that my baby woke up, so computer time is over, so you'll just have to start with the pics I've got so far, our individual shots! Enjoy!]

Spa!

 Today the girls gave me a spa day:

-foot bath with peppermint foot scrub
-foot scrub with pumice
-awesome toenail painting with about seven different colors
-hand massage with lotion
-fancy hairdo
-makeup
-shoulder massage

I felt very loved.

Conversations with the Doctor

Doctor (every single time we have a doctor appointment for a baby): How’s he* nursing.

Me (unless it’s the first week or two): Fine.

Dr: How’s he sleeping?

Me (lying through my teeth): Fine.

[Alternately: Me: Like a baby.**]

Dr: And how many poopy diapers?

Me (every single time!): (First there’s panic—oh no! Should I be counting these things? Weighing them? Marking some sort of tally? Then there’s a reality check. Hello? You just discovered that he gained two pounds and weighs in some epic high percentile. He’s clearly fine. Why does this matter? Then there’s fear of judgment. She’s going to think I’m a bad mother if I don’t know! Then, finally, there’s the vague reply.) Um, I don’t know. Enough?

Dr: (always pressing the issue!) About how many would you guess?

And then I make up some random number just to make her stop asking.

Except this last time, when here’s what I really said: Just tell me what number I should say here so that it seems normal.

Dr: They usually have between a couple and maybe eight per day.

Me: Okay, we’ll go with six.

And that’s my strategy from now on. What do you want to hear, Doctor? Oh, that’s what you wanted? Well, it just so happens that’s exactly what my kid is doing.

The end.

* Or “she,” of course.

** Which is to say, not very well at all.

I Know You Didn’t Mean It, But ...

Cuter than feral goats.

Look, before I tell you some very honest and sticky feelings, let me start by saying it’s not your fault. If you’ve said these things to me, I’m not mad at you or offended or anything. I probably don’t remember it was you! 

But let me add that I’d love it if you wouldn’t say it in the future. I’ll still love you if you do, but just so you know, you’re going to send me home bawling my eyes out. 

Okay, so what is it that you may or may not have said? You said, “Sure, this stage of parenting, with littles and all, is hard. But when they’re older, it just gets different hard (or even harder!). The worries are different, but at least as bad (or worse).”

Now, I understand you meant to be comforting but also realistic. You wanted to remind me that I won’t always have to be watching my baby to make sure he doesn’t fall off of whatever precarious place he’s climbed onto and crack his head open. You’re reminding me that diapers will one day be a thing of the past. Someday soon I won’t feel like a Sherpa with baby on one hip, three bags on the other, holding a toddler’s hand, and climbing up and down the co-op’s stairs (so many stairs!). I get that’s what you’re trying to do. 

But this is what I hear: “You will never ever get a break. There will never be a moment when you get to relax and feel like you’ve accomplished something good. You will never feel good about parenting. Every time you start doing something well, things will just get worse. You think you’re struggling now? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

This is what it feels like: Imagine a person drowning in the ocean, seeing the shore from a distance too far to reach. She’s sputtering and splashing and terrified and hoping she can somehow make it to the sand so she can just breathe air for a minute or two.

And you tell her, “Sure, that’s nice. But when you get to shore, there are hordes of hungry man-eating goats all over the beach. They’ll take longer to kill you than drowning will, and it will probably hurt more (they have small mouths and teeth, you see). So you might as well enjoy drowning.”

Not super helpful.

Next time maybe try pointing out the breathtaking vistas on the beach. Note that there are a few patches of sand that aren’t feral-goat-infested. Even if you’re lying to me. Even if every square inch is full of teeth and hooves. Just lie, please. Thanks.

Parenting and Courtship, according to the six-year-old

On the subject of parenting:

* When I have kids, I will let them build mattress forts and leave them up for a long time and sleep in them.

* I won’t make them clean their room ever. I will not give them any jobs or cleaning to do. Well ... maybe I’ll give them table jobs.

* I will let them do table jobs after bath so that they don’t have to wait to do baths. Or if they want to read or do other activities first, I will let them do that.

* I will let them stay up as late as they want so I can stay up too!

On the subject of her future husband:

* He will have to be okay with how I run the house. Before he proposes, I will make sure he doesn’t mind if I let the kids do table jobs later.

* I will make sure that he’s like me, that he likes to stay up late and parent like I do.

I’m looking forward to finding out how this all turns out for her in a couple decades.

Gingerbread in June

Because why not?

I've never made gingerbread before, and the kids wanted to do something tasty. I don't remember how gingerbread came up, but we decided to go for it.* We found a recipe that even suggested the shape of the pieces and such. It turned out easier to make the dough and harder to actually fit things together than I thought it would be. Learning new stuff! YAY! Next time we make a gingerbread house, though, I really want to make a gingerbread hobbit hole.

We all got a side to decorate, and we used Coriel's cake-spinner-thing that she got from her cake decorating class. So, win!


*Lest you're in the background thinking how cool and spur-of-the-moment I am, let me add that our plans had been cancelled that day, and the kids were sad, and I had to really gear up mentally to do it. Meaning it took me several hours to get up the oomph, and it was after I was already prepared to do something different and fun that day. 

Koa's side. It's a door. Which should be obvious, right?

I have always wanted to do the shingles on a gingerbread roof. Now I have! They started out better than they finished. :)

Brice's side. Awwww!

This is Coriel's heart door. See the doorknob?

My hand-cut gingerbread man.

Addra's roof piece.

A glance at the whole thing, sort of.
In front: Koa's lion/hippo/not sure what it is, but he was determined that it stand up next to the house.
In back: Coriel's happy heart person.
The plate we're working on: Yes, it is indeed the plate that I made when I was six years old. You can't see it, but it has my standard pregnant unicorn on it. All my unicorns back then were pregnant-looking (though not actually pregnant).
The blue rim underneath is the cake decorating wheel thingie.

Squirrel Antics

We have a bird feeder that the squirrels had started getting to, so we moved it higher up the window in the hopes that no squirrels would be able to find a way to reach it anymore. Then, a couple days ago, I heard a thud, so I ran out to the kitchen to see what had happened. This is what I saw. (The bird feeder itself had been knocked to the ground.)

The poor squirrel was breathing hard and clearly freaking out, thinking, "Why do I always get myself into these messes? What am I going to do now?"

 

A minute later, his last claw slipped, and he fell some more. This time, oh joy, he caught himself by sinking all his toes into the formerly lovely mesh of our screen window. But again, he was stuck. Another few moments, and he slipped and fell the last few feet to the ground. Obviously he wasn't hurt, but I sure hope it teaches him to avoid our bird feeder from now on!

Miracle(s) of the Ceiling Fan

Home ownership. Ah, the joys. Every week there's a new adventure in "this was really not installed correctly the first time." I blame MacGyver. A whole generation of us grew up thinking there was no need for appropriate materials. A wad of chewing gum and a paperclip, and voila! Fixed.

So, for example, our coat closet has been nearly impossible to shut correctly for months, if not years. This week, I finally decided to figure out what was going on. It turns out that the screws that someone had used to replace one of the bottom hinges were completely wrong. They were really long and threaded on the end but not toward the head. The closet door, of course, is mostly hollow with just a half inch or so of solid wood to screw into at the beginning. So the screws went in with grippiness (a technical term) but then had nothing to grip with when it actually mattered. I took those screws out and replaced them with ones that worked.

Sadly, because I didn't have matching screws for the job, my replacements--though they work--are also, essentially a juryrigged job. Thank you, MacGyver.

We also have a pipe that was installed--by a licensed professional, ugh--that is not correct to code. We can't get hold of him to fix it. There's also the fact that nearly every door in our house has had problems, the really cheap matte paint throughout the whole house that looks disgusting at this point (because, hello!, children), the fencing that we had to replace when we moved in and that was not well-done (the gate is impossible to latch anymore; it hangs too low), and the wallpaper in the bathroom that someone just painted over instead of removing.*

But this week, we finally conquered one of the Things That Should Never Have Happened. The outdoor ceiling fan and light fixture.

Here's the thing: When you put up a fan outdoors, you're supposed to use an outdoor fan. Outdoor fans have nice covers that keep out the birds. Outdoor fan blades are not made out of cardboard that wilts and droops. Outdoor fans are meant to be used ... outdoors.

Our old fan/light combo was awful. I mean, the birds liked it (except that dead one last year that I found just hanging from it, upside down, stuck in all the nesting materials that were dangling from the motor housing--but that bird probably just died of old age). At least one new generation of offspring called that place its home. But we never used it, and it looked like the plague was coming for it. So we finally bought a new one, and I began to install it.

Look, I know everyone makes jokes about IKEA instruction manuals, but I think those IKEA manuals are amazing. I have never had a problem with them. The instructions for this Harbor Breeze fan, on the other hand--nope. And it's not the first ceiling fan/light kit I've put up, so I do have some basis for comparison. To be honest, actually, I think the thing could have been constructed to be easier to put together. It was surprisingly difficult, especially compared to the ones I've done in the past.

This is where we finally get to the miracle portion of the story.

In the process of removing the old fan, I was supposed to save the screws that attached to the outlet box so that I could attach the new fan. I knew this. But I was just not thinking very well, and so I allowed them both to drop to the ground (of our deck, which has slats that things can fall between). Then I got down from the ladder and actually threw one of them away in the bag full of garbage (including tons of nesting materials) from the old fan. I could not find the other.

And suddenly I remembered that I was supposed to save them. Argh. I hunted around the ground, tried to sift through the garbage bag, and couldn't find either. I had to give up for a while and figure out what to do (also to feed those pesky children who keep insisting that they need to eat occasionally!).

Fast forward to hours later when I explained the problem to Brice and he suggested we use our uber-strong magnet to try to find them. I found about five or six screws in the nesting junk, and it looked like one of them might be it. But only one. We needed two. So we sifted a little more, sorted again, and suddenly there were two. Seriously, I really don't know how we found the second one, but we did. It was just there. Miracle!

I went through the next several steps of installation, did all the wiring, and got the fan blades ready to attach. The design for this was really bad. It was extremely difficult to attach the fan blades because of the positioning of everything. I tried and tried, and I kept dropping the screws! This time I knew it was bad, so I put a rug under me to catch things, but it was still going badly. I dropped one that rolled off to who-knew-where. I got down to look around a bunch, and again, just when I'd sort of given up, I turned and saw Ammon playing with it. Yay!

Anyway, making a long story short, it was a little thing, but I really believe we were blessed with little miracles to help us finish the project. And now we have a nifty new ceiling fan/light that is meant to be used outdoors. Hooray!

* By the way, despite all the frustrations that sometimes attend home ownership, I'm so grateful that we have the opportunity. Our home has been such a blessing, and I'm grateful that we found it and grateful for our neighbors and friends, etc. But there are the downsides.

Recent Epiphanies

1. I realized this week that with six people in the house who usually wear clothing, we produce a load of dirty laundry almost every day. Nudism is suddenly looking more appealing.

2. I was sitting on the couch, rocking a bit in discomfort, and wondering what fresh horrors my period was going to visit upon me this month, when something occurred to me: I'm only thirty-six. That means I have ten years more of this, give or take. Ten. Years. I just ... bleh.*

3. We do not have a psycho neighbor who keeps sawing away our aluminum ties that Brice keeps putting on our fences. Hooray! Apparently squirrels like to chew on soft aluminum. Squirrels. Sigh.

4. Other things that happen when you have six people: You can easily eat an entire cantaloupe in one meal. You have to peel more than three clementines. You go through a LOT of water. Also, dishes. You rarely have as many leftovers as you think you will. Your dining room table that seemed so big when you first bought it now seems like a regular size. There is six times the amount of fun and silliness, chaos, and laughter, and tears, and joy.

5. Today is the day that Mormon Lit Blitz posts my story! That means I should be putting some sort of effort into advertising it, right? Because writers need to practice self-marketing? So here's me advertising. (I'm sorry to say that I'm going to send you on a link parade because it's much easier for me than re-copying all the pertinent info here, so ... sorry, not sorry.)


*Warning: In case you were considering giving me all sorts of wonderful advice about how to make periods less awful, probably don't bother. Either I've already read and dismissed it, or it would require suddenly becoming a new person (e.g., drink more water, eat healthier, lose weight, exercise more, etc., etc.--all good advice, but all obvious, and if I'm not succeeding at these things for general health purposes, it's not going to suddenly happen because I have lousy periods).**
**Double extra warning: Really, really don't comment if you're just going to say how wonderful periods are and I should really embrace them because womanhood! motherhood! yada yada! If you are going to say something like this, you should just be grateful that you're saying it from a safe distance.

Scattered Thoughts

I’ve started avoiding blogging again because I only have little bits and pieces to tell, not any sort of coherent narrative of really anything. But that means stuff is piling up, so we’re doing another random pile o’ junk post. (Also, I started this a week ago, so it’s all old news, but I’m not going to try to fix any weird verb tenses or time references. Ptui.)

Major Minor Miracle. Yes, I know “major minor” doesn’t make sense, but here’s the thing: it was a total miracle to me, and really huge for that particular moment in my life, but it’s also ridiculously small. Yesterday I was so stressed out over preparing for our co-op’s class fair that is happening tomorrow. I had a list of performances on a sheet of paper, and I needed it so I could type up the programs for the fair, but I couldn’t remember where I’d put it. I’ve been on high stress about this activity for a while now, and this was the last straw. As I searched, I prayed—please, please help me find it. I looked in every spot I could think of that it could have possibly ended up, and I finally hit the last spot—the car—and it wasn’t there.

I came back inside the house feeling utterly defeated and on the verge of tears. Again I prayed. Please. Then my eyes wandered over to our fireplace mantle, where our family yearbooks are lined up, and there was the paper, sitting with the yearbooks. Exactly where I had put it and completely forgotten it almost a week ago. I was so grateful.

Koa the Earthling. This just barely happened—Koa walked out into the living room with a box on his head. He told Brice he was an earthling.

The Anthology! My latest gigantic and insane project is finally finished and printed and distributed! I’m enormously proud of it. It’s a collection of stories written by the teens in the writing class I’ve been teaching at co-op this last year. I’ll be posting more about it on my other blog soon and I’ll link there if I can remember. But let it just be said that it was a large undertaking and I am so thrilled to be done (but also thrilled to have done it).

Short Fiction. Speaking of writing, I have been returning to short fiction a lot lately and really enjoying it. It’s been so much fun, and I think I’m going to spend more time in short fiction for the next little while. I have several places I’d like to submit things to, so we’ll see.

Mormon Lit Blitz. Also speaking of short fiction, go look here! Pay particular attention to the entry for June 10th.

Mother’s Day. Brice is so wonderful. He made Mother’s Day quite lovely, as he always does. This year he made me a delicious breakfast frittata and said, “Fri-tada!” Complete with a “tada” gesture. It was pretty great, but it doesn’t translate on paper very well. Also, he bought me a lock-picking set! Yay! Now I can start learning a new skill. It comes with a see-through lock, which is pretty cool because then you can actually see the mechanisms, which I’ve never really understood before.

I love this about Brice—he is always supportive of my whims and desires to expand my learning, even when it’s silly.

Compliments. Okay, this is probably weird, but I keep two compliment files—one is informal, in my memory, and the other is actually in a file in my email. The email file is where I put emails or facebook messages or other communications that people sent me that were really touching and made me feel all glowy and happy. I get to go back and refer to it occasionally when I’m feeling particularly crappy. The other file is my internal list of the weirdest/funniest compliments I’ve ever received.

This last week, I got to add two potential compliments to the weird file.

1. As part of our class wrap-up, I was asking the teens what their future plans were with writing. Many mentioned how they felt about the class (overall positive), but this was my favorite: “It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.”

2. Driving home from church on Mother’s Day, Brice and I were talking about how our various parenting abilities had improved since the beginnings. I mentioned that I was much better with small children than I used to be (though still not very good), and he replied that he thought I was “pretty decent.” Which was both honest and amusing, given that he said it on the day we’re supposedly telling all the mothers how incredibly awesome they are. But actually, “pretty decent” felt like a pretty great compliment. It was real and completely believable (not like “you’re the best with babies!” which would just be a lie).

Must update photo! Holy crumbs, I just looked at the photo that’s on our blog header, and we are two babies behind. Yikes. I really need to fix that. Someday...

The end. Oh so many times in the past little while I’ve thought of something to add to a blog post, but I never do remember them long enough to add. So we’ll just end here.