Julia blogs it like she sees it

The Five Senses

2012-01-28T16:22:00.001-07:00

Grace and Violet have been doing swimming lessons in the indoor pool at the community rec center close to our house. It is surprisingly relaxing to be there-- a huge warm echo-y space full of quiet splashy noises and voices muted by the huge volume of water.

We had a lovely snowfall last weekend that summoned everyone up to the ski resorts and burdened all the trees with a layer of glittering white. I wonder how many years of living where it actually snows it will take for me to not be utterly enchanted by the sight of it.

Lewis' skin and cheeks and feet and hands are so gorgeous and amazing I almost can't bring words to bear on them. The oxytocin rush from his rosy, velvety, perfect skin makes me swoon and I hope I can remember the exact feeling of kissing his dimpled knuckles or rubbing my cheek against his forever.
I mix up my all-purpose cleaner from a concentrate (this stuff, which I really like, FYI) and usually doctor it up with some essential oils to make it smell nice. I always put in tea tree oil because a) I like how it smells and b) it is supposed to be antiseptic to some level. I sometimes add in something else for kicks; this past time, instead of my usual lavender or rosemary, I used peppermint oil and now everything I spray smells like toothpaste.
We like red wine, but we don't like spending great quantities of money on red wine. Rob is sort of a fan of Tim Ferriss and last month saw this post about how to hyper-aerate your wine to make it better. You know how red wine is supposed to breathe for a long time in a decanter before you drink it? To expose a lot of surface area of the wine to the air, thus making it better? Doing this hyper-aeration thing is like taking that to a logical extreme. The way we do it is to pour a whole bottle of wine into my batter bowl and then put the immersion blender in it and run it for, I don't know, 60 seconds or so-- lots of wine getting exposed to lots of air in a very short time. We did a double-blind taste test (this involved two of Violet's opaque sippy cups) and it totally made a difference; the un-blendered wine tasted flat and bland in comparison. Yummier wine on the cheap!

Many Moons Ago

2012-01-24T07:39:00.004-07:00

Ten years ago this month, Rob and I got engaged! We had been dating about two years, doing the long distance thing for about 3/4 of that as I was in grad school in Austin and Rob was in med school in Dallas. I was at McDonald Observatory in west Texas for a late January observing run and Rob drove out there, all secretive and such, coordinating with the people who were there to surprise me. He surprised me on the catwalk of the 2.7-m telescope in the middle of the night and is lucky I didn't have a heart attack, because that is not exactly a place one expects to run into other people. Rob had a ring and the stars in the cold winter west Texas sky and it was all lovely and wonderful. Everybody say, "Awwwwwwww..."

Just engaged, in the west Texas dawn

A ring!

A while before we got engaged (in the summer of 2000, to be exact) we both went to Central Asia with Campus Crusade for a summer to teach English and work with college students. Unbeknownst to either of us, some of my roommates went around on the last day we were in the country taking pictures with themselves and random people holding this sign:

I decided not to put the one featuring a dead goat on the internet.

We had just been dating for about a couple months at the time. But then... my friends lost the roll of film! They were so sad. But then... another team from our group came to the same city later and found the roll of film in the apartment we all lived in! They developed the film and left the prints in a desk drawer where my friend found them, upon returning to the same city for about a year later! She brought them back to the U.S. and gave them to us after we got engaged and now here they are, for all of you to see.

Looks Like 2012 Is Here to Stay

2012-01-17T10:44:00.001-07:00

We are knee-deep in the new year and so far so good. Grace is back at kindergarten, Lewis weighs 20 lbs (20 lbs! At 4 months old! And is wearing 12-18 month clothes!), and Violet is somewhat unpredictable and perhaps a tad feral. This past fall was entirely consumed by adjusting to life with a new baby and getting Grace settled in at kindergarten and potty-training Violet. There was not much else on our schedule and I think this was a wise move on our part. As we have rung in the new year, I have felt more capable of expanding our life a bit, of perhaps driving children to an activity once a week and being at a certain place at a certain time. Thus, Grace is taking swimming lessons and Violet is doing a gymnastics class at the community rec center close to our house. The former is going more smoothly than the latter; Violet has had not much experience with structured, class-type environments and so far each gymnastics class has involved at least one screaming fit, refusal to sit on a carpet square, and unfocused wandering around the room. It's awesome, let me tell you.

This time last year I found out I was pregnant with Lewis. Can you believe that? A year ago he was a tiny tadpole-like creature, I was queasily miserable, and we were freaking out about the disruption of our carefully-laid-out adoption plans, while today he is this gorgeous squishy smiling baby:

What an unexpected joy... I can't imagine a world without him, the newest love of my life. (The love of my life who has shared a cold with me, the naughty boy.) We are still very uncertain about what will happen with our adoption plans. On the one hand, we still feel as passionate about adoption as ever and it has been something we've wanted for such a long time. On the other hand, I feel like I am bumping up against the ceiling of how many children I can cope with well. Love is certainly not a limited resource, but time is, and so is energy, I think. I know we don't have to decide right now and that having three children will get easier as they all get bigger and gain more independence, but it has been tough to meet everyone's needs in these months since Lewis was born. I think Violet has been the most lost in the shuffle, since her needs are not as immediate and intense as Lewis' but she is not as mature and self-sufficient as Grace. I think the two main areas she could use MORE in are a) cuddles and hugs and physical affection and b) stimulating and interesting things to do. There has been a LOT of free-form unstructured play at our house in the past few months. This is not a bad thing really, but I think works best when balanced with planned fun things to do. Hence, the gymnastics class (which she does love, to be clear-- she's just not very good at being part of a group/class yet).

Also hence, preschool, starting this Thursday. I have been researching preschools and getting my applications in around town at the ones that seem good and are close to our house and all that. It turns out that one of them has an open spot right now (a student moved away in the fall) and we've decided to take it and start Violet at preschool now, two mornings a week. It's a total hippie preschool, which I am fine with but will be a new experience for us as Grace has gone to more traditional preschools. They also call themselves a "creative arts" program and do lots of music, dance, theater, visual arts, etc. When we were visiting, the little class was chanting and clapping with the teachers, "Allegro allegro allegro aaaaaadaaaaagioooooo aaaaaaadaaaaaagiooooo..." I think she is going to have a blast. I also think she is going to be somewhat disruptive and havoc-wreaking, coming into this class that has been together since September and has their little routines and listens to the teachers and whatnot. She will be the youngest in the class and is not particularly mature when it comes to classroom skills. I think the hippie vibe of the preschool will be in her favor in that respect. They know where she is now maturity-wise and say they are totally fine with bringing her up to speed with everybody else. The director was saying she thought it would be 3-4 weeks of transition and then she thinks Violet will do great at participating and listening and so forth.

So starting this week, I now will be responsible for getting TWO children to school at regular times. I can do it! I think.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T09:08:00.007-07:00

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine;

Love was born at Christmas;

Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,

Love Incarnate, Love Divine;

Worship we our Jesus,

But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,

Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and all men,

Love for plea and gift and sign.

-Christina Rosetti

Three Years of Violet

2011-12-22T10:17:00.002-07:00

She is just knock-out drop-dead gorgeous, isn't she? It is Violet's birthday and she is 3 years old. We've been wishing her a happy birthday today and she responds, "Happy birthday to you too!" There was so much baby still in her at her second birthday, and so very little today. In the past year, she's weaned, potty-trained, and started sleeping the entire night in her own bed. (Well, most nights. She's actually been going through a bit of a rough patch sleeping-wise in the last week or so.) She is rock solid at identifying letters and numbers and almost as consistently can tell you what sounds letters make and count up objects.

She is so independent and self-sufficient, so confident and brave. Maybe more than anyone else in our family, she is her own person. This means she has no qualms at answering us, "No. Go away," when she is engrossed in something but it also means she is such a calm, collected soul when engaging the great world out there. She has a resilient toughness to her character but still a sweet toddler need for nurturing and snuggling that I hope she doesn't outgrow anytime soon. Who she is right now is amazing.

She calls pigtails and ponytails "Veggie Tales", although we are typically more of a Sesame Street and Sid the Science Kid house than a Veggie Tales house. At first, we had no idea what she was talking about when she was demanding these, leading to some great frustration.
She sometimes likes to sleep with a towel and calls it her "comfy night-night towel".
She dislikes wearing pants/leggings/etc and often outright refuses unless forced. She runs around the house in panties a lot.
She is a hair-twirler. I remember her wanting to play with my hair when she was a baby and now she will have both index fingers in her own hair, twirling in constant circles, when she is tired or stressed.
She loves to build big Lego structures and put together puzzles, often accompanied by a warbling song such as, "Building things building things building things." Sometime she will move to the piano to continue her song.

Oh, sweet, beautiful, goofy girl, I love you and I am so glad to be celebrating a new year of you.

It's All Teeth, All the Time

2011-12-21T14:39:00.065-07:00

So this happened:

Her first little lost tooth! It had been loose for several days, each day growing more and more wobbly. Actually, now that I think about it, the first thing we noticed is that her adult tooth there was starting to emerge, behind the baby tooth. I was about to call her dentist to see if this was a bad sign when the baby tooth started to get loose. Anyway, we had been talking to Grace about wiggling it back and forth and eventually yanking it out. MUCH to my surprise, one morning she asked me if I would see if I could pull it out. Grace is not the toughest of characters and has a pretty big fear of physical pain (the thought of shots at the doctor gives her lots of anxiety) so her request was pretty unexpected. I tried with my fingers a few times but couldn't get it, so then I made a little loop of dental floss to pull on it. I gave it one good tug downwards and OUT it came. Grace totally freaked out (I'm sure it hurt for a moment and there was a bit of blood) and I have serious doubts she will ever let me do that again. She did recover, of course, and is now happy about her new status and the four quarters she found in her tooth fairy pillow the next morning. (Is that the going rate for teeth these days? I have no idea.) The other bottom front tooth is loose too so we'll see how long it takes her to get that one out.

It is a bit of a mind-bender to have one child losing her bottom two front teeth while another one has his coming in.

He started putting his chubby little fingers in his mouth all the time, then stopped being able to sleep alone for any length of time, then the drool started, and then, in short succession, two sharp white teeth poked through his bottom gums. This is so early, right? He is just 3 months old! Some friends of mine were joking with me that either he was gestating way longer than we thought and he was born already 3 months old, or maybe he is headed for a career as a superhero because he has been exposed to some comic-book-style radiation that is making him grow up at super speed. Grace did get her first tooth at 4 months old (also on the early side) but Violet was more typical at 8 or 9 months. So anyway, little Lewis has been on the fussy side, not inconsolable but obviously uncomfortable (as well as drool-soaked). I think the worst is over for these two but it's just a matter of time until more appear.

I've been a bit under the weather as well, which is truly terrible timing (birthdays! Christmas!). I had a full-blown stomach virus Monday and still feel a bit iffy. And then probably because of the combination of being sick, being tired, being busy, and last night sleeping on my front for a while, I have a plugged milk duct for the first time in 4+ years of breastfeeding. Ow. My plan is to really rest and disengage from everything for the rest of today so that I hopefully can recover and heal quickly. Sadly for Robert, this means he is going to have to pick up the slack on some party preparation and cleaning and such. And on his birthday! Today is his birthday and tomorrow is Violet's, so we are having a party for them tomorrow evening with a little handful of people. And Christmas is SO SOON, you guys. I think I would feel much more ready to celebrate all these wonderful things if I hadn't gotten so ill. I will admit to feeling a bit behind.

Choppity Chop Chop

2011-12-13T10:58:00.001-07:00

The time has come, once again, for my dramatic post-partum haircut. Each time I've been pregnant, I've let my hair grow out because all those pregnancy hormones make it look especially full and nice and awesome. Then it gets even longer because after the baby is born I cannot easily go get a haircut, however much I might like to. Then all those hormones go away and sometime around 2-3 months my hair starts shedding LIKE MAD. Seriously, SO MUCH HAIR coming out-- a) it grosses me out and b) my hair starts to look kind of stringy and limp. Then, finally, I reach the point of being able to stand it no longer and go have it chopped all off:

Yay! I feel like a NEW WOMAN. This may have been the most dramatic haircut ever for me; she cut off about 5" of hair. I've found a stylist here that I like quite well who does mostly curly hair. I will admit that I liked the guy I went to in Dallas a bit better as he was some kind of curly-hair genius (hey look! something I like better about Dallas than Salt Lake City!) but this girl here is great too. And oh, how much happier I am when my hair has a specific style that looks like it was done on purpose... (I've mentioned before how I feel about too long hair or hair that has been arrived at by default.) It's still shedding like you wouldn't believe but at least there is less of it now and it looks better.

At around the same time when I chopped my hair, we attempted to go chop ourselves a Christmas tree. We decided to try one more time after last year's less-than-stellar results. We drove to a different Christmas tree farm than last time, although also about an hour away, and tromped around trying to see what we could find.

It was EVEN WORSE than last year, partly because it was so picked over (this was the weekend after the weekend after Thanksgiving) and partly because, well, I guess Utah does not grow the prettiest trees, in the style of the Pacific Northwest. It was so bad (and so freezing cold that day), in fact, that we left without one and drove the hour back to the city. We needed a few things at Costco so we stopped there. And look!

Costco had Christmas trees! "Fine," we sighed slightly defeatedly, and bought one. My photographic record of our Christmas tree journey ends here, but it was still DAYS until we had it up and decorated. We got the tree home and realized that our Christmas tree stand (which is this special swivel-y kind that we like a lot) broke last year and we had forgotten to order a new one. Rob ordered a new one and in the meantime we put the tree in a bucket of water in the garage. Then we proceeded to have a super cold snap with highs in 20s and the tree and its water froze. The first day I could still poke my finger through the ice in the tree's bucket, but by the next day the layer of ice was a good inch thick. By this time the weekend was over and all the rest of our tree efforts had to take place after Rob was home from work, i.e. in the pitch black darkness of December evenings at 41º N latitude.

Our stand arrived once our tree was good and frozen and that evening we managed to get the tree inside, after power saws were used in the dark and so forth. It was so frozen that when we unwrapped the twine holding the branches up, the branches just stayed that way. Over the course of the next hour it slowly defrosted and the branches dropped into a more Christmas-y arrangement. You could hear it if you put your ear next to the tree, these tiny pinging icy sounds. Also, it dropped an unseemly amount of needles, maybe because of being frozen? Or because Costco didn't have one of those shake-y machines that they have at Lowes or Home Depot? The next night we got the lights on, and the night after that, FINALLY, almost a week after we went to cut down a tree, it was finished and decorated. What an ordeal! I have never really seen the appeal of a pre-lit artificial tree but this year? This year I get it.

3 Months

2011-12-01T10:51:00.000-07:00

Lewis is three months old now. Today? Or yesterday? Since he was born on the thirty-first I'm not entirely sure when he would officially have another month under his wee tiny belt. Those hot late summer days when I was so hugely pregnant seem a million years ago and Lewis doesn't seem like an interloping newcomer but like he is exactly where he belongs, here with us.

I think I've finally gotten over calling him "her" and "she". Having never had a boy child before, using the correct pronouns took some getting used to. I was especially bad about this in the middle of the night in those first weeks. I was only half-awake and he was usually wearing something plain white or gender neutral that both girls also wore, so my sleepy brain was very unclear on exactly which baby this was and what his sex was. During the day, he's usually wearing something that is a more clear cultural signifier for "baby boy"and also I am at least somewhat more awake, so that's been less of a problem.

Lewis is a big, big boy. He was 8 lbs 6 oz at birth, then 9 lbs 1 oz at his 2-week doctor visit. We didn't go back to the pediatrician until his 2-month well visit, where he had shot up to 15 lbs 8 oz. I still can't believe that-- over 6 lbs in 6 weeks. He wore the 0-3 month clothes for about a month, then the 3-6 month clothes for about a month, and he is currently wearing 6-12 month clothes. He is not going to outgrow them immediately but they are certainly not that big on him. Maybe we'll get a full two months' worth of wear out of this set before he gets too long for the shirts to cover his belly or for the snaps to meet under his diaper. This is a totally new experience for us, as the girls were very average in their growth, especially this early. I have no explanation for this as he doesn't seem to nurse any more than the girls did and I don't feel like I have more or different milk. We're dealing with a bit of overactive letdown, just like I did with Violet, but it's not too bad and he doesn't seem as overwhelmed and troubled as Violet did. I remember feedings with Violet in these early weeks being stressful, brief, milky, spluttering affairs and it's not that bad this time, especially if I nurse him lying down and only nurse from one side per feeding. It all resolved itself with Violet after a month or whatever, and I'm sure it will this time too. He doesn't seem to spit up as much as I remember the girls doing, so maybe that is the secret to his amazing superbaby growth? He actually keeps more of it in his stomach?

His eyes are still very blue and we suspect that he may keep them. My eyes are green and Rob's are dark brown, so we always expected the dominant genes to win and that we would have all brown-eyed children. Grace's eyes were blue as a baby but we kept saying, "Oh, they'll probably change." Months and months passed and eventually we came to realize that she was going to keep them. Violet's eyes were that newborn gray at the start, of course, but they turned Rob's chocolate-y brown very early, before she was even one month old. Lewis' eyes are blue blue blue, much like Grace's, so maybe by some statistical fluke 2/3 of our children will end up blue-eyed.

His neck is getting very strong, he has just started to roll over from front and to back, and he smiles-- full-on huge open-mouthed toothless smiles of glee and joy. I too am full of joy at seeing him emerge from the cocooned curled-up world of a newborn into happy babyhood.

Advent

2011-11-27T15:04:00.002-07:00

Today is the first day of Advent, the season of anticipation and expectation. We've started playing Christmas music and have put lights up on our house for the first time. I'm... undecided as to whether it looks good or not, which is somewhat ironic since it was my idea. (Rob would not voluntarily choose to put up lights outside, naturally.) We're going to wait until next weekend to get a tree since the Advent season is especially long this year (a Sunday Christmas) and we don't want the tree to be too dry and crunchy by the time we want to light candles on it, but I definitely feel us starting to get ready, to anticipate. I think this time of year is full of expectation and anticipation for pretty much everybody in the western world, but if you're a Christian like I am, then we get to remember that the world waited once for Jesus to come to break in to the darkness and that the world waits again for him to heal all the brokenness forever and to make all the sad things come untrue.

I know I've said this before, but that just doesn't sound like a reason to fall prey to stress and materialism to me.

Or if you're in a more populist, leftist, and/or not-specifically-Jesus-based mood, you could occupy Christmas:

Wherever you're at today as we begin the Advent season, I wish you weeks of rich relationships, meaning, and celebration.

A Few Lists

2011-11-18T09:06:00.001-07:00

Things That I Neglected to Do Before Our Portraits Last Week

Lose 30 lbs of baby weight
Get my eyebrows threaded
Buy new foundation that is pale enough for me now that my pool-induced tan has faded
Get a haircut

Things That I Can't Find Around in Our House Even Though I Need/Want Them

our iPod Shuffle
the voucher for piano tuning that came with our piano
my 1st edition of The Tailor of Gloucester (has been missing since our move from Texas)

Things Violet Has Said To Me This Week

"I looking for my Daddy," upon waking up and coming upstairs
"Do we go peepee in our panties?!" which she thinks is a hilarious question since she knows the answer
"Somebody come and play..." sung in her little toddler warble (I admit that song is really moving to me)

Things I Have Done Recently for the First Time Since Lewis Was Born

Leave him (last weekend when I went to have a massage)
Go running
Sit down and play the piano for a while (see above RE: desperately needing tuning)

Some November Portraits

2011-11-15T10:49:00.003-07:00

Our friend Michael Friberg here in Salt Lake is a documentary/editorial photographer and is currently raising money to fund a photography project on Mormon culture. Both Rob and I think really highly of his work and we've wanted to ask him to do a photo session of the kids or all of us or something so we were excited to see that one of his backer rewards was a portrait session. We did our session last Friday at a little park close to our house and I am SO, SO happy with his work. I mean, seriously-- are these not gorgeous? I want to get them all printed huge and hang them around our house. (Perhaps I'll restrain myself to just a handful.) He posted some more images from our photo shoot on his Kickstarter page, if you want to see more. There are 11 more days in his Kickstarter project and you should definitely check out his project and consider backing it; there are lots of fun backer rewards.

And if you are local and looking for portraits, family or otherwise, I think that particular backer reward is fantastic, especially when you compare it to what you can spend to get good family portraits. For the curious, Mike gave us about 70 edited images from our session and we're allowed to print them. He might even be able to get things done in time for Christmas cards if you hurry!

Long Time No See, Blog

2011-11-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

Things have been rough around here lately and my ability to cope with life has been somewhat compromised, although (spoiler!) the fact that I am now editing photos and sitting down to blog means that I have turned the corner and life is more manageable than it has been for the past few weeks. Rob went out of town for an allergy conference in Boston for four nights, and being on my own with three children proved, ahem, challenging. I did have some friends come over in the evenings to help me with baths and bedtime and then to hang out with me; this helped tremendously and I am very thankful for them. However, I haven't ever been a solo parent with a baby this young before, not to mention two older children as well, so even with some help it was a blow to my equanimity.

On top of the travel, Rob has started working out regularly. The plan is for him to do a Crossfit class three mornings a week before work, which I think is reasonable for him/me/us. I have to get up at 5am on the days he goes to work out if I want a shower that day (which, and here is some insight into me as a person, I ALWAYS ALWAYS DO) and he is then not around to help with breakfast/dressing/etc, which is unfortunate but, you know, life is what it is. So one week he had three intro class things in the evenings (so he was not at home for those three evenings), then the next week he went to work out three mornings in a row to get in his three classes before he left town, then right when he got back in town he again went three mornings in a row to get them in that week. All this resulted in me getting up at 5am for three mornings in a row, then parenting solo, then when he got back I got up at 5am for three mornings in a row again. And then I fell over, dead from the HORROR of it all. No, actually, then we had a weekend and Rob was home and I went to have a massage and took naps and I feel much better about things. I did realize how small the margin has been on my well-being and coping with life, however. Hopefully Rob's new (laudable, admirable) work-out routine will be easier to deal with now that we are back to more normal life.

Now we just have to figure how I can somehow start working out regularly. We left the gym where we were members because it isn't convenient to go to that part of town now that Grace isn't at preschool at the same facility, and Rob has been wanting to do Crossfit anyway. (We can't afford Crossfit AND a gym membership.) It gets dark too early for me to go running when Rob gets home. Running on mornings when Rob doesn't go to Crossfit is a possibility, but I am thinking I may get a regular babysitter a couple times a week to go running and then do a video (Yoga? Pilates? 30 Day Shred?) in the basement. I've tried doing videos on my own and it has not gone super well, what with the baby and his unpredictable naps and the toddler and her desire to climb on me in downward dog. Sigh... I'll forgive them, though, because they are so cute.

Even without successfully exercising, the pregnancy weight is slowly, gradually coming off. (I really do want to exercise, though, because I want to be fit and trim and healthy, not just at some specific weight.) I am still wearing what I think of as my emergency postpartum jeans but they are getting big. They are two sizes bigger than what I was wearing before getting pregnant with Lewis, which is the SAME SIZE that I ended up in after my 1st and 2nd pregnancies. Actually, come to think of it, my final weight at week 39 or 40 was the same with all three pregnancies to within 5 lbs, even though I started from fairly different weights (Grace - lowest, Violet - highest, Lewis - in between). Biology is weird. I am a bit miffed that I have had to buy clothes in this depressingly large size THREE SEPARATE TIMES, because of course I didn't keep them. On the other hand, the clothes that I bought almost six years ago right after Grace was born would not be super stylish now. In some strange irony, the emergency postpartum jeans I have now in the largest size I have ever worn are "skinny jeans". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... Anyway, I like them and I wear them tucked into boots with loose tops. It took about two years for skinny jeans to look cute to me but I think I'm a believer now. Of course, I'd always rather wear a skirt since they are so much more comfortable, and just better in general.

RIP, Henny Penny

2011-10-28T10:38:00.002-06:00

I promise that this isn't becoming a chicken blog, but we had chicken tragedy strike last week! I was out running some errands and upon returning home, discovered one of our hens dead on our driveway. I jumped out of the car and ran around to the backyard and found one wire side of our coop ripped away and the rest of our hens wandering around the backyard. When Rob got home, it was like chicken CSI out there and he ended up deciding it was a good-sized dog that did it. It was a daytime attack, so probably not a nocturnal wild animal like a raccoon, and there is no way a cat could have done the damage to the coop. Also, our hen was killed but not eaten, which seems more consistent with a domesticated animal. It looked like the dog grabbed onto the chicken wire with its teeth and pulled until the fence staples holding it to the frame popped off. I had a bit of a panic attack this morning when I heard barking outside and suddenly thought, "Wait, none of our neighbors have a dog." I rushed out to our backyard and indeed, there was a dog there! Barking and going crazy! The repair job Rob did with sturdier wire and a lot more fence staples seemed to be working, but of course I ran him off. (Our garage is in our backyard; we do have this pretty metal gate over the driveway but had not been in the habit of opening and closing it every time we drove a car anywhere.) It seems very likely that it was the same dog who murdered poor Henny Penny.

So now we have lost one of our hens to a violent end. I feel mad and a bit sad about it. For us, the chickens occupy a space somewhere on the spectrum between pet and vegetable garden. Losing her was not like losing our dog a while back; they just aren't smart enough to really bond with you like a dog or cat or whatever. I do feel sad that we didn't protect her better and that she died a violent death, however. It was Henny Penny who died, the Buff Orpington who was our first to start laying and who we had just cured of being broody. A short life she lived, a fuzzy little chick a mere 6 months ago:

So what else has happened around here besides death? We had the first parent-teacher conference for Grace, where her teacher said she is a good friend and has a great love of learning. We are about two months into kindergarten now and I feel good about our decision to forego the magnet school in favor of our neighborhood school. Grace is really happy there and she has made great strides in reading and I like the community involved in the school. I talked to her teacher about the math being too easy (I think she could have easily done this work a year or more ago) and we'll see if the teacher can make some adjustments to help Grace develop more.

This is also spirit week at Grace's school, with days for dressing up differently all week culminating in them wearing their Halloween costumes today. One of the days she was supposed to dress like a nerd. I don't think she's ever heard that word so she asked me what it was and I told her it was a smart person who was good at things. "I guess we are all nerds then, sort of," she said. Yes, sweet Grace, we probably are. Rob had a bit of ire about the whole thing and I see his point. We want small children to think achievement in math and science and/or wearing glasses is something to be mocked? Anyway, our first thought was to get a child-sized Three Wolf Moon shirt, but then Rob had the fabulous idea to dress her as Steve Jobs. Voila! Wonderful, if I do say so myself.

Our church is changing its schedule and this weekend will meet for our main worship gathering on Sunday morning for the first time, as well as moving to a bigger venue. We had been meeting at 4pm on Sundays, which was AWESOME. Sigh... It will help with some logistical issues and make things more accessible for some people so generally it is a good thing, but oh, how we will miss our relaxed Sunday mornings... I am thankful we had over a year off from the normal routine, but this weekend it is back to working to get everyone out the door at a certain time. Last weekend we took our final relaxed Sunday morning to go out to breakfast at a great little place we can walk to. A) I love that we live somewhere with great places we can walk to and B) I love love LOVE going out to breakfast.

Hormonal Fowl and Staples

2011-10-19T17:20:00.002-06:00

One of our four hens went broody. Not all of our hens have even started laying yet and yet one of them decided that she would like to incubate some eggs and hatch some little chicks. She sat in the nesting box all day, even when there were no eggs there, all hilariously flat and short and spread out. Apparently this is a hormonal thing; the hormones of this particular hen must be a bit wonky because she started laying eggs a month before we expected her to and now, the broodiness. Apparently the likelihood of a hen going broody varies from breed to breed (our broody hen Henny Penny is a Buff Orpington, a breed known for a tendency to broodiness) and there are a variety of things one can try to cure a hen of this habit. We tried removing her from the nesting box several times a day and letting her run around the yard for a while. It seemed to work for a while, but a few hours later, I'd always find her back upstairs. We ended up raising the ramp of our coop (which looks like this, as a reminder) during the day with them all downstairs to force her away from the nesting box upstairs during the day. Then one evening, we forgot to lower the ramp to let them upstairs for the night and they spent the night (fortunately, a warm one without predators around) down on the grass. Ever since, Henny Penny has been cured! Right now, in fact, I can look out the window in our computer room and see four well-adjusted hens strutting around downstairs.

Lewis is seven weeks old now and we have reached the end of our new-baby meals. What a huge help that has been! Is there anything nicer to have a lovely dinner arrive at one's house when evening rolls around after a day of navigating life with a newborn and other small children? For a while there we were actually up to our eyeballs in food, because there were a number of weeks where we still had our CSA share. The last pick-up for our CSA was in early October so the slightly overwhelming deluge of wonderful organic produce has ended. What a first-world problem-- too much delicious, organic food! Whatever shall we do? And we haven't even really started in on the meals in the freezer from my baby shower.

Today Violet had staples removed from the back of her head. Yes! Staples! From my precious little girl's scalp! Last week, she was climbing over the arm of an upholstered chair and fell, hitting her head on the way down first on the wall, and then on our wooden baseboard/trim. The trim in our 1917 house is pretty thick and tall and substantial and it cut the back of her head. At first, I thought, "Oh, poor Violet, come here for a hug." In hindsight, she was crying more than usual for a tumble, but that wasn't my first thought. When I saw that she was bleeding, I thought, "Oh yes, the scalp bleeds so much when it is cut." Then I found the cut and thought, "Oh crap. That is not part of the human body that is supposed to be out in the open." It was only about 1" long but it was very deep, split wide open, and you could see the fat. Blech. She was really upset and in pain, and in adrenaline overdrive, I gathered all three of them up and headed to the urgent care place. Rob couldn't come because he had patients scheduled all afternoon, but he put a plea out on Facebook and a sweet friend from our church met me there to help manage all these children. They numbed Violet's scalp with some gel stuff and after about 5 minutes, it was obvious that she had forgotten all about it. They left the numbing gel on her for about 20 minutes and then took us back to put the staples in. Apparently they use staples instead of stitches under hair because you don't have to shave the area to put them in; they scar a little more but it doesn't matter because it will be under her hair. She had four staples put in and just cried a little during the last two, more from the weirdness of the sensation than from any pain, I think. After a day or so, she totally ignored them and her cut has healed very well. She cried a little more during the removal of the staples today than when they put them in, I think because she wasn't numbed up at all, but she did very well and her hair escaped without getting all matted or becoming dreadlocked or anything. So, all in all, a not-terrible conclusion to our family's first medical emergency type thing. Not that I am going to start encouraging climbing the furniture or anything.

I notice that in my last post I went on and on about a baby swing, and then immediately afterward I became obsessed with researching and then buying a double stroller. Ah, the siren call of baby gear... I am very happy with the double stroller we got (this one, in turquoise, with the second seat, which came for free on a promotion that they were running earlier this month) and I have since cooled on the idea of a baby swing. I am normally a huge babywearing person and I don't think Violet even got in a stroller until she was 8 or 9 months old, but the 1-mile walk to fetch Grace from school was turning out very uncomfortable with my newborn babywearing options, pushing Violet in my cheap jogging stroller. Once Lewis has head control, we can move to the Ergo or similar, which is quite comfortable even on long walks with a toddler, but for now I have a borrowed Moby and pouch and ring slings, none of which were cutting it for me. Anyway, I spent waaaaaaaay too much time and energy researching which double stroller to get; it is a big enough purchase that it stresses me out that I will pick the wrong one. I did eventually decide and now I am the proud owner of our first "nice" stroller, which is awesome. A daily-use stroller is something that it is worth spending money on for good quality, I am coming to believe. Using it makes walking through the neighborhood such a nicer experience and I have a rain cover and all the things I need to use it in all weather, so I am going to do my best to keep up with the non-fossil-fuel commute for Grace through the whole winter and in all weather. So apparently you can solve some problems by spending money.

As September Ends

2011-09-29T18:47:00.000-06:00

The high temperature tomorrow is supposed to be 90 degrees. Ugh! It has been really warm this September, which I shall have to remember to prepare myself for next year. This year June was very cool and September was very warm-- interesting. Even I will admit that Utah has lovely, lovely summers but I am totally over it now. This is exacerbated by the fact that I am nearly always carrying around or nursing or otherwise in physical contact with a little warm baby. I don't really desire to get space away from the little warm baby but gosh, I am ready to not be so sweaty all the time. Maybe it is partly hormonal as well? Bring on autumn!

Lewis is 4 weeks old now and doing quite well, full of sweet baby snuggles and a zillion poops a day, in stark contrast with Violet who at about a month old pooped every 4 days or something like that. Seriously, it is not uncommon for me to change his diaper 3 times in an hour when he is awake, and we have had diaper changes that have involved up to 4 diapers as he poops again immediately as I snap him up. Or as he squirts bright yellow breastmilk poop several feet out his butt while his diaper is off, which is a less desirable option. It is a toss-up which is worse-- that, or being peed upon, boy-baby-fashion. I am glad we're using cloth diapers because otherwise we would have spent a fortune on diapers by this point. Also, all this pooping is finally motivating me to switch to cloth wipes as well. Yes, I know, I know-- I've been cloth-diapering for going on six years now and have never used cloth wipes. I know everyone says you might as well do the cloth wipes if you are using cloth diapers already but for some reason it has seemed too hard until right now. Right now, when I am displeased by how many disposable wipes we are going through in a week.

And me? I am tired. Weary. Knackered, even. It befits the mother of a newborn, I suppose, but is not very fun. I have that eye twitch that I get whenever I am low on sleep. I feel like I spend a huge portion of my day walking and moving around and bouncing, because GOODNESS Lewis likes movement, as almost all babies do, I suppose. I am sort of considering buying a baby swing but am full of ambivalence about it. We borrowed a swing from friends with Grace and she liked it for, oh, two weeks or so, after which it made her cry and cry and cry. We didn't have one with Violet. I'm kind of a minimalist when it comes to baby stuff and also am snobbily horrified by the way most baby gear looks so I don't really want one at some level. At another level, I am lured by the siren promises of being able to put my baby down without him wailing. I want to throw money at the issue, thinking "Surely if I just buy the right thing everything will be fixed?!" If I did buy a swing, I know which one I would get: BEHOLD! A non-horrifying swing! There's a handful of them for sale used around town for about half that price. But would I be spending a hundred bucks for less than a month of use? Or worse than that, even? All of the listings for the used ones are all about how it's been used only 3 times and their baby didn't like it, etc.

I am taking a nap or at least resting most days, which is helping with the coping and the sanity and all. Most days after I pick Grace up from kindergarten and we eat lunch, I let the girls watch TV and curl up with Lewis for a nap. Ah, TV, what a wonderful/horrible crutch you are... Speaking of kindergarten, Grace is having a very good time, making new friends and navigating her new social world well. We've only had one school-related melt-down so far; it was the first day the teacher had them write in their journals and Grace was frustrated because she couldn't write EVERYTHING she had in her brain to express. She wanted to learn how to write the entire English language on her first try. I think she has since come to terms with the incremental nature of learning, to some extent at least, and kindergarten is going swimmingly. I am amazed with the strides she's made in reading in just four weeks there. She is doing so much better sounding out words and is much more willing to try and work hard to decode words. It's liked a trained educator knows what she's doing when it comes to teaching reading or something! Or it could simply be investing time on it every single day, which I admit I have never been good at here at home. That is true in almost every area of my life, actually; I have a hard time maintaining the discipline to do something non-urgent every single day. I can cook and do laundry every day but I have always struggled to be consistent at daily exercise or Bible reading or sticking with an eating plan or the like. Discipline is hard.

Lewis' Birth Story

2011-09-14T15:27:00.003-06:00

Disclaimer: TMI galore! Proceed no further if you are squeamish about childbirth-type gross stuff!

I had a midwife appointment on the Friday when I was just shy of 39 weeks. She checked my cervix and I was dilated 1 cm, which seemed like an encouraging development, although of course not a promise that anything was going to happen immediately. Over the weekend when I was exactly 39 weeks, I lost my mucus plug. This was the first time this rather startling and gross thing had happened to me, as I didn't lose it until I was in active labor with Grace and Violet. Again, sort of encouraging that this baby was getting ready to come, but not a sign that I was going into labor right then or anything.

A few days later, I was awoken around 4am Tuesday morning with contractions that were much more intense and painful than the Braxton Hicks ones I'd been having for weeks and weeks. When I timed them, they were about 10 minutes apart, though, so not really looking like active labor or anything. The contractions stayed pretty much like that for the rest of the morning so Rob went off to work at his normal time, promising to stay glued to his cell phone in case things changed.

That was a weird, weird day. The contractions definitely felt "real"; I had to stop whatever I was doing to cope with each contraction and they were intense enough that I did not think it would be safe for me to drive anywhere. The hours passed, and then passed, and then passed some more, and the contractions just wouldn't get closer together, staying at 8-10 minutes apart for the entire day. I started googling things and decided I was probably in prodromal labor or very slow early labor or, I don't know, whatever you want to call it. The internet informed me that it is not unheard of for this pattern of labor to go on for days (DAYS!). I did my best to rest and conserve my energy and even sleep, with about as much success as you would guess when every 10 minutes my uterus was clenching up in a painful-type manner. I didn't call my midwife until late that afternoon and she was sympathetic and nice but of course couldn't really do anything or tell me anything that I didn't already know. She did recommend that I do everything I could to stop or slow down my contractions and try to get some sleep that night, in the hopes of waking up in active labor in the morning or sometime that night.

That evening I took a warm shower, had a glass of wine, and watched some mindless TV, all in the hopes of calming things down. I felt super-relaxed as I crawled into bed that evening, and then, suddenly, LABOR! Within an hour of getting into bed, the contractions intensified and finally started getting closer together. Eventually they were about 5 minutes apart and at about 1am we decided it was time to go to the hospital. We called our friends who were coming to take care of Grace and Violet to come over (yes, at 1am-- what good friends...) and then drove up to the hospital. THAT was an uncomfortable drive, let me tell you; having a contraction in a moving vehicle is much, much worse than having one elsewhere.

We got all checked in and settled in our labor and delivery room; our nurse eventually checked my cervix around 2am and I was dilated 5cm. Hooray! I was really having a baby! My midwife came and she offered to rupture my membranes. I decided to try walking around for a while first to see how things were progressing on their own, since things would likely get a lot more intense once she broke my water. Rob and I hung out for about an hour, walking loops around the hospital floor, contracting every 5 minutes or so, and eventually laboring on the birthing ball. We were both quite tired at this point and in between contractions we both couldn't stop yawning; our nurse and midwife laughed at us and our contagious yawns making them yawn too. About 3am, my midwife decided to check me again and OH THE SADNESS, I was still 5cm! I was (and am still) very surprised by this because it felt like I was having good, effective contractions. The first check was with the nurse and the second was with the midwife; I wonder how much these things vary by who is measuring? Anyway, I may quibble but I obviously wasn't making huge progress so my midwife again broached the idea of rupturing my membranes. I decided to go for it, with the idea that I could move into the jacuzzi tub to labor if things really ramped up and got intense and I was having a hard time coping.

The jacuzzi tub was not to be, sadly, because when she ruptured my membranes, both the nurse and midwife made squeamish faces as my amniotic fluid was all full of meconium. I mean, a LOT of meconium. For the uninitiated, meconium is the poop that a baby stores up in his system in utero. They are not supposed to pass it until they are out, and a baby's first few poopy diapers are this stuff, which is all tarry and sticky and weird. When a baby passes meconium while still inside, it means they are stressed to some extent or another and it is a bad thing. For us, it meant that the pediatrics people had to come to check out Lewis right after birth, and that I had to be on constant monitoring until he was born (nooooooo...), and because of that I couldn't get in the tub or walk around or move much anymore. This was particularly unfortunate, because as advertised rupturing my membranes kicked things into high gear pretty much immediately and lots of the labor coping techniques don't really work if you're hooked up to monitors and unable to move.

So there we were, and there we stayed for a while longer as labor progressed. It wasn't pleasant, certainly, and I had a lot of pain particularly in my lower back. I was running out of energy and SO SO tired. Eventually I felt the urge to push and started on the stereotypical scream-y laboring woman routine. My midwife checked me one more time and I was completely dilated so we started pushing. I experienced pushing very differently this time around; with Grace, I had leftovers from the epidural so pushing mainly felt like just very hard work, with Violet, pushing hurt but felt like such a relief after the first part of labor, and this time around it mainly just hurt, especially in my lower back and tailbone. (He sort of spun around while descending through the birth canal from occiput anterior to occiput posterior, or maybe the other way around? I don't remember exactly what the midwife was saying. Whatever it was, it hurt.)

I kind of feel like I did a particularly bad job of pushing effectively this time around. I mean, I don't feel bad about myself or anything, but I'm pretty sure it was my worst showing yet in pushing a baby out. I attribute this to exhaustion; I hadn't really slept in 24 hours at this point and I was just out of every resource I had. I actually passed out briefly a couple time during pushing. I would start to push and the whole room would go starry and black and everybody's voices would fade away for a brief moment before coming back. We kept at it, though, and eventually, FINALLY, despite my inability to really do a good job, Lewis emerged into the world at exactly 5am on August 31. The umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck and his shoulder got quasi-stuck, freaking Rob out for a moment, but he was eventually birthed safely, albeit covered in meconium goo. He wasn't super vigorous when the pediatrics people whisked him to the other side of the room; his first APGAR score was 4, way lower than either of the girls. They intubated him and suctioned him and cleaned him up and generally got him mad and responsive and crying, which in this situation was a good thing. While all that was happening, I delivered the placenta (which my midwife declared to be covered in disgusting green meconium goo-- yeah, thanks for that) and my midwife repaired a small tear I got during the birth. My midwife decided she wanted to give me some pitocin at that point to make sure I didn't hemorrhage (she thought it was a good idea since this was my third birth and I had been in labor for so long) and I said OK, although I think that was kind of silly (AND PAINFUL) since by that point Lewis was back with me and breastfeeding, which releases natural oxytocin that causes uterine contractions anyway. (That's why I make a funny face at 0:57 of Lewis' birth video-- more contractions.)

But oh, it was so, so wonderful to be holding Lewis and to have him safe and sound with us and to be done with the whole ordeal of birth. There is just nothing like the intoxicating newness of a just-born baby who belongs to you, the realization that he is here, that there is this new tiny person to get to know and mother and love.

Some concluding thoughts:

I never fail to be amused/horrified by the weird, unexpected "injuries" I end up with after birth. With Grace, I strained an eye muscle so badly that I couldn't focus that eye for a few days, with Violet, I was hoarse for a while from the screaminess, and this time around my tailbone was bruised or something and I burst a ZILLION capillaries on my face, neck, and chest. Seriously, I looked like I was a heavily freckled person. Crazy. Both things were mostly better by the time I left the hospital, but at the beginning my tailbone hurt more than my perineal tear.
I was very curious as to why exactly Lewis passed all that meconium and what stressed him. My midwife said it was probably the cord being around his neck combined with being in labor so long. When you have a contraction, the cord gets compressed to some extent, reducing the oxygen that gets to the baby. Apparently the effect here with the cord around his neck was drastic enough to distress poor little Lewis. And he passed ALL the meconium in his system; we changed no meconium diapers at all. He didn't poop at all in the hospital (causing all the nurses to tsk-tsk in a concerned manner), had one sort of transitional poop, and then just went straight to the regular yellow breastmilk poo.
At just over 24 hours, this was my longest labor, by a good margin (16 hours with Grace, under 5 hours for Violet). What the heck, man? On my third baby?! I don't think this is how things are supposed to go. Of course, this was also my first time to go into labor spontaneously and have a closer-to-drug-free birth so maybe those are related?
This was my second epidural-free birth but I felt pretty different at the end of it than with my first. After Violet's birth, I felt like I'd conquered the world ("I did it!") while after Lewis' birth, I felt more like I'd been hit by a truck ("I made it!"). There were many contributing factors to the difference, but probably the two biggest were 1) the lack of sleep with my labor with Lewis and 2) the artificial speed of my labor with Violet because of the prostaglandin gel I had. Also, the not-ideal positioning (sunny-side-up baby) could not have helped. I also now wonder how much "help" I got with Violet when I threw up. My midwife said that vomiting can really push a baby through the birth canal effectively. I don't know; it just seemed a lot easier last time.
Do I wish I'd had an epidural this time, given how rough it was? No, probably not. It was less than 4 hours between when we arrived at the hospital and when Lewis was born so I don't think it would have been worth the hassle of having IV fluids and not being able to walk afterwards and probably a catheter and all that stuff, not to mention the cost. I ponder this now, but at the time it didn't even occur to me that I could ask for one. And anyway, it may have been rough, but he was worth it.

Bullets! Especially For You!

2011-09-10T18:40:00.001-06:00

Lewis is 10 days old today and doing very well. He has started to have his eyes open more and to stare incredulously at us or things around the house. What an impossibly strange world this must seem to a new baby... He is still very curled up and waves his arms and legs around slowly as if he is a mer-man living underwater. His eyes are still newborn slate gray and I think he is starting to look a tiny bit bigger, a tiny bit plumper, a tiny bit on the way from newborn to delicious baby.
Speaking of such things, breastfeeding seems to be going pretty well, for which I am very thankful. Lewis first nursed in that first hour after birth and latched on really, shockingly well. That instinctive ability is so amazing. He then went on to do exactly what he was supposed to, i.e. nurse ALL THE FREAKING TIME. That link is a little cheesy but I think it does a good job of explaining what normal nursing behavior is for a newborn, something that there is a lot of misunderstanding about.
I have had some pain and discomfort with starting breastfeeding this time around, similar to with Violet. The breastfeeding experts say that you shouldn't have any pain if you are doing things right but after getting started nursing three times now, I think either a) they are wrong or b) it is effectively impossible to do everything right with a tiny floppy newborn with no head control to speak of who nurses so frequently that any small problems with his latch can do some damage. It hasn't been too bad this time around; I think my discomfort peaked around day 7, things are getting better each day, and I bet I am totally pain-free in another week. So just like with Violet, basically.
On the positive side, I figured out how to nurse in the side-lying position on our first day home from the hospital (as opposed to a few weeks along with Grace and Violet), which I'm pretty sure means I WIN AT BREASTFEEDING. AND ALSO SLEEPING.
Violet is going through a super awkward hair phase and I am not exactly sure what to do about it. The issue is mostly the front of her hair but I don't want to cut bangs so I don't know what options I really have other than waiting it out. Although the rest of her hair certainly has the uneven/straggly thing going on, which a haircut would fix, so maybe that is the way to go. Grace got a haircut right before school started, back up to chin-length or so, as I decided to take a break from the hair-detangling drama. Oh, the wailing involved in brushing her hair when it is longer... I would like to keep it longer so we'll see if Grace can handle it better when it grows out this time around. In the meantime, it is super cute shorter and much, much easier to brush.
Also in Violet news, I see more visible signs that she will eventually learn to read than that she will ever learn to use the toilet. Sigh...
Mealtimes are an interesting study in contrasts around here these days. Grace and Violet are, I believe, the slowest eaters on the face of the planet, while one or both of Robert and I are usually scarfing down our food because Lewis either needs or is about to need attention. The only time I eat in a leisurely manner right now is standing up with Lewis asleep in the sling.

Lewis' Birth Video

2011-09-08T17:50:00.000-06:00

Here is a bit of a glimpse into life changing for us a week ago. (And here are Grace's and Violet's birth videos, if you just can't get enough newborn wonderfulness.)

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Happy Labor Day

2011-09-05T08:37:00.001-06:00

My due date was yesterday and earlier in my pregnancy when I realized its proximity to today's holiday, I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny if I was in labor on Labor Day?"

Speaking of proximity of events, remember all my pondering of how close my due date was to when Grace started kindergarten? Well, it turns out that Lewis was born actually ON her first day of school, about three hours before she needed to be there, no less. What are the odds, right? In related news, I have discovered a foolproof method to avoid feeling emotional about one's oldest child leaving her preschool years behind forever and growing up-- Just have a baby! On the same day!

Seriously, I cannot summon up the least bit of lachrymose melancholy for the unstoppable passage of time and transience of childhood and all that; there is just too much else to cope with. My main feeling is one of relief that Grace did not miss her first day. I still am somewhat in awe that Rob managed it all; he went straight home from the hospital after I was settled in my post-partum room (where he had been up all night with me in labor obviously) and walked Grace to school. She had a really great first week (well, first 3 days since they started on a Wednesday) and is enamored of her status as a kindergartener and walking to school and the fun things they are doing. I am so SO glad that she is transitioning well and has this fun new adventure to embark upon.

Oh, and speaking of yet more crazy timing, Rob is currently knee-deep in studying for his allergy boards. This is kind of a big deal as he has to pass this test (and then pass it again every 10 years) to practice allergy. The test is in a handful of weeks (October? I think? I am so fuzzy on everything right now) and he is working working working in every spare moment to learn everything he is supposed to know. It kind of sucks for him because at some level he is missing out on Lewis' first days and it kind of sucks for the girls because they have one parent who is frantically working in every possible moment and one who is sort of out of commission from childbirth and taking care of a newborn and it kind of sucks for me because my main support person can't do as much as any of us would like. It kind of sucks.

What doesn't suck is getting to know this little new person who is part of our family, now that I am home from the hospital and we are all settling in and figuring out new rhythms to our life. Lewis is this perfect curled-up creature with tiny waving fingers and pink shells for ears and a little-old-man-monkey face. There is just nothing like a brand new baby. Grace is full of enthusiasm for him, wanting to hold him and touch his head and play with his fingers; she is such a nurturer. Violet, who I had more concern about, is doing very well with him too. She has a much shorter attention span for him than Grace and she doesn't really do gentle at this point but she has been very positive and happy and accepting. "The baby is sleeping," she notes. "The baby is crying," she observes with alarm. "The baby is soooooo cute," she declares with approval. And indeed he is.

Arrival

2011-09-01T11:47:00.002-06:00

Lewis Martin was born on August 31 at 5am, weighing 8 lbs 6 oz and measuring 20 inches.

Well, Here We Are This Week

2011-08-29T12:39:00.003-06:00

Still enormous, still pregnant, still thankful that things are healthy and uncomplicated and as we'd wish them to be. I'm now within a week of my due date. At my midwife appointment on Friday, I was 1 cm dilated, which is something, right? I am having contractions pretty much all the time, although just a few an hour usually and not super intense. We had a wild thunderstorm come through Salt Lake late last night and I had a LOT of much more intense contractions while it was storming. I really thought I might be going into labor and started timing my contractions and everything. However, when the storm passed, my contractions did as well and I fell asleep. Dramatic changes in barometric pressure can supposedly bring on labor or make your water break or whatever, so that was a funny thing to experience.

I will admit that every time I have Rob take my picture, I kind of hope it will be the last one of me before going into labor. On the other hand, now that I've made it this far, life would be easier if I don't have the baby until we get through this week and Grace gets slightly settled at kindergarten. If I went into labor today, for instance, I'd still be in the hospital when Grace is supposed to have her first day at elementary school. We'll see! I sort of no longer believe that I am having a baby at all anymore and just figure this will be the way life is FOR ALL TIME.

In the peaks and valleys of energy and motivation and all that, I am in a bit of a valley. I have no attention span to speak of and am having a hard time concentrating on anything or finishing anything, even a thank-you note. It will be some kind of miracle if I finish this blog post and publish it. I am glad that I had lots of nesting energy in earlier weeks and months and got many projects finished. I finally got around to photographing my new and improved pantry to show off.

Sadly, I have now realized that my "before" pictures have been lost in a memory card mishap that we had, making my "after" picture rather pointless. Oh well, I guess you'll have to take my word for it that it is much better. It is a very deep closet-type pantry and it was very easy to lose items back in the far recesses. Our sellers had the shelves spaced differently (in a way that seemed inefficient to me) and it was dingy and dirty. We painted it a nice scrubbable shiny white and bought new white laminate shelves (they did have deep enough laminate shelves at Home Depot for this closet that could be cut to the length we wanted). The wire mesh drawers are from the Container Store and are almost the depth of the shelves; I can fit a few seldom-used things behind the drawers. The drawers vastly improve the functionality of the pantry and make it much easier to keep track of things, and the space is so much more efficiently used that I got the slow cooker and toaster off our counter and into the pantry. Those two bins on the floor hold our glass recycling (Salt Lake doesn't do curbside recycling for glass -- LAME -- so we have to keep it separate and drive it somewhere) and for the microfiber cloths I use for cleaning instead of paper towels.

Taking pictures in our kitchen is a challenge as there is no good light and it is awkwardly shaped/sized. I had to use the FLASH-- OH, THE HORROR. Anyway, while I was at it, I took one of our new refrigerator.

I lurrrrrrrve it. Although it does make me want to remodel the whole kitchen to go with it.

Which Comes First?

2011-08-22T11:17:00.001-06:00

This past Friday afternoon we walked up to the elementary school to find out all the details about Grace's kindergarten class. They post all the class listings at 4pm and we discovered upon our arrival that this is an EVENT as the school was noisily packed with students and parents and teachers, milling around and saying "hello" after the summer and finding out who will be in whose class. The more interactions I have at our neighborhood school, the more I like it; I hope that it proves to be a good match for us. Grace was placed in a morning class of 20 total kindergarteners, all of them half-day. That was what we ended up requesting, after all my hemming and hawing on the issue. When we had an orientation up at the school a few months ago they wanted me to put down a preference, and the kindergarten teachers said that the morning classes tended to be more calm, to get through more material, and to be more focused so I picked that. We peeked in her classroom and met another little girl who will be in her class and picked up more papers and whatnot to get ready. I tell you-- the papers! Grace is already officially all registered with all the district-required paperwork, and there were things the school wanted, but now I have another little pile of things from her specific teacher. I won't complain, not really, because these are sweet little about-me activities that they are going to do at the beginning of the year. They make me think that her kindergarten teacher is being very deliberate about easing the transition into the new year and making all the new little people comfortable.

I am supposed to bring the finished papers to yet ANOTHER kindergarten assessment. I guess the one we did a few months ago was to determine which class to put kids in (to spread out the kids who will need more help and those who are well-prepared) and this one is more for the teacher's benefit to have more info before class starts? Grace's is this Thursday and supposedly it is going to be 45 minutes long; that's almost as long as the official testing for the gifted program that we did back in February! This is... good, I guess? That they want so much information? I guess? Anyway, we have that this week and then next Wednesday is the big day as Grace leaves behind preschool and starts elementary school.

In baby news, I am now within 2 weeks of my due date and I look like this:

My most recent midwife appointment was also on Friday and things are still healthy and uncomplicated and looking as they should. Everything looks good with the little man's heart rate and how much fluid is there and my blood pressure and all those things they keep an eye on here at the end. He is head down and I am GBS negative (yay! no IV!) and I think he may have "dropped" recently, as two separate people yesterday at church said that my belly looks about 6" lower than it did the week before and I do feel like there is a lot more room in my upper abdomen. The midwife checked my cervix for the first time at this appointment and she said it is softening and not totally closed anymore and all that, so yay! With Violet I was dilated to 1 cm around 38 weeks, but I'd had that UTI that made me have a LOT more intense contractions than I have had yet this time. And of course with Grace I made it all the way to 41 weeks without dilating one tiny bit. Anyway, I am not really feeling like I am likely to go into labor immediately and if I were wagering, I would imagine that I make it to at least my due date this time around. Grace was born 7 days after her due date and Violet was born 2 days before hers but of course we cheated a bit with her so I don't know if that really helps at all in trying to guess when this might happen. (I just this morning realized that I've been telling people Violet was born 2 days late, which is wrong.)

So now that we've gotten down to it, we'll see how this whole kindergarten/baby thing shakes out. And to sum up, here is a gratuitous picture of two of our chickens.

Half-Birthday

2011-08-13T11:18:00.000-06:00

taken by our super-talented friend Mike Friberg

Today is Grace's half-birthday and she perches exactly halfway between 5 and 6. In less than a week we find out who her kindergarten teacher will be and whether she got a morning or afternoon class, and about 10 days after that, she will start kindergarten.

And So the Summer Trudges Along

2011-08-11T11:29:00.000-06:00

Here we are, approaching the middle of August. How do I feel about this? Meh, mixed, I guess. I have said this about a million times, I know, but summer is not a time I naturally enjoy. It is worse this summer as I think I am running about 10 degrees hotter than everyone else. (Seriously, I would like to keep our thermostat at 68 degrees if that were practical. This would be hampered by the fact that our AC has had diva-like issues lately and it must be coddled to keep from freezing up and not functioning.) However, there are things about summer that I like and so I shall enjoy those while I can. First on the list is probably swimming, especially given my heavily gravid state. Going to the pool is sooooooo nice and feels so wonderful and really makes a difference in how I feel the whole rest of the day. We went on Tuesday and Violet fell asleep cuddling with me in the pool as Grace went back and forth in front of me, figuring out how to take a breath-- idyllic. Second on the list is probably summer food. Oh, food of summer, you are so amazing and wonderful and delicious! And we haven't even really even gotten to full tomato season yet.

And we have done very fun things this summer. My mom came to visit a few weeks after my dad did and the girls got to enjoy lots of time with Nana:

We've taken a couple day trips up into the mountains, one with our church and one with Rob's work:

Utah is still very lovely, in case you were wondering. Both trips involved lakes (reservoirs? I don't know-- man-made both of them) and the girls waded at one of them and went on wave runners with Rob at the other one.

And we have made two VERY LARGE but also fun purchases. Our refrigerator broke after hemming and hawing for a while about whether it was going to remain a functional appliance and we replaced it with a lovely bright red vintage-style model (after a month of renting one waiting for it to be delivered); I will see if I can photograph it soon. It is super adorable but also! It keeps our food from spoiling! I am still a bit excited about this aspect of it, after several rounds of throwing away milk and putting everything I could in our chest freezer and so forth.

The second big purchase was a piano. Hoooooooooooray!

We (I? if we're being honest?) have been talking about a piano for a while now and this past weekend we found a good deal on buying a used one. A non-profit puts new pianos in the Salt Lake public schools every year and then sells the 1-year-old ones to the public at about 50% of retail as a sort of fundraiser. Then 40% of what you do pay is tax deductible because it goes to support the school district. Nice, right? I think it is a really good way to get a lovely piano at a good price. I haven't had a piano at home since I moved out of my parents' house and I am SO SO SO happy about this. I am still playing piano at church so this gives me the chance to practice a bit and attempt more ambitious things than what I can do just showing up and playing music without ever seeing it before. More than that, though, now I can play just for fun! So far I've just been pulling out things that I played back in my serious days but eventually I hope to work on some new music. And also! Piano lessons for the children! Both Grace and Violet are smitten with the piano and our house is full of, um, melodious banging. Seriously, you should hear the racket they make.

So two very large purchases, both of them fun. They did use up the money we had saved to xeriscape our front lawn, though, so I guess we will keep our environmental-resource-hogging lawn for a while yet.

If you haven't noticed, I haven't been blogging very frequently lately. This is a reflection of the inside of my head, which is S L O W and lacking in having much to say and just sort of blank a lot of the time. I am feeling blank inside.

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It's not always a negative feeling exactly, just sort of fuzzy/dull lack of creativity and energy, which stands in stark contrast to the normal state of my mind, which usually feels like a double-time CLICKCLICKCLICK of processing and thought and spark. GAH, pregnancy is just so disorienting sometimes, in the drastic physical/mental/emotional shifts, the unfamiliar gravity of one's own body and the strange idiosyncrasies of one's mind. I could really use some energy back at this point, though. My nesting energy has evaporated into the ether and I have gotten nothing done in days. I have been meaning to vacuum for, oh, 5 days at this point-- I mean, the vacuum has been actually sitting in the middle of the living room plugged in for 5 days. What have I done instead? I can't even tell you. Nap? Consume a lot of ice from Sonic? I remember feeling this way in my last trimester with Grace, which was even less ideal as I had a JOB where I was supposed to, you know, do original research and stuff. Not a lot got added to our understanding of the universe during those months due to my efforts, let me tell you.

Whatever bleary stasis I may feel like I'm in right now, the reality is that I am coming down to the very last bit of this pregnancy. I am 36.5 weeks pregnant now and I'm having weekly midwife visits. Weekly pants-less midwife visits, no less. We have moved beyond the months of quick pee/weight/blood-pressure visits to ones where we talk about actual labor and she does tests and checks me (so euphemistic) and whatnot. Whether I believe it or not, a new baby is coming, right?

A Name for a New Person

2011-07-24T20:41:00.000-06:00

We have a name:

Spelled like (and named after) Clive Staples. This has been our boy name that we've sort of mulled around since before we even started having kids and it is really fun to be actually using it. Rob has always pushed for using Clive instead but I just don't know about that. I am less opposed to the name Clive now than I have been in past years (a decade ago it sounded to me like the name of a bully or maybe a cute dog, but now there's Clive Owen and a lot more quirky old-fashioned boy names going around) but I like Lewis better and we are going to stick with that. We are still a little undecided on middle names and are tossing around two family name possibilities, one from Rob's side and one from mine. There are mild problems with both, unfortunately; one of them rhymes with our last name and one of them, when combined with the first name, is a comedy duo from the 40s and 50s. We'll see; Violet's middle name was totally a last-minute decision and I love it so we'll just have to wait and see how things shake out.

Things around here have made some strides toward being ready for a new baby to come into the house, although not enough to keep me from having classic anxiety dreams (you know, where I have been enrolled in a class all year but haven't gone to it once and am now about to fail, or where I'm in a grocery store and can't find anything I need to buy). My subconscious wants me to TAKE CARE OF WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE ALREADY.

Have I already explained that we aren't decorating a nursery this time around? There are two main reasons.

Neither Grace nor Violet actually slept in their rooms until they were close to a year old. The nurseries ended up functioning as charmingly decorated storage rooms.
Our house has two bedrooms upstairs (currently an office and a guest room) and two in the basement (the master and the one that Grace and Violet share now). I don't really want to shuffle the furniture and put the girls upstairs until after Violet turns 3, for convenience and ease of nighttime parenting and whatnot.

So our new little person is officially going to bunk in our room (just like our other babies have done unofficially) and hopefully he will not resent his lack of nursery when he learns about it. Thus, the rearranging we need to do is pretty minimal and I have gotten a start on it, despite what my subconscious thinks. I organized our master closet to make room for some storage drawers for baby clothes, added some under-bed storage boxes to our room, and made plans to get our changing table back in use as such. I think next weekend I am going to have Rob go up in the attic and get down all the baby stuff to clean and set up around the house-- the cosleeper that attaches to our bed , the bouncy seat, the car seat, and so forth. We will still be 5 weeks out from my due date then, which I admit is kind of early to have all that in the house. Or maybe it's not? I have lost all sense of perspective on this and I just need for it to be done.

I did get through a large pile of baby laundry recently. The little diapers are all clean and neatly arranged in their basket and I found all my slings and babywearing gear. And what else does a cliché of a hippie attachment parenting mama need, right? Clothes, I suppose. As you would probably guess, I did not have much in the way of boy or gender neutral clothes. That is, up until about a month ago. In the space of 2 weeks, I got hand-me-down baby clothes from 3 different friends, one of whom had twin boys, and now we are AWASH in baby boy clothes, swimming in a sea of blue outfits. I feel so grateful and overwhelmed with their generosity, and I am so happy to be giving these clothes another round of use instead of buying new ones (the Earth says "yay!"), and AAACK WHERE DO I STORE IT ALL?! Really, I think we are pretty well outfitted through the 12-month size and I have been surprised anew at just how many tiny outfits can fit in one load of laundry as I've sorted through my new stash.

Some sweet friends here in Salt Lake are throwing me a baby shower in a few weeks and I am really excited about it. There isn't a lot that we "need" for the new baby, between the gear we have already (thankfully we bought everything big/expensive in gender-neutral colors) and the hand-me-downs and our general minimalist approach to parenting and whatnot. There are some things that I put on a baby registry at Amazon, but there isn't a lot (and even less that I'll need at the very beginning) and it is really specific things (OK, I admit it-- I am picky about baby stuff) so we decided to go a different direction for the shower. They are doing a "fill the freezer" shower where instead of gifts everybody brings a meal or something for us to put in our freezer and pull out in those intense newborn weeks. I love this idea, especially given the logistics of our specific situation. And what I am really looking forward to is an afternoon of celebrating this new person coming into the world and being encouraged and supported by our community here.

That sounds especially lovely to me right now because I am a bit in the dumps. I am sleeping TERRIBLY and it is hot and oh, I feel so huge. It doesn't seem very real that we get to meet a tiny new person in just a few weeks; instead I just feel enormous and quasi-miserable. I don't really feel an end in sight at this point and my brain is having a hard time connecting all the low-level wretchedness with the end result of a BABY HOORAY. I am hoping that taking some more visible getting-ready steps will help, and I am working to cultivate an attitude of thankfulness about my healthy uncomplicated pregnancy. Six more weeks...

Stuff and Nonsense

2011-07-09T21:08:00.003-06:00

Hmmm, what have we been up to over the past two weeks? Our air conditioning was malfunctioning for a while, leaving us very hot and also concerned that our ceiling might fall in. I think we escaped with just some subtle water damage on the ceiling and a bill that was not as bad as it might have been. Grace started a little summer camp she is doing 3 times a week for the month of July, with lots of swimming and rock climbing and field trips and whatnot. Also, my dad came to visit us:

We took him to some of our favorite places around town, like the farmers market and Ruth's and the Park Cafe. We went to the aviary one morning and I just about fell over from the heat (or with less hyperbole and more accuracy, I had lots of contractions and got a headache and my feet and hands swelled up all puffy and uncomfortable). It was a 100-degree day and I think I have fallen out of practice about how to deal with such weather. I seem to remember my main coping mechanism was to refuse to do anything outside until such ridiculousness subsided. Anyway, it was such a lovely visit with him. He came over the Independence Day holiday and we continued our years-long lame tradition of not taking our children to see fireworks. Every year I think, "Oh, we really should take them," and then we think about what our children are like when kept up past their bedtime. Such contemplations cause us to fail to gather the energy/initiative/wherewithal to go somewhere crowded and hot with miserable, exhausted children when we could just stay home and put them to bed. We live far enough north now that fireworks don't start until almost 10pm, and the girls usually go to bed at 7:30pm. One of these years we'll finally do it.

I finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and am now finding myself compelled to do things like bake my own bread again and learn how to make cheese. It was a lovely, entertaining read and left me all motivated to make the best possible choices about how we eat. It is certainly a good time of year for that kind of thing; we get a lovely box of produce from our CSA every week and the farmers market is gearing up into the lush part of the growing season. It will, of course, be more challenging at other times of year. I really really really want to do some canning and freezing but we don't have quite the right produce ready right now here in Utah for making jam or whatever. Or at least not in the quantities (and at the price) to make it seem worthwhile-- I don't really want to drop $50 on raspberries from the farmers market to make jam, and I don't think I can drag my third-trimester self to a pick-your-own place this July. I was looking through my pictures and realized that last year I did peaches and applesauce in October, and this leaves me a bit discouraged. Am I capable of canning with a tiny newborn around? I would hate to miss a whole year of having luscious golden peach slices to bring out through the winter. We'll see, I guess. Our new meat situation is fortunately not season-dependent; they have their meat available year-round. Have I gushed lately about their pork? It is AMAZING. I have never really cared for pork that much; it usually seemed dry and bland and not very good to me. This meat is like it comes from an entirely different animal (and in some ways, it does; they raise Berkshire pigs, which is a different breed than what is raised in industrial farms) because it is just mind-bogglingly good.

Another compulsion that has recently reared its head is that I want to pack my hospital bag. I keep leaving things like this and this open in my browser and feel the itch to make lists and get things organized and put it all in a bag ready to go. This is sort of ridiculously early (I am 32 weeks pregnant right now) but I guess it wouldn't hurt to get it done, right? And I think I am just going to obsess about it until I do it. In case you are curious, this is what I look like right now, as I perseverate on packing hospital bags and how I will can peaches with a newborn:

Here's what I looked like at about the same point with Violet:

I think I look about the same, taking into account the uncertainty involved in wearing different colors and standing slightly differently and whatnot. (I actually weigh significantly more in the picture with Violet, believe it or not.) What I can't believe is that I am wearing heels at 32 weeks; that's definitely a difference between a summer and a winter pregnancy. And for completeness, here I am with Grace at 31 weeks, although sitting down doesn't really make any comparisons easy or accurate:

Three pregnancies, three different states-- gosh, we've moved a lot in the past decade.

Summer Plans

2011-06-27T10:06:00.001-06:00

I have decided to turn over a new leaf tomorrow and start getting up to shower before Rob leaves for work, instead of staying in bed until after he leaves, often with a child or two who has joined me. There has been quite a bit of laziness around here since preschool ended and our schedule opened up into its lovely summer spaciousness. Not showering before Rob leaves results in me turning on TV for the girls while I shower and just a really slow, unproductive start to our day in general; watching TV so frequently in the morning just isn't ideal. And it's not like I'm getting a lot of really restful, restorative sleep during that time anyway.

Ugh, pregnancy-induced sleep troubles... I'm definitely getting to that point, 30 weeks pregnant now, down to two months and a few days until my due date. I am in general getting to "that point", actually-- swelling, heartburn, restless legs, BEING VERY LARGE. I have had my first moments of thinking, "Wow, I am really looking forward to not being pregnant anymore." It's so interesting what one's mind and body does through this whole process. In my first trimester this time around, I had anxiety and actual fear about doing the labor/birth thing again. This was new for me; I don't ever remember feeling literal dread and fear about labor and birth before. I went back and read my birth stories with Grace and Violet and I felt apprehension and dismay about having to do that again. The intervening months have changed my perspective, though, and now I would be perfectly happy to push an 8 or 9 pound baby out of my-- well, you know-- in exchange for not being pregnant anymore. And it won't be very long before I will be all AAAAACK GET HIM OUT OF ME CAN'T BE PREGNANT ANYMORE and would be open to the idea of actually cutting into my abdomen to get him out, if it came to that. So take that as you will; the characteristics of pregnancy are such that eventually options that once struck fear in my heart now seem like not-half-bad ideas. Biology, man-- it's like magic.

I do still have some anxieties, of course-- two main ones. 1) With Grace, my water broke and then nothing happened. I know in my mind that this is very unlikely to happen again (one's body tends to get things going much more easily/quickly after the first time around) but I still sort of dread it. The OB practice I was with at the time would give you 24 hours to go into labor after rupturing membranes and at that point (when I was still having no real contractions and was not dilated at all), we started on a full-on pitocin induction and constant monitoring and all that, and almost ended up with a C-section. It was... not very pleasant and I really don't want to do that again. (With Violet, my membranes didn't rupture until I was fully dilated and about to push, in case you're curious.) 2) I reallyreallyreallyreally hate having an IV and the thing most likely to make me get one would be if I turn out to be positive for Group B strep. For the uninitiated, this is a strain of bacteria that can live in the birth canal (among other places) and cause a serious infection in the baby. If you have it (they test for it around 36 weeks) they give you IVs of antibiotics during labor so that the baby gets the drug and won't get infected during birth. I am not cavalier/dismissive/fearless enough to refuse the antibiotics if I am positive for GBS, but oh, how intensely I hope I am not because being able to labor untethered and comfortable is SO much better. In fact, I dislike having an IV so much that I am probably going to indulge in some magical thinking and try some old-wives-tale type preventative things before my GBS test. How's that for logical analytical decision-making?

So I have big plans for getting up and showering earlier every day, and also I have plans to be more intentional with Grace and some reading and handwriting this summer. We haven't been very consistent with that and she is actually showing excitement and interest about it, so I am going to try to invest some more time in that. When I think back to that testing she did for the magnet programs, I am sort of puzzled that she could score so highly when she wasn't really reading at the time. She does better now with sounding out words, but at the time she wasn't able to smoosh sounds together to read a word. I guess that the tests weren't really testing skills like that but "ability", whatever that means? I don't know.

The past two weeks got swallowed up with swimming lessons and although I still find this somewhat inexplicable, I was unable to do much of anything else besides get us to the pool with all our gear and sunscreen and packed lunches, and then back home again with baths and laundry and the post-swimming routine. Violet's skin turns out to be pretty sensitive to the chlorine so the bath and laundry and all that was necessary, even if it did suck away the last bit of my energy every day. Being at the pool was soooooo lovely, though. It really helped with my swelling and I felt much more comfortable on those days; we shall have to dedicate many days this summer to the pool, even though that session of lessons is over. I might do more lessons for Grace; she did really well and can actually swim now. She can't yet take a breath without stopping (so here is what she does: swim swim stop stand breathe swim swim etc.) but she can actually propel herself forward in the water and looooooves it. Violet, on the other hand, spent the entirety of the swimming lessons yelling in protest. She is not afraid of the water and she is perfectly capable of doing everything the teacher wanted her to do, but she DID NOT WANT TO. She didn't want to be part of the cute group of toddlers playing games and getting their heads wet and blowing bubbles and whatnot; she wanted to go do what SHE wanted to do, which now includes going off the diving board. "I need to stand up there," she points. "I need to jump." I think she will do better with swim lessons next year at 3 and 1/2 when we can explain to her that if she wants to swim in the deep end and go off the diving board, then she needs to do what her teacher tells her to. There is not so much reasoning to be done with her at 2 and 1/2. It's comical how different she is at this age from Grace. Grace has always had such an instinct for participating and joining and doing what a teacher says, while Violet is independent and her own person and yes, sometimes, recalcitrant. It does make me wonder if keeping Violet home from preschool for another year of maturity and learning discipline at home might end up being a really good idea after all.

Celebratory

2011-06-13T16:06:00.001-06:00

The middle of June is a time of celebrations for us. Last Friday was my birthday (33 years!) and then tomorrow is our anniversary (9 years!) so it feels like there is lots of fun and special meals and making merry. I did a much better job of having a fun birthday than last year when life was so crazy with having the house on the market and planning our move and Abbey being so sick and everything. Wow, it's almost hard to believe how much life has changed in the past year; I have visceral memories of the stress and anxiety and just how not fun it was to sell a house and plan a big move but it seems very distant now. Anyway, THIS year was much more enjoyable. I had a lovely massage and I bought a pear almond tart from a really good bakery here and we walked down the street to a Middle Eastern restaurant with outdoor seating where we sat in the shade of a tree, eating our pita and baba ganooj and listening to jazz played at the outdoor patio of the restaurant across the street. Basically, it could not have been better. I also had an OB appointment that day with my 1-hour glucose tolerance screen (all normal) which was less fun but I certainly won't complain too much. I have another appointment in a month and then I start going every 2 weeks-- yikes! It's like maybe I'm going to have a baby soon or something.

And then tomorrow is our anniversary, our ninth! What a transformative, joyous, liberating thing being married to Rob has proved to be... We have a babysitter coming over and are going on a date to a new-to-us fancy-ish Italian place downtown. I hope the weather stays nice because I made a reservation out on their patio. I tell you, living in Salt Lake is revolutionizing summer for me. It's like it's an actual pleasant season or something.

Hmmmm, what else is going on? I put Violet's hair in pigtails for the first time, with very adorable results:

Also, today was the first day of swim lessons for us. Grace is in a group class and Violet and I are doing a parent-tot class that runs at the same time. I signed up for these classes about a month ago and then was struck with some anxiety a few weeks later because it had still not really warmed up much. The classes are in an outdoor pool and oh, how I've been hoping it would be not be freezing cold. The pool itself is heated which obviously helps a lot, but on an overcast not-truly-warm day it is rather unpleasant and I end up with blue-lipped shivery children. It's only in the 70s today but fortunately it was sunny so we had a lovely first day. We ate lunch after their lessons and then stayed to play in the pool for a while. Being in the pool feels soooooooo wonderful to me, and I imagine that feeling will only intensity as the summer gets hotter and I get bigger. I had sort of forgotten what an undertaking going to the pool is, though. There's so much to pack to get there, and then the whole process afterward of bathing/showering everyone and rinsing swimsuits and doing laundry makes me feel like I can't accomplish much else that day. Oh well, it's the price to pay for floating about in the pool, I suppose.

For about a day, I thought that Grace had a loose tooth. She was eating an apple and all of the sudden got this startled look on her face, then declared her tooth wiggly. I was skeptical at first because I couldn't feel it wiggling, but she was so consistent about it for the better part of a day that I eventually believed her. She hasn't really mentioned it since that day so I don't think any tooth loss is imminent, but that evening I started a little tooth fairy pillow for her with a tiny pocket for her tooth to go in. Projects like this are so pleasurable, where I use only stuff I have on hand to put together something pretty and fun. I will admit that after looking at line drawings of teeth and then embroidering that tooth on the pocket, I feel totally unconvinced that the shape is recognizable; it just looks like an amorphous blob to me now. Also, Grace insists that she wanted me to put the pocket on the other side, but it's too late for that now and I think it's cute, so there.

I've been sewing quite a bit lately, come to think of it. Sewing mojo tends to come and go in waves, greatly affected by life circumstances such as first trimester exhaustion or moving or there being a lot of good stuff on TV or whatever. The stars have aligned and I have been sewing almost daily, churning out completed project after completed project. I sewed a handful of maternity skirts for me and summer things for Grace (Violet wears a lot of hand-me-downs so most of my little-kid sewing is for Grace) and I've even reached the bottom of piles of planned projects that I haven't gotten to for AGES, which feels lovely. Having energy and time to pursue fun hobby-type things is AWESOME. I'll enjoy it while I can.

Moving Day

2011-06-05T10:05:00.034-06:00

Yesterday was moving day for our chickens, leaving the little cage in our garage with its heat lamp for the coop outside.

I am so happy with how the coop turned out; Rob used these plans to put it together. The upper floor has the roosting area and the nest boxes and the bottom part is where they eat and drink and eat bugs and explore. The sides lift off to access the upstairs for cleaning and whatnot. That ladder/ramp pulls up using a pulley to secure the upstairs for nighttime. The chickens seem to be doing well so far, although they haven't yet learned to go upstairs in the evening. We've been manually putting them up there before pulling up the ramp. Hopefully they will get the idea soon. (Supposedly this is something chickens naturally want to do?) They can get down the ramp and we are pretty sure they are capable of getting up the ramp but they don't seem particularly interested in doing that. Mysterious creatures, these chickens. And can you believe how much they've grown? They looked like this just SIX WEEKS AGO.

Oh, and I don't make the girls wear their helmets to play with the chickens or anything. It just seems like they always go straight for their bicycle/tricycle when they first go outside and then they end up running around with their helmets on all the time.

A Weekend of Brunches

2011-05-31T08:59:00.000-06:00

Ah, what a lovely, lovely weekend we have had... Rob had FIVE DAYS OFF because of some scheduling details at his office and oh, what a luxury that was! The 80-hour work week has been a regular in our household off and on for the better part of a decade so this new life with Rob in a real doctor job instead of med school or residency or fellowship is a revelation.

And isn't brunch a good way to enjoy a holiday weekend? I love brunch, as well as its less-fancy cousin, restaurant breakfast, and the even less-fancy cousin, a whole hot breakfast cooked at home. On Friday, we made migas and French press coffee and were all lazy about the house. Also on Friday, after about 18 months of using baking soda and apple cider vinegar instead of shampoo and conditioner for my hair (with breaks for travel and moving), I got some of the vinegar in my eyes for the first time. Ow ow ow ow ow ow... I recommend avoiding this.

On Saturday, we had planned a day trip to central Utah, including our first stop for brunch at Communal in Provo. Provo, for the unfamiliar, is the town where BYU is and is sort of an LDS social/cultural center. I would never have guessed that it is also home to a really fantastic restaurant using lots of local, seasonal food but oh my goodness, it was so wonderful. Definitely worth the drive.

After that, we continued south toward Uinta National Forest, planning to drive Nebo Loop from north to south. Supposedly it is about a 90-minute drive if you go straight through and there are places to stop along the way for a little walking and/or light hiking. Sadly, when we were about 15 minutes in, we discovered that the road was closed, all gated and chained off by the Park Service or Forest Rangers or whoever does that kind of thing. The entire road is closed for the winter and it turns out that it is still too early to get really up on Mt. Nebo this year. We have had an especially heavy year for snow (there were 10 inches of fresh powder up at the ski resorts yesterday, although most of them are closed now) and there is all kinds of concern about flooding and mud from the snowmelt around here. It turns out that part of the road we were planning on driving was damaged up further from such issues. It also turns out you can look up these kinds of things on the internet, which I now know to do before we plan such an outing again. It didn't really occur to me that on Memorial Day weekend trails and road and whatnot might still be inaccessible. The more you know.

Fortunately, there was a trail accessible from the open part of the road so we did a tiny bit of a hike. It was lovely to be out amongst the trees and open air and nature and all.

On Sunday, we had yet more brunch, this time just Robert and me. A brunch date! Hooray! We went to the Wild Grape Bistro, which was very good indeed. I have been having intense sugar cravings (thanks, pregnancy!) so I had this brioche French toast that was all slathered in lemon curd and blueberries and OHMYGOSH I want some more right now instead of whatever virtuous breakfast I just ate. Sigh... Too bad the weekend of brunches must end.

Let's Not Do Yesterday Again Ever

2011-05-26T12:53:00.002-06:00

Well, yesterday was quite a day. Violet had her sedation and dental work and everything done in the morning. It all went smoothly and like it was supposed to, but ugggggggh it was quasi-awful. Not truly awful, because I am well aware how lucky we are to have two healthy children that don't have serious medical problems, but still, on the normal scale of my existence? NOT. FUN. AT. ALL. They first gave her a shot that knocked her out, then took her back away from us (at which point I burst into tears-- BECAUSE OF COURSE I DID) to do the X-rays, put in the IV for the sedation drugs, do the fillings, and so forth. It took about an hour and then she was in recovery where we could be with her again. She started to wake up about 30 minutes into that. And a very small child coming out of anesthesia? That is something I can do without experiencing ever again, thankyouverymuch. Nothing unexpected or bad happened but the poor thing was all dizzy and floppy and blurry-eyed and agitated, trying to throw her 28 pounds of self haphazardly around in a fit of dim, uncertain consciousness.

But now it is done, and hopefully any other cavities that develop can wait until she is almost 4 or whenever we can just do the nitrous. Or maybe our newfound dental diligence and flossing and so forth will stave off further tooth decay? We shall see. She started to really perk up around 4pm yesterday, and today she is just a clingy, fussy version of her typical self, mostly back to normal. Oh, and Grace had her fillings done a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit more tense than her first time (maybe because it was 3 fillings instead of 1?) and emotionally draining for her and me, but thankfully it all went smoothly.

In other Violet news, I haven't ever publicly declared her weaned, have I? When I got pregnant, she was still nursing most days, occasionally more than once a day, but sometimes skipping a day and only very rarely at night. It started to be really uncomfortable for me so I worked toward weaning. I used some distraction and postponement and shortening nursing sessions (telling her she could nurse till I counted to 10 or whatnot); these kinds of techniques worked for us well, just like they did with Grace. Violet was completely weaned by the time I hit the second trimester, but I don't remember exactly when or how, again just like with Grace. It was very gradual and I am happy about that, although it is sad in some ways to know that there was a "last time" that I nursed Violet and I don't remember it. It probably isn't strictly accurate to call what we did child-led weaning but I am OK with that. And now that I am comparing, I have realized that both Grace and Violet nursed until just past their 2nd birthdays, maybe 26 or 27 months each.

In case you're curious, you don't HAVE to wean an older baby because you're pregnant, as long as you have a healthy normal pregnancy. I think tandem breastfeeding (that's what it's called when you nurse a toddler and a baby at the same time) is fine and good but I don't think it's a good fit for me and our situation and all. It would be different if the spacing of my pregnancies was much closer but at almost 3 years apart, I feel very comfortable with weaning the older child. In both cases, I feel pretty sure that they would have weaned within a few months anyway.

So what a big girl Violet is getting to be! Weaned, usually sleeping in her own bed the whole night, wispy little-girl hair, talking up a storm... She will be 2 and 1/2 next month. We've dabbled in using the toilet but I don't know; I don't see that being a skill she has mastered anytime in the immediate future. We're closing in on the 3-month mark until my due date so I am not sure it will happen before then. Maybe if I went all hardcore potty-training boot camp on her? But is that worth it? Would having two in diapers be all that bad? I have no idea.

Yesterday was also a pretty momentous day for Grace: her last day of preschool... EVER. When we return to school in the fall, she will be a kindergartener. We had a lovely year of pre-K at the Jewish Community Center and I am very happy with how our preschool experience turned out, even if I did plan it on basically no first-hand information while still living in Texas. Yesterday I picked up Grace there for the last time and brought home with us the ziploc bag with a change of clothes that has lived in her cubby all year and a huge final pile of art projects and now it is summer, I guess? The high temperature today is 60 degrees and it is drizzling so it doesn't really feel like it but I am thankful nonetheless for not setting an alarm this morning, not packing a lunch last night, and getting to spend the whole day with my fun girls.

Chair Makeover

2011-05-23T20:50:00.000-06:00

I've been wanting to reupholster this chair since we lived in Connecticut and thanks to my nesting insanity and some extra money we got this spring, it is finally done!

This is that scratchy orange chair that we took all Grace's and Violet's chair pictures in. Is it too busy now for chair pictures? We might have to switch to a different chair for that. I just love how this turned out, though-- a lovely intense graphic pop of interest in the room. I was really drawn to a bright peacock print (intense blue and teal peacock feathers) but I decided that was maybe borderline too eccentric and this was a better balance of interesting with sane. It is such a delight to finally have fixed up this chair. The man at the upholstery shop said that the chair looked like it had been recovered once already, sometime pre-1960 (because that orange fabric was done with spit tacks, whatever those are, instead of staples) and it was probably about 20 years older than that. He thought it was likely originally built in the 1930s. And what a lovely 80-year-old chair it is... It originally belonged to Rob's grandparents, like much of our furniture. We joke that everything we own is either 60+ years old or from IKEA, but I love having old furniture that has been fixed up. Like most Americans, I have a fraught relationship with material possessions, but I am happy to have quality things that are worth fixing whenever I can instead of disposable things.

In other nesting news, Rob is making great headway on the chicken coop. This picture is from Friday, I think, and right now it looks like this. That top part has the roosting area and nesting boxes and the bottom part is for them to run around in the grass. The chickens themselves are growing HUGER and HUGER by the day, at least compared to the eensy little puffballs they were when we first got them. One of them in particular has grown just amazingly big. She is the Buff Orpington, which is a "dual-purpose" breed, meaning you can raise them for eggs or meat. I have realized that what this means is they grow shockingly fast. (In case you are wondering, we are keeping chickens just for eggs. When they reach the end of their useful egg-laying years, they will probably be eaten by someone, but I seriously doubt by us.)

I am 25 weeks pregnant now and my main pregnancy symptoms are:

getting tired easily (NAAAAAAAAPS-- I NEED NAAAAAAAPS),
getting bigger and bigger, and
disorientingly wild mood swings.

Sometimes the second and third are related as I once again experience just how much pregnancy changes one's body. I am not one of those women who look all normal except for an adorably round belly; I am one of those women who wonders why must my face and arms and legs get all puffy/fat because a baby is growing in my abdomen. This time around I have even been gaining slightly less than the "normal" range but apparently it makes no difference. Sigh... Other things that have made me woeful and despondent recently include missing our dog who died last summer really badly and answering Grace's questions about what a homeless man's sign said. Seriously, I was sobbing in the car explaining that no, he did not have a bed or a place to keep any food. I think I freaked her out with my reaction; she is about as unaccustomed to me being crazy emotional as I am. Of course, the mood swings do go the other way too. I have felt ridiculously gleeful and giddy about the songs on the 90s station on the satellite radio in our new car (which is still working for now, despite us not paying for it). And is it just me, or are 30 Rock and Doctor Who and How I Met Your Mother totally the most awesome TV shows ever? And getting that chair done made me way happier than it normally would have. I am fragile and everything is just so intense, I guess. Including the heartbreaking beauty of my children.

My Posts Don't Have Unified Themes Anymore

2011-05-16T08:42:00.015-06:00

This is probably a reflection of the inside of my head these days.

Monday mornings are one of those times when I am so glad to be the one who does not have the full-time job that keeps us in mortgage payments and health insurance. It is a good time to be a stay-at-home mom, as the world starts up its workaday routine and the gears of a new week start turning. Grace has walked across the street to our neighbors who will drive her to preschool and Violet (who slept freakishly late) is sitting at the dining room table munching on blackberries and a waffle with honey on it and I am glad to not have anywhere to be immediately.

Monday mornings are also when we get our delivery from a local dairy and I just put it all away. It is a bit of a luxury, I will admit, but it is so, so nice to have some things that I know we always need just show up in the cooler on our porch every week. Their milk isn't organic but it is hormone-free and is produced locally. And it comes in glass bottles! I like that the glass bottles get re-used and not recycled (we rinse them and put them back in the cooler for them to pick up and take back). I get some other things like cheese regularly, and then occasionally other treats. They deliver a lot of regular grocery items in addition to the dairy products they produce themselves but the milk and cheese are our staples from them.

Grace only has 8 days left of preschool for the year, which seems somehow impossible. I am happy about her being finished for the year; I always like when she has time off and we get to spend more time together and we don't have to rush around in the mornings to get someplace at a certain time. She is fun to be with. Both girls are, actually. Violet is deep in the throes of two-year-old adorableness, all little sentences and pretending to be an animal or a letter of the alphabet (she is usually D and I am usually W, I believe) and sweet smells. How do small children manage to smell so good, especially their heads? And also, why do two-year-olds have such a terrible reputation? They are not strong on logic and reason, I will grant you, and sometimes seem like an uncontrollable force of nature that one can only hope to restrain, but they are so full of charm and funny speech and blooming personhood.

We have had such lovely gorgeous spring weather over the past few days-- our first 70-degree day! We've been taking advantage of it and eating outside and visiting some of our favorite warm-weather restaurants, because today we go back to cooler weather and rain for a while. I don't mind going back and forth like that because while the warm weather is utterly wonderful, it has been causing me to SWELL UP and hopefully this cooler weather will calm things down. Both girls were winter babies and I didn't really have much swelling until the last month; this new baby will be my first time to be very pregnant in the summer and I am a bit apprehensive about how bad it might be. Just those few days of warmth made my hands and feet noticeably puffy, especially if I did a lot of walking (which I have been-- see lovely spring weather mentioned earlier), and I think it quite likely that I am going to be a swollen mess by July or so. I have an engagement ring and a plain wedding ring and I already cannot wear them both at the same time; I bet within a month I won't be able to wear either. I know a lot of women buy a replacement ring to wear while they're pregnant (not actual real jewelry, mind you-- just inexpensive costume jewelry) and I can't decide what I think about that. On the one hand, yay for pretty things that make you feel pretty! Jewelry is fun! On the other hand, why exactly would it would be bad for me to go ring-less for a few months? Surely the vast majority of people do not care if I am married or not? Are there really that many strangers who would make an uncharitable character judgment about an obviously pregnant, obviously hot woman? And surely I am not going to base my actions on the opinions of such a hypothetical stranger?

Tuesday Morning Ramblings

2011-05-10T09:54:00.001-06:00

Our trusty computer is having issues-- so sad. The DVD drive fails to cooperate more often than it works and more importantly, the hard drive is starting to flounder. The computer is four years old but we think it is worth fixing rather than just replacing (because before this round of troubles it was meeting our needs perfectly well) so Rob is about to embark on a repair mission. I consider myself technologically literate but I am not really a hardware/IT person so such things fall to Robert in our house. Also, he is a natural tinkerer so I suspect he derives a measure of enjoyment and satisfaction from such a pursuit. In this case, this will involve removing the glass from the front of our iMac (!!!) to get to the hard drive. I am now working on that Google Chrome laptop that Robert got sent (did I ever mention that here? such a surprise...) which works well for what I do, with the exception of photo editing and organization. No photos for me for however long this process lasts. And I guess no music either, since now that I think about it we don't have any way to play music outside of our computer. Here's hoping it all goes quickly and smoothly...

Something else that I am hoping will go smoothly is all the fillings that my daughters apparently need. Ugh ugh ugh. I took them both to check-ups last week and they BOTH have cavities. Grace had a couple from last time that the dentist thought looked questionable but decided to wait on since she hadn't ever had a filling before. On the last go-round, Grace had one filling done with nitrous and she did super well so this time he is going to do all 3 areas that look iffy. I feel pretty confident that this will go smoothly; everyone at our pediatric dentist's office is really great and I think she will handle it well, especially considering that last time everything was easy peasy and she isn't afraid at all of the dentist. Violet is another story. The dentist couldn't even really get a thorough look inside her mouth and she wouldn't sit still for X-rays. She definitely will need to be sedated, which is what they do at this age for dental work. The cavities he could see were between her two front teeth but there could be more obviously (they'll be able to find everything and fix it all when she is sedated). Oh my goodness, I hate this idea, though; I don't want my sweet little two-year-old to be sedated and have an IV and all that! I think the best option for us is doing the sedation and procedures in the dental office; it will be a CRNA who will do the sedation there. I have a bit of anxiety about this because ideally I want, you know, a crack team of highly-trained experts in a top facility (i.e. pediatric anesthesiologists in a children's hospital or something) taking care of her while they are sedating her but they do this a lot and as long as no one is terrible at their job it should be fine. I have always been impressed with everyone at our pediatric dentist, so I think I trust them. I think.

And then the question of WHY WHY WHY? We don't ever have juice or hard candy, although we do occasionally have dried fruit and we certainly do not outlaw sugar. I nursed both of them at bedtime for a long time but the research is anything but conclusive that that is bad. We brush their teeth twice a day although we have not been regular flossing types. (But who flosses their toddler's teeth?! Actually, thanks to Facebook I now know that a number of my friends floss their toddler's teeth so... oops?) This is all so foreign to me because I had one cavity my entire life, when I was in high school sometime, I think. I almost never flossed as a child and I was nursed well past my 1st birthday and we had sugar around the house. In contrast Rob had a lot of cavities as a small child and Violet's teeth especially look a lot like his-- really tight and close together. I don't know; I'm sure I could obsess and think of a million reasons why this is our fault and then a million reasons why it isn't. The truth is probably some combination of the two, and perseverating on why is not a useful pastime. Instead, we shall face the unpleasant task of adjusting some of our routines (flossing, and maybe giving up the gummy vitamins?) and taking my small children to have their cavities filled.

I did another unpleasant task last week. Our adoption agency emailed and told us that all our paperwork and background checks had finally gone through and we were now an approved prospective adoptive family. Normally this would be the point where they would start showing our profile to prospective birthmothers. We went ahead and told them that we wanted to have our file on hold and we would get back to them next year or so about where we want to go from here. The agency was really supportive about it all and I so appreciate the way they've dealt with us through this. (I'm sure this isn't the first time this has happened for them.) I do feel sad about it because this was us really saying "no, we're not doing this now" for the first time. And can you believe the timing of all this? If we did go forward with the adoption right now, the average time to have a baby placed with us would be 3 to 6 months. Yeah... my due date is now just under 4 months away. I can't get over it-- so crazy!

Those things are all rather unpleasant, but my life has been rich in friendship/relationship stuff lately, for which I am so grateful. I am still thinking about Easter and how our church celebrated it this year. It was pretty much unlike anything I have experienced before and the joy and reality of resurrection was real in a new way to me. Our friend Becky (who has a lovely SLC food blog) had a post about it here with pictures and whatnot. And then the next weekend I hosted a bridal shower for a friend here who moved to Salt Lake about the same time we did. It was so fun to celebrate her and this transition of hers, so fun in fact that I only took this one picture before everyone showed up. And I think I have taken three (or was it four?) meals to friends who have just had new babies in the past few weeks. Lots of babies! But more importantly, I think, a richness of relationship and connections with people here who are a part of the new life we're building. It can be so hard to find that, and I am so, so thankful for this beautiful place and the people in it and our intertwining links here.

Spring Has Sprung

2011-05-03T14:39:00.004-06:00

I've spent the vast majority of my life in a climate where spring came too early and too hot, but that is not the case here. It turns out that I actually like spring here! The sun is out (when we aren't getting visited by wet spring snow) and the bulbs are blooming and the outside world beckons with wheeled vehicles and walks around the neighborhood.

Going on a walk in our neighborhood with Grace on her bike is a work-out-- not a physical one, mind you, but an emotional one. She has mostly ridden just on our driveway and venturing into the big world with HILLS (very, very slight hills) and STREET CROSSINGS and BUMPS ON THE SIDEWALK is a big undertaking. Grace is someone who feels her feelings intensely and can be dramatic about circumstances, so taking her out and about is a very slow process involving lots of encouragement and talking her down from the edge of hysteria. She is highly motivated to master new skills (which is good, of course) so she doesn't ever want to give up and go home. But oh, the dramatics...

Our chickens have grown very dramatically in the past ~10 days. I first noticed them looking bigger on day 4 or 5, which is kind of amazing to me. They don't have that round-ball-of-fuzz look anymore and a couple of them are already losing their chick fuzz in favor of adult feathers. Soon they will enter the awkward adolescent chicken phase when they look like they have mange and listen to music I don't like in their room with the door shut. But seriously, they eat ALL THE TIME, which I guess is how they manage to grow so fast. I bought them a second heat lamp when we were having a cold snap and snow (poor babies were all huddled together under the single heat lamp) but if we get more warm days then I think they can visit the grass for the first time next week sometime.

We had Grace's little ballet recital last night, which was, you know, what you'd expect from an evening of 3- to 5-year-olds "dancing". All the other pictures I took have other people's children displayed a bit too prominently for me to post them on the internet, and then this one below is out of focus-- AAARGH. Oh well, hopefully you can still tell what a lovely ballerina she is. She had so much fun doing ballet. She says she wants to do soccer next, so I should probably get on that. Things are wrapping up for the school year-- ballet class is finished, Grace will be done with preschool in 3 weeks, etc. This is giving me some cognitive dissonance because, again, I have spent almost my entire life somewhere where May brought the truly hot weather as well as the end of the school year, and it SNOWED last week here. It was warm and summery when we moved here last July so I'm assuming the snow will stop at some point before then?

Speaking of Grace and school, last week somebody from the ELP office called me to ask what our ranked preference for the magnet schools was and I told them we were going to go to our neighborhood school. Then the next day a more in-charge woman called me wanting to talk about that decision. It turns out that Grace tested very highly and she wanted me to know that before I declined an ELP spot. I thought we made this decision already! Aargh! Anyway, we are still going with our original plan for all the original reasons because I still think they make the most sense for us. I am, of course, now mildly plagued with worry that this isn't the best decision for her. On the other hand, I am OK with not making the absolute best decision for her as an individual in favor of one that will be good for us as a whole, as long as it isn't a BAD decision for her, you know? And I don't think this will be, even if she doesn't spend next year performing to her absolute peak 5-year-old potential. The administrator woman was very supportive and said she just had one piece of the picture there with the test scores and children and their families are much more complicated than just that. She said that our neighborhood school is great, which is what everyone says. We can always re-test Grace another year to try to get one of these spots again if we decide we should do that. So it turns out that Grace is even more a mini-me than we thought she was, from her hair to her big feet to her ability to take tests very well.

Household Business

2011-04-26T20:25:00.000-06:00

Chickens are not the only things that we have added to our household lately. We bought a new car! Well, it is used, actually, but new to us. Both of the cars we've been driving for the past several years are small-ish and will not fit three car seats across the back seat, so we definitely had an upcoming deadline to come up with another option. I'd kind of always assumed that three children meant it was time for a minivan and I LOATHED this idea. (Not enough to feel done with babies after two children, mind you, although the thought did cross my mind.) Rob started doing research, though, and ended up deciding that one of those 7-seat SUV-type things might be a good option, especially since Toyota makes a hybrid Highlander. I feared that I was letting my vanity influence this a bit, but really, if the Highlander fits our needs and our budget and our priorities and I hate the idea of driving a minivan that much, why not? Nobody makes a hybrid minivan yet anyway, so there you go.

Rob looked around for a used one for a couple of months and now we are now the lucky owners of a pearly white 2008 Highlander. It is FANCY, I tell you. It is by far the fanciest car we have ever owned; the one we ended up finding at the mileage/price we were looking for has GPS (yay!) and a back-up camera and a DVD player for the kids and heated seats and, gosh, everything. I feel really grateful about it, and it definitely takes the sting out of adjusting to driving a big vehicle. I much prefer small cars, given my druthers, especially considering that our garage is behind our house and one must navigate a narrow driveway between a fence and our house to get there. I am happy to report that I still have a 100% success rate of getting in and out of the garage, even after driving the new car for over a week. I am not naturally skilled at parking.

So now Rob is driving the Prius (our garage looks like a Toyota hybrid commercial) and we passed on our red Vibe to its new family. That was such a great car-- still is, really. We bought it right after we got married and I drove it back and forth from Dallas to Austin every week while I commuted during grad school. If it weren't for the three-car-seat issue, we totally would have kept it for a while yet and continued to use it to bring our Christmas tree home every year.

So a new car, and now also a freezer full of meat! We've been quasi-vegetarians for a number of years now; we would eat meat at other people's houses and at restaurants if we felt like it but I only cooked meat at home a half dozen times per year. This was mainly environmentally motivated, although the ethics of factory farming also played a role. While Rob was in residency and fellowship we couldn't afford to regularly buy meat that we felt ethically comfortable eating so we just didn't. In looking up produce CSAs for this coming growing season (want to find one for yourself? go here!), I stumbled upon this local farm that raises grass-fed cattle and pastured pigs. "Hmmm, interesting," I thought. Their prices range from $3.50/lb if you buy vast quantities of meat to just over $5/lb for 30 pounds, which sounded pretty darn reasonable to me, especially given what kind of meat we are talking about. Then I found out one of my friends has purchased from them and was really happy. And THEN I started craving more meat, which is something that has happened to me with both other pregnancies in my 2nd and 3rd trimesters. So I found a screaming good deal on a chest freezer on Craigslist (oh, Craigslist, what did people do before you?) and now there are 15 pounds of pork and 15 pounds of beef in our garage. We had pork chops last night for dinner and I guess we are meat-eaters again!

I will admit that I am still ethically conflicted about eating meat. I mean, the animals at our Utah farm live about as ideal animal lives as is possible, but still they have to die for us to have steak and bacon when we could all very easily eat something else. I want to read this book but I'm kind of afraid it will convince me that I should commit to vegetarianism. On the other hand, I am a total city girl and am very squeamish about death and suffering and have only ever lived with dogs and other pets, so I am pretty sure I have a romanticized/anthropomorphized view of animals. I do wonder if raising our chickens will change my perspective on all this and give me more balance and realism. Or if it will make it impossible to eat chicken ever again.

I've been organizing baby clothes right and left (the girl clothes have indeed left the garage and are finding new homes, for the curious) as well as all the other baby paraphernalia. I've made a ridiculous amount of money selling my too-girly-for-a-boy cloth diapers. I tell you-- cloth diapers are so fabulous. First off, you don't have to buy disposable diapers (obviously) and they are cuter and nicer and softer, then you can use them on a second child, and then when you are done, you can sell them for 50%-75% of what you originally paid for them. Crazy. I think I have enough gender-neutral diapers to make it without buying too many more, maybe just a few. (I always tried to keep 2/3 of my diaper purchases gender-neutral.)

So it has been an eventful couple of weeks at our house, right? A baby boy, chickens, a new car, trying to re-learn how to cook meat... It has felt very full and busy, and I have been full of organizational, getting-crap-done vigor. The second trimester-- I eat a second breakfast every morning at 10am and I GET CRAP DONE. I know I have bemoaned how awful pregnancy is, and I largely stand by all that, but maybe, just maybe, this middle bit isn't all that bad.

Four New Babies

2011-04-24T19:16:00.000-06:00

There are four new babies at our house, but rather than going all hardcore-attachment-parenting-Dr.-Sears on them as is our usual approach, they are living in our garage:

THE CUTENESS! IT SLAYS ME!

Aren't their butts so adorably fluffy and round?

So yes, after pondering backyard chickens for quite some time (I first mentioned wanting them here on the old blog in 2009) we have finally taken the plunge into chicken ownership. Yesterday we got four little chicks who are now living under a heat lamp in a cage (intended for a rabbit or a ferret) in a cozy corner of our garage. They will live there for 4-6 weeks until they lose their soft fuzzy fluff and grow in their adult feathers, then they will move outside to a coop (which Rob will spend the next 4-6 weeks building). They will reach sexual maturity and start laying eggs by about Thanksgiving or Christmas or so. Eggs from our very own chickens!

We picked breeds that have good egg production and are well-suited to cold weather; we got one each of four different breeds:

a Buff Orpington, the pale golden chick, who is named Henny Penny and will look like this when she grows up. She seems the most low-key and amiable of the four.
a Barred Plymouth Rock, the mostly black chick, who is named Drumstick and will look like this as an adult. She has the most spunk and initiative of the bunch.
a Speckled Sussex, the dark brown chick, who is named Mrs. Benedict and will look like this when she grows up.
an Ameraucana, the light brown chick, who is named Ella and will look like one of these when she grows up. The different colored Ameraucanas were all mixed up at the farm supply store so we don't know for sure but I'm guessing she'll be one of the brownish reddish ones. She will lay blue eggs!

Grace has gone out to check on the chicks at least a dozen times in the 24 hours we've had them, and we've both been pooped on already. Violet actually did a decent job of touching and holding them gently, although of course intense supervision is necessary with her. Rob saw an opportunity to tinker with technology so he made a webcam for us to see what the chickens are doing without going out to the garage (the garage door opener scares them anyway). I can't guarantee that the webcam will work permanently but it's been doing pretty good so far, so go visit if you want to see our little chicks running around their new home.

It's a Boy!

2011-04-15T20:45:00.000-06:00

Yes! It's true! Our parenting world is about to be expanded and changed. I had my big halfway-point ultrasound today and against all our expectations and theories, we are having a boy.

We did have a little inkling about this. At my last midwife appointment two weeks ago, she couldn't find the heartbeat with the doppler thingie. (Cue several minutes of intensifying anxiety. I tried to be calm because I know this happens a lot but it had never happened to me.) She gave up after a while and took me into their little ultrasound room to check things out. Fortunately, the baby was alive and wiggling around just as a baby should be and the midwife went on to check the heartbeat and so forth. It is always so awkward in those situations to refer to the baby ("she or he", "her or him") so I jokingly said to the midwife that we were pretty sure it was going to be a third girl. She said, "I don't know about that!" and after looking for a while, declared that she thought it looked more boy than girl to her. I will say that this made me anticipate my big ultrasound quite a bit more than I thought I was going to, which really doesn't make any sense, does it?

My midwifery practice sends their patients to a big maternal-fetal medicine practice at the hospital where I'll deliver for this main mid-point ultrasound. We trucked in both girls with us this afternoon and had a miserable beginning to our appointment as they were an HOUR behind schedule. Ugh, Violet totally lost it. We did eventually make it back to the ultrasound room and got a lovely long look at our new little one. They did all the measurements of the brain and heart and abdominal organs and spine and counted hands and feet and everything, and I am really grateful that he looks healthy and normal and just as he should. He had his little hands up by his face a lot, which was super adorable, but also made it hard to get good pictures. I think these ultrasound pictures are more the stereotypical blurry gray blobby things than Grace's or Violet's, but oh well... Humorously, the picture that is the most clear and obvious is the one identifying him as a boy. Too bad my sense of propriety keeps me from posting pictures of my baby's junk on the internet, right?

So a boy! We are thrilled. We would have been so happy either way and the idea of raising three little sisters is delightful, but it is very exciting to contemplate an entirely new kind of child. We have a boy name that we've been thinking about for years now, but I think we'll let it settle for a few weeks to see if it feels right before we firmly decide. Now we can continue our track record of not circumcising our babies and have it be a more meaningful decision! And finally, a child who can be good at math! HAHAHAHAHAHA-- just kidding. It will be so interesting to me to see how our perspective on gender and parenting and toys and all that shifts with the addition of a boy. My girls wear dresses and a healthy dose of pink and love flowers and pretty things, but on the other hand, we have yet to show the girls a Disney princess movie and our books and toys are mostly gender neutral (with some exceptions-- Grace's bike is pink because I was lucky to even find one that was free of branding, the baby dolls are all obviously meant to be girls, and so forth). It will be interesting to learn to navigate a new side of gender issues.

And clothes! I saw this article making the rounds on Facebook recently and it did make me wish that gender-neutral clothes were still the norm for babies (the pictures from that article are so interesting too). We really can't have our new baby wear most of what we have in our hand-me-down boxes, though; we are not that up for a radical deconstruction of gendered clothing expectations. I think I will be smarter about what kinds/brands of clothes we buy this time. I feel like I have a better idea of what works at different ages for me and my preferences, with the cloth diapers, etc. But now what to do about all the girl clothes in plastic bins in our garage? We will obviously always keep around the clothes between Grace and Violet, but I am just itching to clean out and get rid of the things Violet has outgrown. On the other hand, what if we do adopt and end up with a girl? Will I feel stupid for having to re-buy girl clothes? But is it a good use of our space and the clothes themselves to have them sitting there unused for years "just in case"? I am doing a good job of over-thinking this.

Happy, Busy, Sad

2011-04-09T10:49:00.002-06:00

I am so grateful for how I am feeling these days. SERIOUSLY. 2011 had a bit of a rough beginning for me, what with a few months of first trimester misery (unexpected misery, no less) and then a round of illnesses. I am 19 weeks pregnant now and feeling so, so much better that it's hard to even describe. I feel like the past few months were this dismal fog when I was just barely functioning, and now I feel SO ALIVE. It is so wonderful to feel quasi-normal and to enjoy food and to face a new day without dread about how bad I feel. It is also so wonderful to catch up on all the details of life that have fallen by the wayside in the meantime, all the projects and paperwork and details of family life that got pushed to the side because I just couldn't handle it. We organized and de-cluttered the garage! I took Grace to a belated 5-year check-up! I made Rob take the Texas registration stickers off the cars with a hair dryer and a razor blade! I dusted!

I think part of my new-found motivation to deal with ALL the things is hormonally-induced crazed nesting. Isn't it a little early for that? And does this whole phenomenon seem weird to anyone else? I would never argue against the reality of the nesting instinct but it seems very strange to me that some cocktail of hormones can make me want-- no, NEED to organize the closets and replace yucky old outlets with bright shiny new outlets and file all the papers. It makes more sense to me that something biochemical could make someone, say, intensely bond with a new baby or want to have sex; those things seem more basically biological to me. But brain chemicals that produce an intense need to repaint a room? Weird.

Among other details that have recently been taken care of, Grace is all registered for kindergarten now. We ended up registering her at our neighborhood school. We still haven't heard back if she got one of the coveted ELP spots (we won't until May) but I think even if she does, we will stick here close to home. This is partly because I totally bailed on all the open houses and information sessions for the ELP magnet schools (I. just. couldn't.) and thus I have no basis on which to make a decision. And it is partly because I think walking her to school and having her there for half-day kindergarten will be better for her and me. And it is partly because I think Grace will do absolutely fine in a mainstream classroom, especially for kindergarten, given her personality and sociability and whatnot. Anyway, I gathered up her paperwork and vaccination records and birth certificate and copies of utility bills (our neighborhood school is considered very desirable so they are apparently pretty serious about establishing where exactly you live) and took them over to the little school. Now we shall see if she ends up in a morning or afternoon kindergarten. At first, I was going to request a morning one because that seems much more normal and I am pretty sure that if she is an afternoon one, we will just putter about every morning and not get dressed and never get anything accomplished in the mornings. But then I remembered that I would have a NEWBORN BABY this fall and I thought maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing. It's not like you get anything done with a newborn baby anyway, and slow mornings with nowhere to be until noon following rough nights don't sound that terrible. Plagued with indecision, I ended up at "Eh, whatever," and have decided to let God pick. I say this half-jokingly because I am pretty sure that's not how God normally works and that he is not a crystal ball to which you can abdicate decision-making responsibility, but on the other hand, I do believe in a God who is loving and caring and personally involved in our lives.

I haven't talked much about adoption plans recently, and that is largely because we haven't really decided anything. Our background checks are still out being checked so we haven't had to tell the adoption agency exactly what we want to do yet. Once those come back, we will be approved prospective adoptive parents and would normally then be put on the active list and our profile shown to prospective birthmothers and so forth. We are leaning away from doing that right now. It turns out that what we were contemplating has an official name-- it's called "artificial twinning", siblings who are not biologically related who are less than nine months apart in age. And it turns out that it is generally frowned on, for a lot of good reasons. I found this article especially compelling, although obviously bits of it do not apply to our situation. Supposedly it is harder than having biological twins because the two babies are not ever at the same developmental stage; the difference between a 3-month-old and an 8-month-old is HUGE, as I have definitely experienced, and it would be really hard to meet both of those babies' needs at the same time. Our parenting style definitely comes into play here; I really want to be able to, you know, hold my baby a lot and wear my baby in a sling while chasing around the older ones and be able to do the non-stop nursing that most newborns need/want. If the situation had been different and we were pushed into an artificial twinning situation (i.e. I'd become unexpectedly pregnant after being matched with a birthmother or right after a new baby was placed with us or something) then I think we would have embraced it and dealt with the challenges and I'm sure been glad that we'd gone down that road. Choosing to do this in a more deliberate way gives us pause, though. And since we are looking at adopting a mostly healthy newborn, these babies are going to get adopted by someone; the wait time at our agency for African-American babies is 3-6 months, not 1 week. Don't get me wrong-- I think there is a significant need for families open to adopting a child of color (exhibit A: our agency's wait time for white babies is 9-12 months) but what I am saying is that the need for parents is not so dire that us choosing not to adopt this year means a baby will go without a family.

So what does this all mean? I am pretty sure that we are not going to go on the active list when our approval comes in. This makes me sad sad sad. Will we update our paperwork in a year or two and come back to this? I honestly don't know. We'd always pictured ourselves with three kids, and four sounds like a LOT. Also, a family of 2 white biological kids + 1 black adopted kid seems not too unbalanced, while changing the ratio to 3 to 1 seems different to me. Right now I feel less sure that we'll adopt than I have EVER, like since we got married, and this too makes me sad sad sad. On the other hand, I think Rob and I have realized how much we do desire to adopt through this experience, so maybe we'll reevaluate in 2012 or 2013? No doors are certainly closed (except the door to more biological children, which we are going to CLOSE) so we will see. In the meantime, I will comfort myself from feeling sad about not adopting this year with the very great happiness of getting ready for a different kind of new baby. And also, getting some chickens.

San Francisco

2011-03-30T12:00:00.000-06:00

We are back from our trip to San Francisco and have recovered enough from the laundry and the INSANE RE-ENTRY ISSUES of my children for me to edit photos and whatnot. Oh, what a lovely time we had! I think we made the trip too long (although with good reason-- Rob's conference was 5 days and we took a few extra days to see his family; add two days for the plane trips and all the sudden you have a LONG trip) but nevertheless it was really fun. We didn't rent a car and just used public transportation, which was definitely the right decision. Driving and parking in a dense, urban city is utter misery to start with, and it turns out the girls loved the streetcars and cable cars and commuter train and even the buses. Violet especially wishes, I think, that we could do all our transportation WITHOUT a car seat and WITH entertaining strangers. Public transportation is better for kids than car travel, after all. I need to figure out where we can get from our house with Salt Lake City's not-super-awesome public transportation system.

We ate so much wonderful, delicious food during our trip. Dim sum in Chinatown, wonderful Mexican food in the Mission District (actually we ate in the Mission a LOT because there were so many wonderful but also kid-friendly, not-too-fancy places to eat), grilled sausages, Peruvian, Salvadoran, fancy brunches, amazing ice cream... I could go on and on. One evening when Rob's parents had come into the city to see us, they babysat the girls and Rob and I went out on a date. We went to a speakeasy, with an unmarked entrance door and a password and secret passages and everything (it would have been even more fun if I weren't pregnant and could really drink but still, it was fabulous) and then had seven courses of beef at a ridiculously tiny, wonderful Vietnamese restaurant. I found this list in a local San Francisco magazine when I was researching our trip that was very helpful in deciding where to go to eat (although, as you would expect, many of the places on that list are way too fancy and/or inappropriate for kids). I put all the places I thought we should try as bookmarks on Yelp before we left, and then wherever we were in the city, I could look on my phone and see what was close by. Brilliant! Speaking of phones, I will now sing the praises of having a smart phone to anyone who will listen when it comes to navigating an unfamiliar city. Google Maps was my very best friend, and their public transportation and walking options for directions worked beautifully. Seriously, it went absolutely without any problems.

It rained a lot while we were there, which was kind of a bummer. Poor Rob's parents got some of the worst rain during their days in the city, and some long-time friends of Rob's (and now mine) who also came into the city to see us got pretty wet as well. Fortunately, it was usually just on-and-off rain with several hours or a whole day of sunshine interspersed here and there. Grace and I walked around with ridiculously curly, frizzy-yet-flat hair in the humidity (have I told you that I think Violet's hair is going to be straight-ish?) and I will admit that doing buses with a stroller AND umbrellas with rain coming down was challenging. I tried to avoid the stroller as much as possible on the rainy days and just go to places with minimal walking on our route and/or make Rob carry Violet if he wasn't in his conference. (For the record, we wished we had brought the Ergo; we never use it with Violet at home anymore but it would have been helpful on the trip.) I was wishing by the end of the trip that I had a nicer stroller (I only have cheap strollers) and Grace was wishing by the end of the trip that we didn't make her walk so much every day. But on the whole, on the non-rainy days, getting around was not tough at all.

And oh, did we get around! I am really happy with the things we got to see. We didn't see Pier 39 or Ghirardelli Square or some of the über-touristy places, but that's not really our style anyway. We saw the bridges and the Ferry Building, Fisherman's Wharf (the part with the actual fishing boats and disgusting but captivating puddles), the Palace of Fine Arts, Zeum (which was a big hit) and the Exploratorium (which was not). We got into those last two places free with our membership to the Salt Lake City planetarium; I think being a member of a local museum/planetarium/whatnot like that is such a good deal because you can use them when you travel at places with reciprocal deals set up. Where we did NOT get in free was the Academy of Sciences, which houses the good aquarium and a planetarium and a rainforest thing and whatnot. It was going to cost $80 to get in for the four of us! Can you believe that? We did not go in. Boo on you, Academy of Sciences...

Our last full day in San Francisco was sunny and beautiful and we spent most of the day in Golden Gate Park, which is so huge that there was no way to really see the whole thing. We mostly walked around the Japanese Tea Garden and Spreckels Lake and had a wonderful ending to a wonderful trip. Thanks for showing us a good time, San Francisco!

Life in the Big City

2011-03-21T22:47:00.001-06:00

Well, hello there! We are in San Francisco! Rob has his big national allergy conference and we have all tagged along to hang out in a beautiful city and have lots of fun. This is the same conference that took us to New Orleans last year, so apparently this is how we go on vacation now.

I am pretty much healthy finally, for which I am SO SO THANKFUL. Seriously, that cold totally had my number for a good two weeks. I am really overflowing with gratitude that I finally kicked it, especially given the demands of traveling with small children. The day that we had our flights was still rough, but I have been largely healthy since then. This is a decent time to travel during a pregnancy; I don't have the super-specific food aversions and needs (i.e. "must. have. crackers. now. or. will throw up.") and headaches and extreme exhaustion of the first trimester but I'm not really big enough to feel awful lugging my gigantic self around an unfamiliar city. So, hooray for all that.

San Francisco is such a beautiful city, and we really love it here. We spent part of our honeymoon here (after spending most of it in Yosemite), and of course Rob grew up in a more suburban part of the Bay Area. Rob's parents moved out of the metro area to Sonoma County a few years ago, so although we have flown in and out of Bay Area airports about once a year, we have always immediately driven a few hours inland and have not actually spent any time in San Francisco itself since our honeymoon. It's been so fun to be here, and I hereby resolve that this trip I am finally going to make it inside Britex Fabrics. Every other time I've been here, I have walked past it or glimpsed it down a street but I was with companions who were not really into fabric shopping. I don't care this time; I am going.

This trip is making me realize anew how much I love big cities. I do; I love the bustle and the tall buildings and public transportation and the diversity and museums and that feeling of there being an infinite number of things to do and see and eat and experience. Rob tried to convince me the other night at dinner that San Francisco was an even better big city than New York, which was obviously crazy talk (New York is really one of my favorite places to be in the whole wide world), but it is lovely in its own right. What else I have realized anew is how mentally/emotionally draining big cities are. There are the mentally ill homeless (which seems like an especially big problem here, but then I wonder if I have blocked that out from visits to other big cities) but also just the increased level of effort it takes to do things, which is kind of draining. I find that effort to be one of the invigorating things about travel but at the same time it uses up the mental/emotional energy reserves pretty fast. So here is my analysis of Salt Lake City as compared to San Francisco: colder/snowier in March, proportionally more white people, proportionally fewer homeless people, fundamentally easier to live life and do things. These things all have their positives and negatives, of course. (Well, except for the lack of diversity thing-- really nothing good about that. And the homelessness. OK, just scratch that sentence altogether.)

They announced that next year's meeting will be in Orlando, and I can't decide if we should all go along for that or not. Are we Orlando kind of people? There is Disney, of course, but I don't know off the top of my head if doing Disney with Violet at slightly more than 3 and this new baby at about 6 months would be fun or misery. (Grace, I think, would probably love Disney next year.) And is the other option in Orlando a beach-y vacation? This is all just off the top of my head; I have done zero research about Orlando as a possible destination. A warm beach could be fun. Right? Wouldn't it? I have never taken a beach-y vacation ever in my entire life, with the only possible exception being the day or two I would take before an observing run in Honolulu with Waikiki Beach and so forth. I could see a beach being fun with three children. Oh my gosh-- THREE CHILDREN. We are going to have THREE CHILDREN. What are we going to do?!

A Bit of Spring

2011-03-10T19:57:00.000-07:00

We are various levels of sick here at our house and Grace has missed half of her schooldays over the past two weeks, but goodness, I cannot mind it very much because it was sunny and balmy and warm today-- it even got to 60 degrees! The sky was a blue I would like to paint my bedroom and the foot of snow we got a few days ago is almost entirely melted away and it smells amazing outside... I am sure that winter is not finished with us here (after all, it snowed in April last year when we were here visiting) but oh, what a beautiful day!

We have been so lucky this winter about illnesses, hardly having gotten anything, but the germs caught up with us in the past month as it's been a merry-go-round of sickness at our house with various people getting various diseases. Right now, I am recovering from a nasty cold and Grace has some kind of insane rash combined with cold symptoms. They might be unrelated to each other, I guess, and Rob has a complicated theory involving the amoxicillin she was taking for her strep throat and then her getting exposed to my cold virus and KABLAM! Crazy rash! Poor thing, she is old enough now to be self-conscious and unhappy about it. I gave them a bath last night (usually Rob's job but he wasn't home) and it was quite a sight-- one naked porcelain-skinned child and one child covered face to feet in this unnerving rash. Sheesh, I will be glad when it is gone.

I will also be glad when I am fully recovered from this cold. During pregnancy, your immune system is suppressed a little to keep your body playing nice with the foreign organism growing inside of it, and for me, I find that this means a) I catch illnesses really easily and b) I get way more sick than I ought to from every little virus that comes our way. I thought I was coming down with for-real influenza at the beginning of this cold, but thankfully not, just a bad cold. Blech, just one more thing to add to the list of weird, miserable pregnancy symptoms (along with restless leg syndrome! and nasal congestion! and strange skin issues!). I do not win at being pregnant.

I have had a realization about myself when it comes to procreating. (Well, it's not entirely new, but I have realized it with new clarity.) I really REALLY dislike being pregnant. I am not one of those women who feel all glowy and at one with their beautiful gestating bodies and just so happy about every minute of it. I realize that this attitude is very much a function of how easy it has proved (soooooooo easy...) for us to conceive; I have not spent any appreciable amount of my life wishing and hoping that I was pregnant, like so many people we know and care about. I know that this is a blessing, and if I had to choose between super-fertility/unexpected pregnancies and not getting pregnant for months or years when I wanted to be, I would definitely pick the way things have turned out. I think that my friends who have struggled with infertility and gone on to get pregnant have a better sense of perspective about the misery of the whole thing, though. Although I think I should borrow some of that perspective and have a better attitude, I also think it is OK for me to say that yes, I really REALLY dislike being pregnant. It is what it is. On the other hand, I really REALLY loooooooove newborn babies. Seriously, there is just nothing like the wonder and the newness and the magic of a tiny new baby. It is enthralling and rapturous and leaves me blissed out, and yes, I am really looking forward to doing that again. I do win at babies! I think the reality of a new baby is starting to sink in a bit for me. I had a midwife appointment last Friday and she did another quick ultrasound. The baby looked so much more, well, baby-like than even just 5 weeks before; you could see its heart pumping away (with four chambers visible!) and the baby wiggling and flailing around and the backbone and FINGERS and so much wee adorableness.

So there you go-- pregnancy sucks, I've obviously never struggled with post-partum depression, and we get to have a BABEEEEEEEEE...

7 Facts: Music Edition

2011-02-28T16:15:00.001-07:00

Amy from A Chase After Wind, whose blog I very much enjoy, tagged me in a 7 Things meme last week. (I'm trying to remember how I first found Amy online; I think she left some gracious, gentle comments about a difficult faith issue on a very famous blog we both read and I really appreciated her perspective. And she lives in St. Louis, where all my extended family lives!) I do so love me a meme, and it is rather a dreary day around here with Grace having strep throat and Violet being worrisomely fussy, so here are seven facts from me. Amy did hers with a theme (her feet!) and a theme seemed like a good idea to me, so mine will be all about music.

I have been just FULL of nostalgia lately for 90s music, for some inexplicable reason. I turned 12 in 1990 and 22 in 2000, so obviously this was an important decade musically for me, but really, I just love so much of that music-- grunge and women singer-songwriters and Smashing Pumpkins and Achtung Baby and Nirvana... NPR agrees with me. (Related, I also am full of nostalgia right now for the fashion of the 90s; I really want to wear long flowy skirts with Doc Martens.)
I have a deep and abiding love for subversive use of the banjo. I believe this is born out of my dad's banjo playing, although he is more of a traditional banjo player with straight-up bluegrass and whatnot. I just loooooove people using the banjo in unexpected ways, though; Bela Fleck and Blind Pilot and Sufjan Stevens come to mind.
I have been playing piano at our new church here for a few months now, which has been really fun. It's downright amusing how DIFFERENT it can be to play at different churches; people come to church music with such a variety of backgrounds and levels of training and whatnot. I consider myself very lucky that all the communities I've played as part of have been nurturing and positive and Christ-centered, but even so it takes some adjustment to get used to such unique musical cultures. Why, WHY don't guitar players read music?
I feel sort of ready to own a piano, at some point in the not-too-distant future. I don't know if it will happen because gosh, pianos are expensive. And heavy. And I'm not sure where we would put it. But I'd really like to live in the same house with one again sometime (I haven't since living with my parents in high school) and I would be pretty happy if eventually our kids learned to play. We'll see.
One of the most shocking musical experiences of my life came when I turned on Austin City Limits one evening and realized that I liked Willie Nelson. This was back in the pre-DVR days (I was in college, I think?) and I don't believe it would have even happened at all if I'd been using a DVR at the time; I would have seen that the episode had Willie Nelson and not watched it. I generally define my tastes in country music as "yuck"; my stance on this has softened over the years as I have realized that it is actually contemporary pop/country that I don't like, but at that stage in my life I was utterly convinced that Lyle Lovett was the exception that proved the rule and that country music was not for me. I had never really even heard Willie Nelson's music to my knowledge but was utterly convinced that I disliked it. But I was WRONG! He was WONDERFUL! It's kind of fantastic to realize that something you had dismissed is actually really great.
The next live show that I would really really REALLY like to see is the New Pornographers; I just love them so. This song, and this song, and this song, and this song... And have you seen this video? HAHAHAHAHAHA... Actually, that might not be that funny if you don't know much about this band; those are all comedians playing the people in the band. They (the actual musicians, not the comedians) came to Salt Lake City last summer for a free outdoor concert series, like the second week we were living here, and things were just too crazy and we didn't have anybody we knew for babysitters and we DIDN'T GO. Oh, the humanity... They need to come back to Utah sometime in the next six months or so before I have this new baby and then I can't do anything fun for a year. (That is an unfair exaggeration, of course, but nighttime rock concerts are really not an easy option for a good long while, at least the way my babies live their lives.) Actually, how about all musicians I like come to Utah in the next six months? I need to get in all my nightlife while I can.
We have one concert on our schedule at this point; the Arcade Fire is coming to Utah in early April and we have actual tickets and everything. Hooraaaaaaaaaay! (Note to self: get babysitter.) I still can't over the fact that they won one of the big Grammys this year. Don't get me wrong; I think their new album is fabulous and all but I still think that was a crazy win.

Snowbunnies

2011-02-22T16:02:00.001-07:00

We went skiing for the third time yesterday, and gosh, was it ever beautiful. We had gotten fresh snow the day before (over 20" of fresh powder up in the mountains) but the clouds had cleared away and it was this sunny day of blue skies and all this fluffy white gorgeousness, both in the clouds and on the ground. I really wish I was better at skiing so I could somehow manage to take some pictures with my phone or something, but navigating around still takes all of my concentration and I don't think I can take pictures at the same time, much to your loss, I am sad to say. I still am spending my time on the bunny slope, which I now can ski down without looking too ridiculous or falling down. I tried an actual green slope yesterday with Rob, and I reverted to ridiculousness and fell down three times trying to get back down to the bottom. I am not sure how many weeks of skiing I have left in me this season. Either my ski pants are just going to get too uncomfortable, or my balance is going to be compromised too much for me to manage it anymore. We'll see which happens first. Supposedly in most years you can ski in Utah well into May or even June but I'm not sure how many more times I'm going to make it up there.

Yesterday was enormously beautiful, but it was also insanely busy up there. It was a holiday and long weekend for some people, and a fresh powder day, and this month is apparently the peak of the ski season here, and you should have seen the traffic getting up the mountain. It took us an hour to drive up there when it usually takes 30 minutes and our day started with stress over missing the beginning of Grace's lesson (her first one!) and sitting in terrible traffic in the midst of NATURE and so forth. Things worked out as far as Grace's lesson and all our other plans, but wow, there were a lot of people.

This was Grace's very first time up there with us, as she couldn't start the group lessons until after her fifth birthday. She went through several phases while there. First, excitement at finally getting to ski after hearing us and many of her friends talking about it since November. Then, panic and saying that she didn't like skiing after discovering that it is kind of hard and you have to work at learning it and falling down is scary. (At one point, she was standing facing a tree refusing to make eye contact with her teacher and crying about how she wanted to stop.) And finally, after some convincing, perseverance tempered by barely-controlled panic as she started to get the hang of it and did actual ski down the bunny slope. She is not a fearless shredder but at the end of it all she said she liked it and I think she will do well.

Violet came up with us this time as well and we put her in the childcare at the ski resort. She seemed to have fun but she would have much rather come skiing with us. She desperately, desperately wants to ski. We have had utter freakouts about Grace's skis, which Violet wants to play with and drag around and have as her very own. If she sees any skis at all, she declares, "I NEED SKIS!" and tries to run over and grab them or catapult herself out of my arms toward them. We're going to have to come up with some other skiing plan for her that doesn't involve waiting until she's five for group lessons. Unfortunately, neither Rob nor I are skilled enough to really teach a toddler/preschooler to ski, so we're going to have to pony up for private lessons or bribe a friend or something. Because she NEEDS SKIS.

Violet is just full of hilariousness right now, come to think of it. She has somehow confused our front doormat (which is about as clean as you would expect after being our doormat for the better part of a year) for a blanket and likes to take it and spread it over herself or others if anyone happens to be laying on the couch. She announces herself to be "REALLY HUNGRY!" or "REALLY TIRED!" or, most commonly, "REALLY STUCK!" Toys or objects are also often "REALLY STUCK!" Gosh, she has somehow developed a voracious appetite all of the sudden, being "REALLY HUNGRY!", as stated before, and also often proclaiming "I NEED FOOD!" or "I NEED SNACKS!" And yes, she does always speak with exclamation points. It's just how two-year-olds roll.

Edumacation

2011-02-17T16:16:00.000-07:00

So if you have children of your own, you probably know this, but this is the time of year for thinking about what you are going to do for school for the coming fall. It does seem early, doesn't it? But this is when all the preschools have their registration days and want all your paperwork and money and so forth. The ante has been upped this year, because although it seems nearly impossible, Grace will start KINDERGARTEN in the fall. Kindergarten! How can this be? Anyway, our little neighborhood school seems really nice and sweet and nurturing and I think it would be a perfectly acceptable option. Then there are a couple of ELP magnet schools that seem good and aren't too far away, so we had Grace do the assessment for that last week. I had a hard time describing to Grace exactly what we were going to do when we were driving there because she hasn't ever taken a test in her life. They didn't allow parents into the testing room so afterwards I was trying to get Grace to tell me what it was like, with minimal success. Apparently there was addition and reading and fill-in-the-blank stories and puzzle-type things. The school district here tests 4-5 times as many children as they have kindergarten ELP spots so I have no confidence whatsoever in Grace getting picked. In fact, I feel sort of uncertain about if I even want her to get a spot. Our neighborhood school is very nice and a really short walk and she could do half-day kindergarten there (which I see as a good thing for her personality and our family; the ELP programs are all full-day); the magnet schools are not far really, but they would involve a car drive. And also I am currently annoyed because we have to rank the magnet schools we would want 2+ months before we even find out if she gets a spot (those letters get sent in May), which means I have to visit and go to open houses and think and ponder and decide which one we like the best without even knowing if she's qualified. Blech. Nothing makes me think more longingly about homeschooling than all the logistical details and waking up in the morning with an alarm clock and packing lunches and driving to and fro and all that.

And then there's Violet, who I am also full of uncertainty about for the fall. We are thinking about putting her in preschool for two mornings a week. I know she would love it, as she currently thinks pretty much any group setting with kids is the super most fun thing ever. I have put her on the list for a little preschool at a Presbyterian church close to us, but that place is known for filling up fast and it is hard to get a spot. I should hear back from them at the end of March, I think? The other main option would be the Jewish Community Center where Grace is now, which is fabulous in many ways but is pretty expensive and further than I would like to drive in an ideal world and also has a drop-off/pick-up schedule that would conflict with Grace's if she ends up doing half-day kindergarten. We could definitely get a spot there because we are a currently enrolled family but I think the logistical challenges are insurmountable and I'd rather have her in no preschool at all than there. To top all of this off, I am trying to accurately picture myself doing all this given the schedule of this impending baby. My due date is September 3 so all this oldest-baby-off-to-kindergarten and first-day-of-preschool is going to be happening with me either one zillion weeks pregnant or with a 3-day-old baby. Or heaven forbid, in the hospital. AAAAACK.

Speaking of the new baby, I had my first dream about her/him. (Well, it's really a her, as we all know, right?) I dreamed that the baby (who was a girl in the dream) came early and although had no health problems because of it, was very small, the size of the baby dolls that we have. We had to come home from the hospital almost immediately, like within hours of the birth, because I had to pick Grace up from school, with this tiny baby in a sling. Also, we hadn't decided on a name yet and Rob and I were having these big fights about what to name her. He wanted to name her something really flowery with some wacky alternative spelling (HA!) but I was having none of it. So hopefully none of this actually happens, although gosh, I really have no idea what we're going to do for a name if we are having a third girl. Also, my subconscious is pretty obvious about its concerns, no?

Five Years of Grace

2011-02-13T09:32:00.001-07:00

Today is Grace's birthday and she is five years old. She is all arms and legs and curly hair and intense single-mindedness and vivid radiance. She spends vast quantities of time with markers and paper and scissors crafting intricate creations, and is forever making inscrutable objets d'art to bestow as gifts. She loves her social circles at school and church and whatnot, and gymnastics and ballet have been huge hits this year. When she gets over-excited, her voice does this crazy thing where it goes up several octaves (impressive, given its normal little girl range) and yet at the same time gets grating and guttural as if she's been smoking. She is a sensitive soul. We tried to watch Star Wars with her a few weeks back and did not get past the opening scrolling text because it was all just too scary and dramatic.

She is more competent and capable every day but sometimes she still very much wants to be little and cuddled and taken care of. We have been getting some baby talk and other regressive kinds of behaviors recently but I also see her being brave and adventurous. She expresses worry or anxiety about new situations more often than when she was smaller; I think her ever-increasing forays into the outside world have made her more aware of how wide and unknown it is. She doesn't have the watertight confidence of a fearless clueless toddler, which I think is just part of getting bigger. My heart sometimes aches a bit when I see her independence and curiosity clash with her realization of how big and uncertain the world is.

We had a fun birthday party for her yesterday and wow, it was a crazy one. It was bigger than her 4th birthday party; we invited her whole class from preschool along with church friends and a few others. It may have verged on too big and and I'm wondering if it's time to stop inviting her whole class to these things. Or maybe to stop having parties at our house. Or maybe both. It was a good time, if a bit crazy and messy, and I do love a big party where all the toys end up on the floor and half-eaten cupcakes litter the furniture and everyone does lots of chatting. We continued our tradition of asking for no gifts (although of course she is getting gifts today from family) which still strikes me as one of my best party-planning ideas ever. Seriously, the toys multiply every year as it is and we don't need 15 more presents from people who may not have the same values when it comes to toys and possessions that we do. Anyway, we played some simple games and ate cupcakes and batted balloons around and it was fun. Today we'll have a family dinner (she requested spaghetti and meatballs, which is kind of funny since I'm pretty sure she's never eaten that) with leftover cupcakes and then open her presents. I feel so, so lucky to be celebrating my biggest girl and who she is on the eve of her fifth year in the world.

Happy birthday, my beautiful, vibrant, sensitive, growing-up girl.

Siiiiiiiiiiick

2011-02-08T10:07:00.003-07:00

I am struggling through a cold right now and am feeling kind of rough. We've been pretty fortunate on the illness front this winter but this little virus has found us and is making its way through the residents of our house. I am feeling particularly low and wretched this morning after a troubled night. I think I am the most sick from this particular virus of all of us, either because I lack moral fiber or because I am with child and this virus is exacerbating the normal nasal congestion I get while pregnant. (Yet another of the weird, very common, largely inexplicable symptoms of pregnancy...) I don't think about my nose that frequently when I am not sick but boy, it sure is important, isn't it? Especially at night. I can barely breathe through my nose, I've gone to bed before 9pm for the last three nights, and gosh, I just feel generally AWFUL. I have in the past day broken down and started taking some OTC medicine. I don't like to take anything when I'm pregnant (because heck, it turns out that even Tylenol, which is like the ONLY THING they say it is OK for pregnant women to take, can make bad stuff happen to your baby) but I am just too miserable without it. It is kind of ridiculous that a mere cold has flattened me so thoroughly and I know Rob wants me to pull myself together and function; hopefully I can do so soon.

I definitely need to be a little more functional by the end of the week because it is Grace's birthday on Sunday! The actual thing that will require some functioning on my part is the party we are having for her and her little friends on Saturday. I still need to do a bit more planning. Games? Cupcakes? Balloons? I am going pretty low-key so I think that is about it. Anybody have any great resources for party games for 5-year-olds? I was going to let myself off the hook on the cupcakes and buy them but it turns out that cupcakes from a non-grocery-store bakery are quite pricey. I am normally someone who bakes everything from scratch so I had no idea-- $2 to $3 per cupcake, or more, and I think I need 2 dozen. Oh well, it's not that much work. I think I'm going to do these cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting.

My red hair is holding up quite well. I am going on 3 weeks now and it still looks pretty good; I think I'm going to try to make it to 4 weeks before going over it again with more red. This is an improvement over the other times I have done this when I had to put more Manic Panic on every 2 weeks. The stylist who did the color said that she thought the brand she uses lasts longer, and then also I have stopped washing my hair every day since the last time I did this so I'm sure that helps. I used to be a shampoo-every-day-without-exception kind of girl, but I started the baking soda/apple cider vinegar routine back in 2009 and it helped me not wash as often. (In case you're curious, during our move and unpacking and all that, I went back to regular shampoo because it was too hard to mix up stuff or travel with the baking soda routine but I did stick with not washing everyday and just used conditioner on the other days. After things settled down here in our new house I went back to baking soda and cider vinegar.) I am still a shower-every-day-without-exception kind of girl, though; not even newborn babies can keep me from my daily shower.

I think I am about a week away from being in maternity clothes; my belly doesn't look particularly pregnant but my waistline is definitely disappearing and clothes are getting uncomfortable and tight. This is about when I started wearing maternity clothes with Violet (11 or 12 weeks), and about a month earlier than I did with Grace, which is all normal and typical and whatnot (getting bigger faster with not-first pregnancies and whatnot). I am happy that I started this pregnancy 15 lbs slimmer than I started Violet's, although of course I would have been happier if I'd gotten all the way down another 15-20 lbs to my pre-Grace weight. Not that it matters at all as far as maternity clothes go because I GOT RID OF ALL OF IT before we moved to Utah. So yeah, I'm not sure what I'm going to wear in another week.

Carbs! I Need Some More Carbs!

2011-02-01T10:23:00.001-07:00

Someone bring me some carbs! I swear that nothing brings what I eat more in line with the Standard American Diet healthy types are always bemoaning than pregnancy. This has 2 main reasons: a) nothing is as soothing to a miserable tummy than some nice refined carbohydrates and b) I cannot manage the energy or stomach to do much cooking so nice packaged prepared food it is for us. I now chuckle at my plan to start 2011 off on a super healthy eating kick. I can hardly face a vegetable or legume and white flour is my friend. (I am eating a lot of fruit and dairy, so that's something, I suppose.) We have turned into a short order cook kind of house, where Rob cooks and eats his food (he is sticking with our grand healthy eating plan) and we make something easy the girls will eat and then I pick at whatever sounds like it might not be disgusting. Usually carbs.

I was so cheered by the responses of our friends and family to our surprising news. I wasn't expecting people to be mean or judgmental or anything, but everyone being so warm and encouraging really put me in a happy state of mind about circumstances. I felt especially nervous about telling some of the adoption-minded people in my life and they were maybe the most gentle and understanding. It's good to have so many people in one's life who are reassuring and positive and supportive; I am really grateful for the gift of so much kindness and all these relationships. So, thank you. Really.

So far, this seems more like the first trimester of Grace's pregnancy than the first trimester of Violet's pregnancy, which is a good thing because man, I was a MESS when I was pregnant with Violet. This time it is the same kind of stuff but not as extreme. Of course, I am typing this after a particularly rough morning (the nausea! the headache! the nearly irresistible urge to lie down somewhere!) but no, it is true-- I am not as badly off this time. We are splitting hairs here though, because pregnancy has once again managed to turn me into an emo hot mess. Ugh, I think this may be the part of pregnancy I dislike the most-- the mental/emotional craziness and just how foreign the inside of my head feels. I can just feel the craziness welling up inside of me sometimes and I know I am not going to make it through whatever conversation I am in without utterly losing it. For example, things that have made me cry big hot blubbery tears in the past few weeks have included:

telling people that probably we're not going to adopt this year,
this video about being Muslim in America,
the funeral episode of How I Met Your Mother, and
this bit from The Daily Show about a community in Mississippi.

GAH, when humorous satirical news shows have you doing the ugly cry, you know you have issues.

I've had a couple of people ask me why we are pretty sure we are having a girl this time around, so I shall share. Have you heard about the whole fast sperm vs. slow sperm thing? On average, girl sperm are slow but live a long time while boy sperm are fast but die quickly. When Rob and I were in the stage of, "What?! How did this happen?" (the answer, of course: the usual way) we were going back through our schedule and calendar and all that and the only thing that makes any sense is a slow sperm situation. So there you go! TMI! We'll see if we're right in, oh, 10 weeks or so.

WHAAAAAAAAT?!

2011-01-28T13:31:00.000-07:00

So apparently, this is happening:

I KNOW! Surprise! We've known for a very little while now, but this is still pretty much what the inside of my head looks like: !!!!!!!! I am almost 9 weeks pregnant, due at the beginning of September. So three kids for us later this year, a new little person who belongs to us and our family. Weirdly, a new baby was actually what we were hoping for this year but this feels like a big change to our plans.

We have a lot of conflicting feelings about all this coming down in the light of our adoption plans-- confusion, shock, befuddlement. Oh wait, that is pretty much just one emotion, isn't it? And then we have been pretty open about our path towards adoption with EVERYONE so it feels kind of embarrassing to now be explaining that I'm pregnant. Yes, world, that's right-- an unplanned pregnancy. We know this doesn't mean we can never adopt a child, but we hadn't really decided we wanted more than 3 kids and we HAD really gotten ourselves mentally/emotionally prepared to adopt in the near future. We had begun to have a picture of what this baby might look like, what parenting this baby might involve, who this baby would be, and now it feels like that baby we were ready to love doesn't exist anymore or that baby doesn't belong to our family.

I think some people we've told don't get why this news has left us off-kilter, and I will admit that, yes, we wanted a new baby this year and we are (Lord willing) going to have a new baby this year. I think it must be a similar to what people who have fertility problems go through if they decide to adopt; I thought I was going to have Baby X but now I am going to have Baby Y. I feel sad, I admit, for what we are not going to experience.

I am not sad about this new baby, though. This baby is wanted, this baby is loved, this baby is welcome. We are definitely in a phase of adjusting our expectations, but the person we are now expecting is an unlooked-for gift, an unanticipated blessing. We're in the process of embracing the unanticipated, as well as thinking through what this means for our original plans. Adopt in 2013 or so? Faux twins? Our paperwork is done but we are not approved yet so we have some time to think through things. In the meantime, I had my first midwife appointment today and there was a tiny heartbeat flickering in this baby's chest as he or she (probably she-- I am pretty convinced) continued the long voyage from smattering of cells to new person. Safe journey, tiny baby; we love you.

I Got My Hair Done!

2011-01-22T17:31:00.005-07:00

And it turned out super fun. I am really happy with how the color turned out. The bangs are going to take some getting used to, and today (one day after the haircut) I am not sure I'm going to keep them and may immediately grow them out to the sort-of side-swept layer-y thing I had going on before. They were cut to be straight-across blunt bangs that hang straight down and I can't even bear to have them like that. All that hair! On my forehead! GAH! Maybe I will get used to it in a little while.

I was just remembering to back when I had pink hair in Dallas a couple years ago and chuckled at how I would get asked VERY OFTEN at church if it was my first time to visit there, something I never got asked with all brown hair. Oh, the Bible Belt... I have chosen to be charitable and believe that these people were assuming I was new because they thought they would remember seeing a pink-haired woman in their church, and not that their assumption was a less benign one. I do not see this as a problem at our church here in Salt Lake City because a) it is quite small and you pretty much know who everyone is and b) everybody at our new church is all covered in tattoos anyway.

Chit Chat

2011-01-10T08:49:00.000-07:00

It is yet another beautiful snowy morning here and I am in a chatty mood. The lovely drifting snow is actually making me chuckle a bit today because the Dallas/Fort Worth area (where I grew up and where we lived most recently) got some snow over the past day or so and this had the result that my entire Facebook feed was made up of declarations of "IT'S SNOWING OMG!" and the like. Some people posted pictures that showed that their blades of grass were almost submerged in snow. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA-- poor Texans...

I think this is the week that Robert and I finally take advantage of all this beautiful snow here and go skiing. We bought some locals-only passes to one of the ski resorts here before the season started but we haven't actually gone yet, due to the holidays and busy-ness and a lack of appropriate outfits. I think we have finally collected all the various articles of clothing that you need and I am working on lining up a babysitter for the day and scheduling a lesson for us and then! We shall ski! I have never ever skiied in my entire life before so this may be quite embarrassing but I am 99% sure that I am going to really like it. I also want to try out snowshoeing, which also sounds awesome and fun.

This week is also the week that Grace starts ballet lessons. We did gymnastics through the fall, which was fun and low-key and great for a 4-year-old. She says she wants to do gymnastics and then ballet and then soccer, so now we have moved on to ballet. I don't think I can handle driving her to more than one activity a week at this point. I know she would like it, but the money and the time and the hassle... Blech. I am a bit apprehensive about soccer because don't they have practices and games every week? Nooooooooo... Anyway, this spring she is doing ballet once a week up at the Jewish Community Center where she is going to preschool, in a little class that meets right after she is done with preschool. It's very convenient; the teachers will change her clothes and move her to the dance studio and everything. I ordered her ballet shoes a little while ago and she is in looooooooove with them. She wears them around the house pretty much all the time as if they were her house slippers.

Dealing with the girls' sleep habits lately has been a puzzle inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma. For months and months, we have been putting them both down at the same time (around 7:30pm) after giving them a bath together and reading and prayers and so forth. This was, as you might guess, AWESOME because we had practically the whole evening to ourselves after they went to bed. Grace hasn't napped for several years at this point, but Violet is still taking a substantial afternoon nap, without which she is unable to make it to dinner awake and with her crap together. Well, in the past month, Violet has started needing less sleep, I guess, because she no longer can fall asleep before 9pm or so. I keep experimenting with her nap to see if an earlier or shorter nap will leave her able to fall asleep at the same time as Grace, but to no avail. Farewell, free evenings... And although it seems strange, I actually wonder if Grace needs to go to bed even earlier because it can be rough to get her up in the mornings for school and on weekends she will sleep until 8am often. I somehow keep expecting Violet to go to sleep at the "normal" time but she never does and I need to adjust my expectations, I guess. I am now looking forward to her dropping her nap so she can go to sleep earlier in the evening and Rob and I can return to our wild and crazy 2.5-hours-of-no-children lifestyle.

Do you think it is possible for weather to affect the mineral content of water? Since we've moved to Salt Lake City, we've noticed sort of hard-ish water, but since winter settled in, it has gotten WAY way worse. The poor dishwasher now does less actual washing of dishes and more coating them in a scum of white deposits. Maybe the colder temperatures make whatever softening chemicals they treat our water with less effective or something? It seems plausible, I suppose. Anyway, I used lemon Kool-Aid to clear out the dishwasher (isn't that a cool idea?) and then I bought some of this stuff to use with every load. I think the dishwasher situation is back under control, and for that I am thankful.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-02T19:18:00.017-07:00

I'm a day late, but happy 2011 to you! I don't ever remember being so excited for a new year to begin, but here we are, starting afresh with days stretching out ahead of us full of possibility and hopefulness. One of the things I am hopeful about for 2011 is that we will add a third little person to our family sometime this year. We are very, very close to having all our adoption paperwork done and approved; we have missed my personal goal of having it done by the end of 2010 but we are down to just one form, I think. (I hereby resolve to get to the police station for fingerprinting THIS WEEK, if at all possible.) Once our paperwork is finished and approved, a birthmother could choose us at anytime but the average wait if you are open to a child of any race is three to six months. Hopefully this calendar year will find us a family of five!

I am also excited because after the borderline-disgusting excess of the holidays, Rob and I have decided to turn over a new leaf when it comes to food and exercise and the like. I am such a cliche! Starting a new diet in January! It just really wasn't practical through the holidays though, with parties and birthdays and dinners with friends and a marathon visit from Rob's parents. So starting this week, I am cutting out sugar and white flour and other badness for a while and increasing my protein (eggs! lots of eggs!) and getting back to the sure-to-be-crowded gym. I feel like I am in a really good place mentally and emotionally about this, in case you are remembering my body-image freakout of this past fall. I am feeling motivated and realistic and ready to do good things to nurture and care for my physical self. I may go into sugar withdrawal after the massive holiday overindulgence, but hopefully it will be short-lived and soon I will feel well-rested and clear-skinned and svelte.

For a variety of reasons, I feel happy just to be returning to the normal rhythm of our everyday lives. Historically I have really loved this time between Christmas and New Year's, when the crazy pace of Christmas preparations has passed but regular life has not started back up, but last year we all had a terrible stomach virus and this year it was absorbed in the aforementioned megadose of family togetherness. And then there is my darling children's, ahem, challenging behavior as the lack of routine and sugar and whatnot has caught up with them. Maybe the magic of that week was a college and grad school thing and now that I am a real grown-up driving a child to school and running a household, the real magic lies in the everyday and the commonplace that make a family, a life, a year. Here's to 2011!

Gifts!

2010-12-26T13:56:00.000-07:00

Christmas is over, the presents are all unwrapped, the recycling bin in full of brightly colored paper, and we are feeling content and overwhelmed with good things in our lives. I really love some of the gifts in our family this year!

First off, I sewed some little mermaid dolls for the girls. These are from the Mermaiden pattern by Wee Wonderfuls, and I am sooooo happy with how they turned out. They were very fun and rewarding to sew and used up just tiny scraps of fabric. The only thing I bought for these dolls was the embroidery thread for the faces. (Doing the faces, by the way, was just. too. fun. seriously.)

The black hair and the blue hair are from felted old sweaters; the black hair was from a merino wool sweater and it turned out an especially awesome texture, sort of squishy. (The blue hair was from an old cashmere sweater and turned out more soft and fuzzy, as you might expect.) The original pattern has you do hair flowers from rickrack, but that didn't work at all for me. I used some lace and regular ribbon for two of them, and then did little beading embellishment on the other two.

I used three different fabrics for the body/skin and they turned out pretty different from each other. They each had different amounts of stretch, so the dolls each turned out slightly different sizes. The medium brown skin was a woven with no stretch (what the original pattern calls for), so that doll turned out petite and little (also, kind of wrinkly because there is no stretch-- she is a blue-haired granny mermaid). The fair skin is a hemp/cotton French terry that has a medium amount of stretch, so those two dolls turned out medium-sized (and I think this was the most appealing amount of stretch; I'd love to find it in more skin colors or dye it or something). The dark brown skin is very stretchy and that doll turned out, well, a bit on the plump side. In hind sight, I should have sewn her a bit smaller to start with. Also, the next time I sew an African-American doll, I will use a darker red for the mouth.

I really love how they all turned out different and quirky and individuals, and I am DEFINITELY going to buy her new book. Also, I may buy this pattern from the same designer for future doll sewing. I have never really sewn little toys or dolls before this and I am feeling a little obsessive and addicted right now because SQUEEEEEE THEY ARE SO CUTE AND FUN TO SEW. Also, the girls really like them; Grace's are in the bottom picture and she has named them Aubra (left) and Princess Tail (right).

I got many lovely gifts myself, including this necklace from Rob. It is made from a vintage dictionary page; isn't that the most wonderful, appealing idea? You get to choose what word you want in the necklace, so Rob decided it should be a subversive necklace. LOVE.

And then here is what I gave Rob (actually for his birthday, which is a few days before Christmas). It's an oil painting done by this artist as part of a project he did for small, affordable commissioned art. He did 100 little oil paintings based on photographs that we sent in; Rob's painting is based on this photograph of Grace when she was about 18 months old. Again, LOVE.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T21:55:00.001-07:00

Once in royal David's city,

Stood a lowly cattle shed,

Where a mother laid her Baby,

In a manger for His bed:

Mary was that mother mild,

Jesus Christ, her little Child.

He came down to earth from heaven,

Who is God and Lord of all,

And His shelter was a stable,

And His cradle was a stall:

With the poor, and mean, and lowly,

Lived on earth our Saviour holy.

And our eyes at last shall see Him,

Through His own redeeming love;

For that Child so dear and gentle,

Is our Lord in heaven above:

And He leads His children on,

To the place where He is gone.

Two Years of Violet

2010-12-22T08:23:00.005-07:00

Today is Violet's birthday and she is two whole years old. She has changed so much since this time last year; I don't I will ever become accustomed to the whiplash-inducing rate of change of these first years of life. She says more words than I can count, identifying herself as "BIOLET" and stringing together little proto-sentences. She runs full-tilt when the fancy strikes her and in the wee small hours of the morning sleepily toddles from her little bed in the room she shares with Grace to our room to cuddle for the last hours of the night. She sings recognizable if hilarious versions of "Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star" and "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel".

She likes using forks and spoons and pushing buttons and eating blueberries and nursing before she goes to sleep, and she dislikes having her teeth brushed and sitting at the table to eat and being thwarted from her adventures. She's pretty much grown out of babywearing, except for very rare special circumstances, and protests at anything that restrains her unfettered independence, from the Ergo to the stroller to the grocery store cart. She is so daring and fearless, approaching the world around her with confidence and curiosity.

Violet is much more assertive than Grace was at this age, insisting that it is "BIOLET'S TURN!" and clasping items to her chest and declaring them "MINE!" She is generally a laid-back, easygoing individual, though, and is philosophical about the ups and downs that life brings her way. She loves being around other kids her age, calling them "OTHER BABIES!", although she doesn't get as many playdates and dedicated Violet-oriented activities as Grace did at this age. The plight of the second child... I do think I am going to do a gymnastics class or music class or something with her after the holidays.

Yesterday was Rob's birthday and I think it is just this year sinking in that their birthdays will always be intertwined and linked. I hope she doesn't resent it later, when her birthday comes at such a busy time of year and won't ever really get a lot of undivided attention, despite how hard I may try. At some level it makes me happy, though. We are all tangled together forever, even our birthdays. And then I think I will always associate this time of year with the joy of bringing home the amazing tiny new person that Violet used to be. I was dreamily in love with that milky Christmas newborn, but now I see how everyday she is becoming more herself.

Happy birthday, my sweet, intrepid, even-tempered, beautiful girl.

Busy

2010-12-14T16:06:00.001-07:00

Life has been a bit full lately. I see this largely as a good thing because I think it means that we are settled in here and are building relationships with people and finding our place and whatnot. We are doing church stuff twice a week and MOPS has turned out way better than I feared it might, and then there's always stuff for Grace's preschool and storytime at the library and adoption paperwork and so forth. The holidays are, of course, a contributing factor in recent weeks. Rob and I try hard to be deliberate in cultivating peace and avoiding insanity for our family during these times, but even when you try for mindfulness, there is still so much going on this time of year! For whatever reason, this is the first year that I decided to really make gifts for the girls, a decision which brings with it its own brand of busy-ness. (By that I mean frantic sewing whenever the girls are asleep.) This afternoon I finished Violet's birthday present, though, and it turned out so cuuuuuute that I feel another burst of motivation to finish my last bits of work on Christmas presents for the girls. Violet is getting a baby doll for her birthday from my parents and the rest of us are all giving her things to go along with it/her. (I wonder what the appropriate pronoun for a baby doll is...) Here's what we (well, really I, I suppose; Rob's role was being supportive and nodding appreciatively) did:

The bed itself is from IKEA (the DUKTIG bed, in case you are in the market for a doll bed); it comes with some linens but they are pretty second-rate so it was time to break out some fabric. The mattress is foam from Joann's that I wrapped in cotton quilt batting and then covered in white flannel. The quilt, which took probably 90% of the time of this whole project, is just a scrappy pattern I made up as I went along (mostly strip-pieced but cut up to make it look random). And the little pillow is covered in sweet doll fabric that my grandmother gave me. I bought the foam for the mattress and the pillow form, but everything else was stuff I already had. This probably says more about my fabric stashing than about my frugality, sadly.

I am not a big quilter normally. I usually think, "So we take whole fabric, cut it into little pieces, then sew it back together in to a big piece?!" However, occasionally I get a hankering for the geometric mathematics and patterning of it, and I really enjoyed making this tiny quilt. And those pieces really are tiny-- about 1" on a side. The batting is Warm & Natural, which is my faaaaaavorite; I don't preshrink it and then laundering the quilt when it's finished makes the whole thing shrink up and get that fabulous vintage-y puffy texture. I quilted it pretty heavily-- free motion wavy lines on the solid light pink and a decorative leaf stitch from my sewing machine on the pieced strips. I had so much fun making all this, although it has taken up all my sewing time recently. Busy Santa's elf, that's me!

Of course, being busy is not entirely a good thing. For starters, I am not the kind of person who thrives on having too much scheduled activity going on. I like my free time, and honestly my most favorite kinds of days are the ones with no places to be and no tasks to take care of. There is a strong hermit streak in me, and I do get a bit de-centered and off-kilter when there is too much activity in my life. And then there is exercise; I am sad to report that I do not still work out 6 days a week like when we were living in that rental house this past summer. Rob and I joke that we exercised so much then because it was so unpleasant to be at that house. The beautiful gym at the Jewish Community Center where Grace goes to preschool was a much nicer place to be. Now, between our lovely new house that is just so darned comfy and hard to leave and the full, busy days, I am doing good to exercise 3 times a week. Hopefully I will get back on that after the holidays are over.

Looking back, I am realizing that I never really was busy in Dallas. This is partly because I had a baby during those years and it is hard to get super involved in anything in the outside world when life is so absorbed by the urgency of a newborn, but I don't know that I can wholly attribute it to Violet because the same thing did not happen when I had Grace in Connecticut. The couple of activity/social things that I tried went rather badly and the dominant culture there is just not the best fit for my personality and interests and values and whatnot, so I kind of gave up eventually, I admit. It is such a relief to see my life here now rich in relationships and full of things that make me happy, and I am very grateful.

Advent

2010-11-28T10:56:00.002-07:00

Happy first day of Advent, everyone! It is snowing down big, beautiful, fluffy, white flakes outside as I type this and we are beginning this season of expectation and anticipation. Jesus came once, and is coming again.

Yesterday we drove up north of the city to find a cut-your-own tree place. We did this in Connecticut at a really great farm near our house in Hamden and always got the most beautiful trees; it was so much fun. As for Utah, well... I can still say we had a lot of fun.

See all those trees, nestled into beautiful mountains? You would think we would have found a good one, right? In our tree's defense, it did look quite respectable outside in nature where it belongs. We could tell it was a bit sparse looking and probably too big for our living room, but hey, we could just chop some off the top and bottom, right? Well, as we sawed off bits of it, it veered from solidly Christmas-tree-shaped into slightly tragic Charlie Brown territory. Oh well, this is what you risk when you eschew a manufactured perfect tree from a factory, I suppose, and Grace is fully convinced of its beauty and perfection. Here is a very flattering glow-y portrait of our wonky Christmas tree:

So bring on Christmas! I am getting ready for it! And just for the heck of it, here is a song from what is still my very favorite Christmas album. Yes, I know I linked to this 2 years ago. I just can't help myself.

Our New House: the Upstairs Edition

2010-11-26T16:18:00.003-07:00

It is Thanksgiving weekend and one of the things I am very thankful for this year is our new house. After the upheaval and turmoil of the past year, it is so, so wonderful to be settled in a place that feels so cozy and warm and wonderful, so like home. And I have finally organized some pictures of it, so let's take a little tour, shall we?

Our house is one floor above ground (here's the exterior pictures), and then the basement. It was built in 1917 and the rest of our neighborhood is all of similar age, mostly originally 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom houses with unfinished basements. In the century or so since they were built, people have finished the basements however they see fit, so everybody has their space organized and used differently. All four of us are sleeping in bedrooms in the basement, so our upstairs is now mostly public spaces, if you know what I mean.

See our front door? It turned out so well. It is the original front door (HUGE! WIDE! SOLID WOOD AND THUS VERY HEAVY!) but it was a bit sad-looking when we bought the house so we had it taken off and away to be refinished. The restoration guy who did it was a bit slower than he originally said (although he did do an excellent job) so we lived with our front door opening boarded up with plywood for quite a while. Classy! I much prefer it this way, with hinges and a doorknob and whatnot. And see that scratchy orange-ish chair? I STILL haven't gotten that re-upholstered. Someday, someday... I love the glass-fronted bookshelves built in around the fireplace; that's a pretty common detail in the bungalows in Salt Lake City.

Aren't the windows pretty? This is the living room looking into the girls' play room. The paint color through the living and dining room is Metro Gray by Benjamin Moore. It is a fabulous gray that reads slightly blue or violet or warm, depending on the light. My mom has it in her guest bedroom and I just fell in love with it when we stayed with them. We had the floors refinished before we moved in and had the floor guys use a low-VOC environmentally-friendly finish from this company. It turned out really beautifully and we are happy so far with it. And if you turn around here, you will see...

...the dining room. I loooooove these chairs. They are these chairs from West Elm and I like that they have no nasty crevices or food-catching upholstery or anything-- very child friendly. (And, of course, how they look is very, very nice as well.) The dining table is the NORDEN table from IKEA and is also new. That white sideboard in the back is built-in. Awesome, right? And a little peek into the kitchen, which I am just now realizing I didn't photograph. Sigh... Another day.

Here's the girls' play room. This color is a Martha Stewart color from Home Depot, Araucana Teal, and I loooooove it. All our paint is actually low-VOC paint from Sherwin Williams because that's the low-VOC paint that our painter likes the most, and they did a really great job of matching my colors. That toy storage below the windows is new and is the TROFAST system from IKEA. This room does not typically look this neat, in case you were wondering.

This print (which is hanging off-camera to the right in the previous picture) is one of my favorite things I bought for the new house.

Now we come to the two little back bedrooms upstairs, which are really hard to photograph because they are pretty small. This one (painted Benjamin Moore's Claret Rose) is currently our office. In another year or so, we are going to move Violet and Grace to bunk beds in here and then our computer desk will join the toys and such in what is now the play room. (Both rooms are pretty empty right now so there will be plenty of room.)

And lastly here is our guest bedroom, where the beautiful quilt my mom made for us and all our black-and-white photography of Yosemite lives now. It is all set up and ready for guests so hey! Come visit us! Well, not if you are a random person on the internet, but if I actually know you in real life, then yes! Come see beautiful Salt Lake City!

Which Comes First, the Omelette Pan or the Chicken Coop?

2010-11-17T13:55:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking lately that I wish I knew when my children would start to like spicy food. Then, you know, I could mentally prepare myself for how long I will have to keep things bland for them. Poor little children, with their super sensitive taste buds that have not been burned out by a lifetime of Thai food and Tex-Mex... You can see the horror on their faces when they do get a bite of something too spicy for them. When will that go away and be replaced by the enjoyment of it? And why do we enjoy spicy food, now that I think about it? It's one of those pain/pleasure things, I guess. Similarly, I wish I knew when my children will be able to eat a meal without such a huge percentage of it ending up on the floor. Violet is, of course, the worst offender, but really Grace is not super neat yet either. I never noticed this at all until our dear Abbey started to get sick in the last year of her life and quit cleaning up after them; now, sadly, it is my job. I can last just a couple of days without having to vacuum our dining room rug, at which point I can identify at least 6 to 8 different kinds of food. Kids! They're messy!

So college football season is drawing to a close and the big college rivalry here in Utah is between the University of Utah and Brigham Young University. It is a rivalry rather similar to Texas', where in an SAT-style analogy Utah would be to the University of Texas (liberal, big state university, in a bigger city, etc) as BYU is to Texas A&M (conservative, small town, etc). Probably some fellow Aggie is going to be mad that I just compared us to a Mormon school but IT'S TOTALLY TRUE. We used to joke that A&M was the biggest Christian college in the country. Anyway, BYU's colors are blue and white and their logo is often a big collegiate-font "Y"; if you are a friend of ours from Connecticut, this may sound quite familiar to you as it is very, very similar to what Yale uses. Rob has some T-shirts and a fleece and whatnot from the Yale pediatrics department and he has gotten some funny looks and doubletakes from people when wearing them, especially if he is holding a drink or at church or something.

I've been doing away with the nonstick cookware in our kitchen over the past couple of years. I try not to be a health/environmental crazy crackpot person but I find the evidence for the dangers of nonstick cookware pretty convincing. I heard the guys who wrote Slow Death by Rubber Duck talking on NPR a while back and it finally motivated me to find a different way to cook stuff. I haven't thrown all my nonstick stuff out, but the pieces of cookware that I use the most now are my Le Creuset Dutch oven (expensive but so worth it for me; I use it ALL THE FRACKING TIME) and my cast iron skillets. I have a little 8" skillet that I have no idea where it came from (I think Robert had it before we were married and I scrubbed off all the rust and seasoned it and whatnot to get it back in working condition; I have a vague memory of it being from one of his grandmothers?) and then last Christmas my sister gave me this nice 12" one. Cast iron is so nice to cook in; it is so heavy and has so much mass that you can get it blisteringly hot and I love the way it evenly moves heat into food. When it's well-seasoned it has a naturally nonstick surface that works for pretty much everything for me and it washes very nicely. I do not follow the thinking that you can't use soap on your cast iron; I wash it by hand with my regular dish soap, then pop it back on the stove to get warm enough to make sure all the water is evaporated (you do have to take steps to keep cast iron from rusting), then rub a tiny bit of oil on it with a paper towel while it is warm to keep it well-seasoned. I've done it this way for years with my 8" skillet and for one year on my big skillet and they are in great shape and this is working great for me except when it comes to eggs.

Oh, eggs, you are so darned sticky... I can't seem to do anything to my cast iron to be able to scramble eggs in them without ending up with an awful stuck-on mess at the end. I have a little nonstick pan that's good for a single serving of eggs but I'm not sure I want buy a bigger nonstick pan to do eggs for a whole family breakfast, given the aforementioned issues. On the other hand, you don't cook eggs at very high heat (which is where nonstick is really bad for you) and this thread is making me think I should buy something nonstick really cheap at IKEA and just use it for eggs only, thinking any bad chemical exposure will be pretty minimal. Or maybe enameled cast iron or enameled steel is the way to go? I am full of uncertainty... I need to figure this out, though, to prepare for when I convince Rob to get our backyard chickens. Chickens! Hooray!

Flying Solo

2010-11-11T19:17:00.005-07:00

Rob left this afternoon for several days at a national allergy meeting so I am doing the solo parenthood gig for a while. Violet was terribly sad when we dropped Rob off at the airport, mournfully wailing "DADDEEEEEEE! DADDEEEEEEEEE!" as he walked into the terminal and we drove away. Sad! Grace, thankfully, is now old enough that a) we can tell her about these types of things ahead of time and prepare her and b) she can understand that in such-and-such number of days he will be home. My biggest challenge with her today is that she thinks the city Rob has traveled to is named, not Phoenix, but "Penis".

The thing I am the most worried about while Robert is gone is that Violet has been KILLING me lately with the bedtimes. Blech. She has been fighting going to sleep like you would not believe, crying and thrashing and refusing to stay in bed until, usually, my bedtime. I think we are up to 6 nights or so of this, and believe you me, I am ready for this little phase to end. Ironically, this miserable phase came on the heels of her sleeping so so well for a number of weeks, even finally breaking the 8-hours-of-undisturbed-sleep mark that had been her previous highest achievement to the elusive, heavens-breaking-into-song, honest-to-goodness sleeping through the night. Oh well, what's a mama to do? It'll all be different a week from now anyway. It's like kids change really fast or something. In this case, thank goodness, because these evenings have been rough.

Speaking of Violet, she recently has discovered the alphabet and can identify almost all the letters. She still confuses b and d and the like, but the cockles of my maternal heart are warmed by her glee about the letters. It does surprise me a bit to sit in the car with my not-quite-2-year-old and have her read off "U-P-H-O-L-S-T-E-R-Y" or some such group of letters, especially since I know Grace didn't know her letters by this age. I give all the credit to Word World. I also think that TV show may deserve the credit for Grace finally starting to understand the smooshing of letters/sounds together to make words. She is not really reading yet, but something has cognitively clicked in her brain so she gets it at some level and her motivation has received some kind of boost as a result.

My most recently completed reading was Rethinking Thin; here's what I wrote on Goodreads:

Really interesting. Kolata (a New York Times science writer) follows several overweight people as they participate in an academic weight loss study and explores why they do or don't lose weight and do or don't keep it off. There's a section on the history of dieting, which is wacky and interesting, explorations of what research has shown us about why we weigh what we do and cultural attitudes toward obesity, but the section I liked the most and found the most challenging to my preconceived notions about weight and dieting was about the biochemistry of satiety and appetite. She succeeded in convincing me that most thin people are thin because they are hard-wired that way, that being overweight is not really much of a health risk for otherwise healthy people (people with regular exercise and healthy diets), and that permanently losing weight is just not as simple as "eat less, exercise more", thermodynamics notwithstanding. Kolata doesn't give advice about what to do with this information, either on a personal or a policy level, but it does put how I choose to eat and live and think about my body in a new light.

So anyway, when I first finished the book, I felt so liberated and content and like my eyes had been opened to a new understanding of my body. (For context, I've lost a lot of weight since Violet was born but for the past number of months my weight has not budged, still a nonnegligible amount above what I had thought of as a good, happy weight for me. I am overweight according to my BMI.) I then had some in-real-life conversations about the ideas in the book with someone who dismisses these kinds of rethinking of weight issues. These conversations have really affected me and made me feel kind of awful; now I cannot quite seem to recover my baseline equanimity, not to mention the new contentment I had right after reading the book. I feel like my confidence has somehow evaporated and I'm actually feeling worse about my body right now than I have, I don't know, ever. I've got to somehow snap out of this. I've been rereading some different thoughts on body image, and staying far away from any fashion magazines, and reflecting on where my security/value/identity really come from.

Happy Halloween

2010-11-01T13:48:00.000-06:00

Well, Halloween may not be our favorite holiday around here, but there's nothing to be grumpy about in a winged 4-year-old fairy and a happy Cat in the Hat.

I went trick-or-treating for the very first time in my entire life, handed out candy to lots of cheerful neighborhood kids, and went to a party across the street with a dozen sugar-crazed children and their parents. Hope you had a fabulous weekend too!

Look! It's Our House!

2010-10-28T17:20:00.002-06:00

Gosh, I love it. We are really feeling settled here in the house as our first month here draws to a close.

I think the girls are settled and feel stable again, which is quite a relief. Moving (and moving twice in 3 months, no less) is kind of disruptive when you are a small child, it turns out. Who could have guessed? Ironically, Grace has recently developed a fixation on apartments. I am amused by this because I remember doing the same thing as a child; I loved the idea of the stairs and living up high and being all squashed up with other people's homes. (Heck, we would have loved a condo/townhouse thing NOW because we don't like yardwork and we are ideologically in favor of denser housing, but neither Dallas nor Salt Lake City has many with 3 bedrooms.) There is a specific apartment building that we pass on the way to and from Grace's preschool that has particularly captured her imagination. When we drive past it, she declares that she will live there when she grows up. She says she will live on the top floor and she will invite me over for dinner and she will make me chicken nuggets and cupcakes. I can't wait.

I have finally been motivated to get some pictures taken of the house for our adoption paperwork. We are starting up that process again here in Utah with a new agency, which is exciting. (To recap, we have always been interested in adoption and planned to adopt; we started the process with an agency in Texas and got started on the homestudy but then decided to move away from Dallas so put the process on hold until after we were settled.) We are pursuing the same kind of adoption as before, a domestic newborn adoption. We are saying we are open to any race so we will probably be matched with an African-American child. I think we've found the right agency for us and we are filling out paperwork and we have the first homestudy visit scheduled (a social worker! coming to our house! to see if we are fit parents!), so things are moving forward. We'll see how it all shakes out. Anyway, I like these exterior shots but I am still working on the interior ones; I need to switch out a lens or something. Soon you will see the paint colors and pretty hardwood floors and my new dining room chairs that I just love and the shiny kitchen.

One fun thing I've done in my shiny new soon-to-be-photographed kitchen is turn this:

into this:

And oh, how delicious it is. I did applesauce this harvest season too, which is also quite lovely. Rob says we need to buy some kind of wagon before the farmers market starts up again next year because he is tired of trying to carry these awkward, big boxes of produce home. Home preserving is so rewarding; I really like it. It also always makes me think of my friend Emily, who partnered with me in my first-ever canning experience back when we lived in the same neighborhood in Connecticut. Having a little cabinet filled with glowing golden jars is such a homey, wonderful feeling as autumn winds down, especially since yesterday we woke up to this:

YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY!

Friendly

2010-10-25T15:02:00.002-06:00

My mornings have been revolutionized lately by this nifty innovation called a "carpool". It turns out that some of the neighbors on our new street send their 3-year-old son to the same preschool where Grace is going. She has room in her car for Grace, in addition to her little boy and her 2nd-grader, so most mornings I walk Grace over to their house and watch them drive away for the school drop-off run. I guess it is not technically a carpool if she does all the driving and I never help, is it? (And a minivan really is in our near future, isn't it? Bleargh.) Anyway, it has been such a help, and it feels great to be making friends in our neighborhood.

I realized the other day that fully half of the new friends I have made here in Salt Lake City (I am just counting adult women in this) don't eat gluten. There is a gluten intolerance epidemic! It is a very trendy way to eat (obviously) and its trendiness makes me chuckle, but I do have sympathy for such issues since my mom has been off gluten for, gosh, 10 or so years now and it has made a big difference for her. I sometimes suspect if I myself could lay the blame for some of my (rather mild) chronic stomach issues on gluten. I have been joking with Rob lately that I sure will miss macaroni & cheese and grilled cheese sandwiches and such when I discover I am lactose and gluten (oh, and probably yeast and fructose too) intolerant.

Speaking of making new friends, remember how I was saying, "Oh, I haven't really met many LDS people at all," and saying how typical everyone in Utah seemed? Well! It turns out that one of the mom friends I've made at MOPS has actually been part of a fundamentalist polygamous sect her whole life until 18 months ago! I did not see that one coming, I tell you. She is a sweet, funny woman with a regular haircut and regular clothes, and obviously very brave and determined for leaving her lifelong community with her children. She left because her oldest children (both girls and boys) started having a lot of trouble in that community in their teenage years and is divorcing her husband (she was the first wife so CAN actually get a divorce and all the legal rights that entails). A surprise around every corner, I tell you!

In much more mundane news, I think that this is the year that Robert and I finally break down and celebrate Halloween in traditional American style. I refer you to my post from two years ago to explain our feelings on the matter and my history with this holiday. Everything is changing this year, though, because a) our church here is teeny tiny and isn't doing any kind of fall festival and b) I am told that our street is very trick-or-treating friendly with lots of young families and neighborliness and fun times. (Actually, our street is just very neighborly to start with; I have already had more chats and interactions and glasses of wine with neighbors here than I did in 2 whole years in Dallas.) We are going to leave our light ON this year and give out candy and everything. This will be a first for me. Rob is still very grumpy about the whole holiday (he has stronger feelings about it all than I do, which is somewhat ironic, given the difference in our backgrounds-- or maybe that is to be expected? perhaps we all tend to explore different choices than our parents?) but we bought the candy so we are mentally committed to the whole neighborhood Halloween celebration. Violet is going to wear the hand-me-down Cat in the Hat costume and Grace is going to be a fairy. I bought the wings on Etsy and am sewing a matching dress. I must admit that part of my openness to a more conventional Halloween just might stem from how FUN it is to sew up a fantastical costume. There aren't just enough opportunities in life to sew a shiny sparkly fairy dress.

Someday I Will Blog Regularly Again

2010-10-07T14:01:00.001-06:00

Life has been a whirlwind lately, a whirlwind of moving trucks and boxes and painting and settling into a new home. We have been in this new house for almost 2 weeks now and I feel like life is starting to settle into a comfortable pattern as the boxes have been cleared away and the various workers have finished their tasks and departed. It still feels like there is too much to do each day and keeping up here online has, obviously, fallen by the wayside. This is fine and natural, but I have missed it. I guess I should have expected it, seeing how the last time we moved in the summer of 2008 I blogged a mere 6 times in 3 months. Until I manage some real time for thought and sharing, here are some bullets:

Getting Grace to preschool 5 mornings a week is kicking my butt. Seriously. This will get easier, right? And this would be a bad reason to consider homeschooling?
I love the light in the upstairs (non-basement) of our house-- so airy and luminous and bright.
I love how cozy the basement (where all 4 of us have bedrooms) of our house is; it feels like a snug den.
Grace is going to a little gymnastics class and although she is generally having fun, she gets freaked out by the uneven bars.
I have a hair appointment tomorrow and I am planning on doing something DRASTIC color-wise.
I really miss sewing. My sewing stuff is all here and in the room where my sewing area will be, but we need some kind of storage furniture and organization and it is not ready for action yet. I am just ITCHING to make something.
I think my children are not getting enough sleep, what with our new morning schedule, especially Grace. We've got to get them to bed earlier, I guess?
Our front door came back this week! Hooray! It's the original door to the house and was a bit the worse for its 93 years of wear. We had somebody take it off and away where it was all refinished and it looks really lovely now. Especially when compared to the plywood that was boarding up the doorway for the past few weeks.
Last weekend, Rob and I went to hear one of our recent-ish musical discoveries, a band from Portland called Blind Pilot. I have such a soft spot for the banjo... (They are going to be at the ACL festival, Austin friends!) It was a really fun show-- all the great stuff from their first album and some new stuff that was so good that it makes me excited for their next album. All week Rob and I have had their music stuck in our heads. There are worse things, certainly:

21 Months

2010-09-21T09:21:00.011-06:00

Today Violet is 21 months old, 3/4 of the way through her second year of life. She is just a few months shy of becoming a 2-year-old. A 2-year-old! I can hardly believe it. One of the most obvious changes in her lately is her language blossoming at an ever increasing rate, which is super-fun and such a joy to see. She calls her sister "DRACE" and her dad sometimes "WOBBER" and herself "BABY!" I'm not sure what she thinks the word Violet means yet; maybe she thinks it is a call to attention or what I say when she is supposed to stop what she's doing. She still says "AT-CHOO" for thank you and if you thank her, she says, "YOO WELCOME." If she is looking for you, she will warble, "WE-AW-YOO?" and if you tell her you love her, she will respond, "I-UVOO." One of her latest words is elephant, which she pronounces something like "APPLE-FANT". She puts together little two-word sentences, such as "other eye" and "Daddy shoe".

She is obsessed with shoes and socks, and she has a deep fondness for keys. She declares things to be "MINE!" with said item clasped to her chest with both little hands. She sings warbly approximations of songs from our favorite CDs or the alphabet song. She is such a climber, deeply motivated to scale the heights of the fireplace mantel or the dining table or the basement stairs or whatever else presents itself. She gets so upset about being thwarted (an unfortunately common occurrence, given her predilections) and sometimes throws herself face-down on the floor upon being foiled. Strangely, this is not the prelude to a tantrum; she lays quietly face-down on the floor for a few moments, then gets up and wanders off to do something else.

The past few months have been a time of great transition for our family, moving from Texas to Utah, and now from this rental to a house of our own. One transition for Violet has been moving from a crib to a toddler bed. Our crib was damaged in the move and rather than buy another one with the money our moving company reimbursed us with, we bought this toddler bed (so cute! I really like it). Moving to a toddler bed has been so nice; it's so much easier to get her to go to sleep when I can cuddle with her, nurse her a little, and be physically close to her as she is dozing off. Maybe I am coming around to the realization that we are not a crib family, and perhaps for baby #3 we can get away with moving straight from the bedside cosleeper to this toddler bed. No crib-- I'm a total hippie, aren't I? Anyway, we also put Violet in her new little toddler bed in the same room with Grace, which has gone smoothly so far. It is awfully adorable to see both of them sleeping away just a few feet away from each other.

Of course, there's not much about Violet -- sweet, funny, adventurous, driven Violet -- that isn't adorable.

Church and Donald Miller and Sleeping In

2010-09-20T16:00:00.000-06:00

I think we have found a church to call home, and we feel pretty excited about it. It is this church, which is a fairly new church plant of Imago Dei, a church in Portland you may have heard of because it is where Donald Miller goes and he mentions it in Blue Like Jazz. (Which is fabulous! And everybody should read it!) Anyway, it is a really interesting, refreshing faith community and I feel so enthusiastic about being a part of it. See this video? Oh, I just love it. I've had a hard time with church life for the past couple years because of various cultural quirks of big Texas evangelical churches so I feel very happy to have found a really different kind of place where I feel more in tune with the community. Speaking of Donald Miller, actually, I read Blue Like Jazz when I was perhaps at my peak of church-y unhappiness and he has a chapter entitled "Church: How I Go Without Getting Angry" that both did and did not help me at the time. He talked about a lot of things that resonated with me ("it was like going to church at the Gap") but the answer he gave to the question presented by his chapter title was, in the end, to find a church that was a good match for you as an individual and then let go of any bad attitude toward other churches that are not good matches for your personality, priorities, etc. This was not very helpful to me when I was going to a Dallas mega-church, as you might guess, but I feel quite differently here at the beginning of my relationship with a church that seems like it reflects my interests and values.

It is a very young church, both in the sense that it has only been meeting since Easter of this year and in the sense that Rob and I suspect we are among the oldest people there. It's not that there is nobody older than us, but we are definitely on the upper end of the age distribution-- loooooots of people in their 20s.

This church is so new that it doesn't have a building yet so it is meeting at various random places around the city like people's houses and this amazing bakery (closed on Sundays and thus those amazing pastries tantalize us the whole time we are there but we are unable to purchase/devour any) and the student union at the university. It meets at 4pm on Sundays, which I must say is a huge paradigm shift me. For my ENTIRE life, Sunday morning = church and it is blowing my mind a little to have Sunday mornings free. Is this what it is like to not be a churchgoer? Instead of getting up with an alarm clock and scuttling the whole morning to get yourself and your children fed and dressed in some appropriate way and out the door, you sleep in and are lazy and go to a lovely Sunday morning yoga class? I can see the appeal. Seriously, though, I have been going to this great yoga class on Sunday mornings now and if this church ever gets a regular building and has Sunday morning services, I am going to miss it.

For the record, there were probably 5 different churches here in Salt Lake City that would have been great for us, one of which is where I am going to MOPS now. We had a bit of concern about this before we moved here, because all the people we knew here were agnostics/atheists/skeptics/etc and faith and spirituality weren't big priorities for them. All these people were/are really happy in this city and we thought we would be too because we have a lot in common with these various friends of ours, but we were a little worried that the only church-goers in the whole city were Mormon and we would have a hard time finding a spot for us. Not the case, however-- the churches here are smaller and newer than what we were used to in Texas (OH NOES <- sarcasm) but they are thriving and vibrant. So, to sum up, this is not a reason to avoid Salt Lake City. Nor are the Mormons, really; to be honest, I haven't met many LDS people since moving here. This is, of course, because of where I've been spending my days since we moved here in July-- the liberal neighborhoods around the university where we live and go to the park and Grace does gymnastics and we go to restaurants and shop, the Jewish Community Center where Grace goes to preschool and I use the gym, various churches we've been visiting. I hear tell that the suburbs are a vast swath of LDS folks as far as the eye can see, but the only reasons I go to the suburbs are IKEA and In-N-Out Burger. (Yeah, we are not very good quasi-vegetarians.)

Like a Chicken Bereft of Its Head

2010-09-09T14:07:00.000-06:00

Whew! Life has been a bit of a whirlwind recently! I keep getting further and further behind on laundry, and I am not even sure what we've been eating because I haven't planned and cooked proper meals for quite a while now. It's all been good/fun/important stuff that has kept us in this hectic state, but some calm and peace would be very welcome right now. Violet started developing a runny nose late yesterday and then had a miserable night, so I cleared our schedule today and declared it to be a day of staying home in comfy pants. Having a sick 20-month-old is pretty wretched (the coughing! the snot! the terrible toddler moods!), but I will admit that I could really use this quiet day after the harried tumult of the past two weeks.

Those two weeks have seen us close on our house (hooraaaaaaaaaaaay...), the sellers rent back from us for a while, and then us take possession of the house. It is now really ours, and I am super excited. I started work on the mantel, which I am refinishing, and then this week people came in to refinish our floors. We're having them use an environmentally friendly finish on the floor, which I am kind of excited about. It's low-VOC and LEED complaint and all those good things, and I perused the internet to find people who have had it on their floors and folks seem very happy with its durability and whatnot. After the hardwood floors, we will have somebody come in to wire for the speakers in the media room and then somebody to do all the painting, and I am still working on getting somebody to refinish the front door. It's probably under 3 weeks now until we get to move in and it is hard to communicate just how HAPPY this makes me.

Yesterday Grace had her first day at her new preschool so there has been much scrambling around to meet-the-teacher and parent meetings and making it to the first morning drop-off WITH all the appropriate items and WITHOUT being late. I think it is going to be a fun year for Grace; her two teachers seem so sweet and engaged in small children and serious about this as an important and wondrous part of life. She is going five mornings a week, which is only slightly more hours weekly than she did last year but going everyday is going to be new for us. It is mainly going to be an adjustment for me, I think; I have to get us all out the door dressed appropriately with a lunch packed EVERY MORNING. For FIVE DAYS A WEEK. Shocking, I know.

Speaking of getting dressed and packed up and where one is supposed to be, I have recently been bemoaning how much time my exercise habits now take up. By the time I drop off whatever children I have with me at the childcare room after having packed them what they need and me what I need, then work out, then pick them up and drive home and then take a shower and do my hair and so forth, I have used up almost two hours (or more, when I work out for 90 minutes instead of an hour). Multiplying this by how many times a week I am trying to exercise, I am up to about how many credit hours I was teaching before Violet was born. So much time! I wish being in shape wasn't so much WORK. I am hoping that after we are settled in the new house, more of my time and energy gets freed up so that eventually I can return to sewing and fun things like that and eventually having a job again without returning to my slothful, non-exercising ways.

On Labor Day, instead of staying home and doing laundry and buying groceries as some priorities would have directed, we went on our first outdoorsy outing here in Utah. It was SO MUCH FUN. We drove out to Big Cottonwood Canyon and hiked a little trail to Donut Falls. It was a perfect first hike to try out with Grace, as it was just 1.5 miles roundtrip and there was this great waterfall to see. There were a lot of people there because of the holiday and the beautiful, slightly cool weather, but it was still fun. We had an inauspicious beginning to our hike as Violet threw an absolute fit for about the first 20 minutes. She wanted so desperately to walk and be independent but I had to keep her in the Ergo as she isn't a good enough walker to navigate rocks and a bumpy trail and so forth. Oh, how she protested! Oh, how angry she was at being thwarted! Rob said it was like being the one with a crying baby on an airplane, except WORSE, because all these people had come out to enjoy nature and trees and mountains and there we were with our tantrumy screamy toddler. We just kept moving forward and eventually she calmed down after she screamed herself hoarse and hungry and thirsty. For a while we thought it was going to be an absolute failure of an outing but Violet calmed down and then shortly afterwards we arrived at the falls and it was just lovely. I climbed about a third of the way up the falls but turned back when it got too slippery to scramble up the boulders with my balance compromised by Violet strapped on me, while Rob and Grace went all the way up and got to see the circular hole in the rock for which the falls are named. We had such a good time, and I can't wait to see more fun outdoorsy things here in our new home state. If we make a habit of such things, I am going to need some appropriate shoes or clothes or something. I wore my one pair of jeans and was reminded how much I just abhor wearing jeans-- so uncomfortable. And the shoes I wore (a really old pair of retired running shoes) went into a pile to be donated because they were making my feet numb. Another benefit to hiking-- I get to buy a new outfit!

Third Refrigerator's the Charm

2010-08-24T20:36:00.001-06:00

The third refrigerator we have had at this rental house in the past month was delivered to us this evening. Refrigerator #1 conked out a few weeks back and after all the organic milk and frozen stuff from Costco went bad, a replacement arrived. Refrigerator #2 was of the same ilk (old, cheap, seen better days) and Sunday night starting to make a very concerning noise. The popsicles were all melting and the refrigerator section seemed to be about the same temperature as the kitchen itself so again we called our landlord. I think the grocery-related financial damage was less complete this time because we drove a bunch of stuff over to our friends' house and then borrowed a cooler from them. We managed to keep a good bit from being thrown away in another display of obscene waste. Today I promised these friends (the ones I've mentioned before because they are almost the only people we really know here) that we would soon make more friends in Salt Lake City so that they weren't the only people we had to call whenever we needed any kind of help. They have been so, so generous and helpful since we've arrived but I can only imagine they would not mind spreading the tasks of helping us out around a bit.

I was talking with Rob yesterday and wondered aloud which would be the better choice environmentally-- to buy one crappy used refrigerator every month or to buy one new refrigerator that would last ten years. I'm all for buying used items in an effort to keep stuff out of landfills and to not use up so many resources, but I have my suspicions that you may not come out ahead on this one.

Anyway, Sunday night I was just seething with frustration about this rental and was just so, so OVER being here. I have tried to be careful about what I've said about this rental in general out of kindness to the landlord, who seems like he is having a hard time, but let's just say I will be glad to leave. Since Sunday, I have achieved a more zen attitude; this house is what it is and not liking certain aspects of it will not change anything or make us able to move out any faster. Acceptance, contentment-- that's the best path, right? I am so glad to have had a place to live, and if we hadn't moved to this house, we probably wouldn't have started looking at buying houses as early in our time here and then we wouldn't have ended up in the lovely bungalow we are buying.

I spent most of the afternoon over there today, meeting with hardwood flooring people and painters to get bids for the work we are getting done, and oh, how I think I will grow to love that house... It is just so charming and gracious and wonderful. I met one of the owners for the first time and she was super nice; she said her two little boys are so glad that a family with children is moving into it because they thought the house needed kids. They are quite obviously getting ready to move as the house was all full of boxes and turmoil and mess. There were workers there doing the last of the repairs that the sellers agreed to do as well; there turned out to be some unresolved permit issues with the renovations they did to the basement and the beautiful big garage they built, but it is all getting hammered (and drywalled and plumbed) out with a great ruckus over there right now. There were also neighbor children over playing with her little boys (it was a bit of a madhouse there this afternoon, like I said), and I just feel so optimistic about the house and the neighborhood and all of it.

We actually close TOMORROW, which snuck up on me slightly. I will wire a great deal of money to the title company first thing in the morning and then late tomorrow afternoon we will sign our names a bazillion times and then we will own a house again! The sellers are renting the house back from us for another week, and then we will start the work we're having done, and then sometime in the middle of September we will get to actually move in. I'm so excited!

Apparently I Blog Once a Week Now

2010-08-17T11:19:00.000-06:00

I drove past the house we are buying again, just for fun, and I cannot WAIT to move into it. The rental here is wearing on me a bit, but mainly I am just ready to really settle down and unpack all our boxes and feel like we've found our home. It won't be that much longer, as I keep reminding myself. We got the inspection back and the sellers say they are going to fix everything we asked them to (despite the fact that those other buyers who were competing with put in a back-up offer that is higher than what we are paying-- we find this puzzling, to say the least, but we are grateful). Also, we have given the mortgage people document after document after bank statement after tax return and supposedly we are all on track to have money with which to buy this house, so that is also good. We are supposed to close the end of next week, I think, which is very exciting. After that, we'll start all the floor refinishing and other stuff we need to do before actually getting ourselves into it sometime the middle of September, probably. So soon! And so exciting!

We've been working with Grace on her reading skills for a while and we've run into some frustration. Months and months ago, even before her 4th birthday, she was so interested in letters and sounds and rhyming and how it all went together and I thought, "Wow! She is so ready to move forward with this!" She learned all the sounds the letters make quite quickly, but she has been having real trouble with putting the sounds together to make a word. She will go through a word and correctly say all the sounds, but then not be able to smoosh the sounds together to make a word. At first, I thought, "OK, fine, she needs more practice and hasn't made that cognitive leap yet and doesn't get it yet." The letter-sound connection can be a bit of a rote memory thing and sounding out words is more a skill, not just memorizing. However, it has been MONTHS now that she has been at this stage and she doesn't seem to be making any headway. I wonder if she is just not ready and we need to put it on the back burner and not worry about it for a while, or if we should keep plugging away a little bit every day on it to help her make whatever connection is not happening right now. It doesn't help that I lean toward the first option and Rob leans toward the second. Grace is finding the process REALLY frustrating right now and is not enjoying herself when we do her reading books and tries to put it off and just generally is not having fun with it, and this of course really worries me. Wanting her to enjoy reading is right up there with my very top desires for her childhood and I wonder if what I am doing is hurting or helping that.

In contrast, Grace IS enjoying her week this week tremendously because she is doing a swim camp at the community center where we go to the gym and where she'll go to preschool and so forth. We didn't get any swim lessons in our schedule this summer before now, what with the move and all, so these are the first lessons since last summer. It is 3.5 hours every morning for 5 days, and yes, she was EXHAUSTED yesterday after I picked her up. She doesn't nap very often these days, but I predict she will nap every afternoon this week. Oh, how she loves it, and she is doing so well. I worked out yesterday and today after dropping her off and I could see her little class out the windows while exercising; it is so amazing to see her little self hanging out in the deep end and actually swimming. She can't figure out how to take a breath yet but she actually swims.

Oh, and speaking of working out, we have now come to the TMI section of this post. I have been exercising a lot, most days of the week, since settling into life here. I have been doing a variety of things: running around our neighborhood, elliptical and weights at the gym, and classes at the gym, like yoga (oh, how I love yoga; at the end of a good class, I feel about as wonderful as after a massage) or a resistance/weight class or whatnot. Yesterday I went to an indoor cycle class, you know, spinning or whatever. I tried this kind of thing one other time, way back in grad school, and both times I left with really intense soreness from the bike seat. Not good muscle soreness meaning I'd worked hard, just pain from the seat. I did like the class otherwise, though, so rather than immediately decide this is not for me like I did last time, I've been trying to figure out what my options are. This has led me to google things like "spinning class sore crotch". Apparently, it is something that gets better as you get used to it, although I find this an unappealing idea. I don't exactly want my lady parts toughened up, if you know what I mean, and perhaps unsurprisingly Rob says he is categorically opposed to the idea. Many people on the internet suggest padded bike shorts, and now that I know what they look like, I have realized that about half of the women in the class (the class was about 2/3 women) were wearing them. Another fitness thing to buy... I see why being in shape and thin is more and more a privilege of the wealthy. Between what is costs to buy fresh produce (not to mention organic) and what it costs to do most exercise, it's no wonder that obesity problems skew with economic status.

Goings On and Not Goings On

2010-08-09T16:06:00.011-06:00

So what have we been doing with ourselves, other than trying to buy a house? For starters, we have been going to the pool a lot. I have spent more time at a pool this summer than I have since I was about 11, I think. The pool we belong to (the same community center that has the gym we're using and where Grace is going to school in the fall) is great for little non-swimming kids with a big zero-entry area that they can walk around in. Grace is so brave this summer about putting her head in and has enough motor skill to actually kick and pull her arms and whatnot. Violet likes to walk in to about knee-depth, then turn around and walk out, then turn around and walk in, then wander off and try to steal some other child's pool toys.

I've also been exercising a lot more than I have in YEARS. I exercised today, making it now a full week with doing something every single day, even if it was just 30 minutes of yoga on Saturday. I don't naturally like exercising, but hopefully I can make it a habit and find some things I sort of enjoy and feel physically better. (And maybe look better too? I weighed myself this morning and I am FOUR POUNDS heavier than I was last week. I know that there are many good benefits to exercise that are not weight loss but still, that is a bit discouraging after being really disciplined this week.)

I also have been missing Abbey a lot. Between when she died and when we moved out of our house in Dallas, I kept thinking I heard her nails on the hardwood floors or her tags jingling on her collar. I didn't think about it all as much during the really insane period of driving and having no furniture and whatnot, but now that things are settled down, I miss her. It's been over a month now that she has been gone. I especially miss having her around late at night when the girls are asleep and we would often be petting her or taking care of her. Sweet girl...

And now I shall tell you what we have NOT been doing. I have not been cleaning very much, that is for sure. I have had some huge mental block about cleaning here. I think it is partly that it is a rental and thus I don't have much sense of belonging here, and partly that it isn't the nicest of houses so I don't feel motivated to try to keep it nice. This is counterproductive, of course, because letting the house get dirty makes me like being here even less. I finally gathered some gumption this past weekend and made Rob help me and the house is now clean. Now I resolve to not let the kitchen floor ever get as disgusting as it was before I cleaned it yesterday.

Also, I have not been cooking much. The kitchen here in the rental does not really lend itself to grand culinary exertion and then there is the lack of air conditioning. We had a spell of quite hot weather that was even a bit humid (well, humid for here) and I just could not bear to turn on the stove or the oven or anything like that. I have been using the rice cooker a good bit, and we've been eating salad a lot, and we've still been going out to restaurants more than we normally do. I keep trying to check out raw food websites, but a lot of those recipes (at least the ones that aren't just salads) seem to involve a mandoline (which I DESPERATELY want) or a dehydrator (which I do not). Anyway, today at lunch Grace declared she was tired of peanut butter and jelly so I may have to step up my game here soon. Hopefully this won't be too painful because the heat seems to have broken and we have more temperate, arid weather which is much more comfy in our non-air-conditioned house.

And lastly, I have not been sewing, which is a bit of a bummer. When we started unpacking our boxes, we realized that there wasn't really going to be room for my sewing table and all the associated stuff that goes along with it here in the rental. By that time, we had also adjusted our timetable so that we would hopefully be in a house of our own within a few months so I decided to just leave it all packed up in boxes in the basement, along with half our kitchen stuff and all our books and so forth. I am missing it, for sure; the latest issues of Ottobre and Burda came and it was sad to realize that I won't be able to sew any of it for quite a while. The lack of sewing has motivated me to get out my knitting needles, though; knitting takes up much less space and isn't nearly as involved, equipment-wise. I decided to try to make a Kina for Grace and went to check out a fun independent yarn shop here in Salt Lake City to buy some very pretty yarn. The sweater is looking really good so far and I feel quite optimistic about my chances of actually producing a wearable garment within a reasonable timeframe. I am possibly the worst, slowest, most unproductive knitter in the world, but I am here on Ravelry, if any pals out there want to be my friends.

Home Sweet Home

2010-08-03T09:32:00.004-06:00

So our real estate adventures have continued in the past week or so. We were originally thinking we would start house-hunting in the fall, but now that we have gotten here and see the neighborhoods and see what is on the market and see what living in our rental is like, we have decided we would prefer to move sooner rather than later. It's not even that much drastically sooner than we were originally planning, actually. We have this rental house until the end of the year, and many of the houses we have been looking at need a good bit of work. By the time we went through the process of finding a house, closing, having work done, then moving into it, we would be well into autumn, depending on which house and thus how much work.

Anyway, we found a house (a beautiful, beautiful house) that was so lovely that we decided to make an offer. It was this charming late-1920s Tudor with a gorgeous kitchen and amazing bathrooms, all done with really high quality. The house had a really beautiful, special feel, full of light and super-high coved ceilings and beautiful windows. The neighborhood gave us a bit of pause, not because it was not nice but because it was maybe a bit TOO nice. Seriously, there were mansions across the street, and it seemed like there weren't a ton of kids around. It was so, so beautiful that we decided we would like to try it, though. The house was at the top of the price range we were considering and thus our offer was low-ish, and it turns out there was another interested buyer who's been hemming and hawing about the house for weeks. He had told the selling agent to let him know if anybody else made an offer, so when we did, she did, and then this other buyer went and made another offer. I know this is a bit of sour grapes on my part, but doesn't that seem like a jerk move? I mean, someone else had to want the house for him to go, "No, wait, MINE!"? It seems like what small children do with toys. Anyway, his offer was higher than ours, so no beautiful Tudor for us.

Then, a few days later, we saw another house that seemed like a great option. (It was not the next house we saw, of course; we've been looking at tons and tons of them.) This house was built in 1917 and is a bungalow, sort of craftsman-y. It also has lovely bathrooms and a great kitchen, and it has a very cozy, livable feel to it. It has this gorgeous fireplace and a fabulously finished basement with a media room and a nice master area. It's a bit bigger than the first house, and seems more like a family home; it's really easy to visualize ourselves there, even 5-10 years from now with another kid or two. There's room for chickens in the backyard and lots of storage. Not unimportantly, this house was priced much lower and even its asking price would be comfortable for us. To top it off, the street seems like a better match for us; it's just off of 15th and 15th with fun things to walk to, and the street seems less fancy schmancy and there are more kids around.

So we love this house, we can see ourselves in this house, and we decide to make an offer. We make another low-ish offer, hoping to negotiate and get a good deal on it, but a few hours later our realtor calls us back and AGAIN there is ANOTHER BUYER who was considering making an offer and has now decided to, motivated by us wanting the house. I mean, really? REALLY?! As Rob said, what is this, 2005? Isn't this supposed to be a buyers' market or something? We have decided that we personally have witnessed the turnaround in the housing market, right now, right here, in the last week or so. You heard it here first.

The selling agent came to both of us buyers and asked us to make our final best offer and he would present both to the sellers. I thought this is a fairly civilized way to do things; we don't lose the house because we made a first offer planning on negotiating. We made a nice plump offer and changed our dates to what the sellers wanted and last night, at 10pm or something, the sellers got them both and decided. And hooray, they picked us! Supposedly, the offers were very close on price but the dates were what decided it for them. Interesting, no?

So we will have a house, a home of our very own! I am really excited about this house, with its big front porch and tin-ceilinged-kitchen and beautiful neighborhood. I don't have any good pictures (the ones online are tiny) but I will try to get some up as the process moves forward. We will close near the end of the month, and then do a bit of work (refinish the hardwood floors, paint all the woodwork, paint the walls, maybe refinish the front door), and THEN! We will move into a place of our own! And be settled and unpack all our boxes (half of which are in the basement of our rental) and be HOME.

Furniture is Fabulous

2010-07-27T20:36:00.002-06:00

So I have already mentioned this, but our moving truck was days and days late arriving to our house here in Salt Lake City. It actually didn't leave Dallas until after we arrived here in Salt Lake City, a fact which filled me with regret at not planning a much longer cross-country drive involving the Grand Canyon or something. Some of the orders ahead of us in the moving company's queue ended up going way over their estimated weights, so ours had to be bumped to a later truck. The company that did our move paid us $150 per day that they were late and they ended up being 5 days late so we were not without recompense, but given the choice I definitely would have taken getting our stuff on time.

We had with us a couple of suitcases of clothes, the toys for the car, inflatable mattresses, and not much else. The original plan was for us to be here in our house 3 or 4 days without any belongings but it ended up being closer to 10. Ten days! Without a single dish! Or a place to sit! We decided that we would make very bad Buddhists. I am someone who abhors clutter and am something of a minimalist when it comes to furniture and decoration and all that, but this was taking things TOO FAR. I am also a bit of a homebody (I am not antisocial but I do not regularly go out in the evenings and I have a pretty high need for unscheduled downtime) so it was so weird to have "home" be such an uncomfortable place. Anyway, our big moving truck finally arrived and it has been such a relief to have real beds to sleep in and bowls for our cereal and chairs to sit in. I think it has been a big relief to Grace as well; she was definitely showing signs of stress at all this upheaval. One day when we were eating lunch at a restaurant, she started weeping, saying that she wanted "to lunch at a HOME." And now that we have our stuff, her bedtime prayers have included thanking God that we have our furniture and our house is "more like normal".

Anyway, my memories of the days without any stuff are already starting to fade; it must be like childbirth where you eventually feel all hazy about the horrible details and thus you do not immediately recoil in horror when the thought occurs to you to move again/have another baby. It's probably a good thing that I didn't have regular internet access during that period or else there would be whiny, complaining blog posts to commemorate my lack of moral fortitude.

Having our home be such an unpleasant place did give us lots of opportunities to be out and about and do fun things, although the fun did eventually grow wearisome, especially to Grace. We ate at a ton of fun restaurants and hung out at the beautiful downtown library and visited parks and so forth. The other thing we did was go see a bunch of houses with our realtor here. We weren't planning on house-hunting until the fall but, well, we were looking for something to do. :) And now we have found some houses we really like so we might end up moving forward pretty soon on some of this. As Rob and I were unpacking the boxes when they finally arrived, we would look at each other and say, "Hey, I know! Let's MOVE AGAIN!"

Happy Pioneer Day!

2010-07-24T19:47:00.001-06:00

Well, look at me-- I am BLOGGING. On my COMPUTER. Which is connected to the INTERNET. It is a very exciting day. My fancy birthday phone has been my only connection to the internet for, gosh, almost 3 weeks now and although it is pretty amazing to be able to respond to email or use Twitter on my phone, it just isn't the same and blogging was nearly impossible. Now I am sitting in front of this HUGE GIANT COMPUTER SCREEN and typing on this GIANT KEYBOARD and it makes me want to use a lot of capital letters.

So it will be two weeks tomorrow since we arrived in Salt Lake City, and what are my first impressions, you ask? It is really, really beautiful here. We first drove into the city along I-80 heading west from Wyoming, passing by Park City and through the mountains that edge Salt Lake City and I was just awestruck. I have never lived anywhere this gorgeous. We were using the GPS and when it said we were 10 minutes from our house, we were in this lush green canyon with beautiful mountains on either side. I couldn't help but think about where I would be if I drove 10 minutes in any direction from our house in Dallas. Even being in the city is lovely. The mountains are RIGHT THERE, so close to the city, and the valley itself is lovely, with big trees and charming older homes and little neighborhoods with firm identities. (Do you know what I mean? Different neighborhoods here look different from each other.)

We have been spending a lot of time out and about in the city because our moving truck was so, so late and our house was EMPTY and I really like the vibe of the town. Rob and I have looked at each other several times and said, "This is our kind of town." There are lots of little non-chain restaurants staffed with friendly tattooed people serving yummy food (Mexican! Middle Eastern! Breakfast!), and pockets of walkable shops and yoga studios and boutiques. We went to the fabulous farmers market last weekend, and I have been checking out a bunch of the awesome parks to give the girls a chance to run around and have fun.

Speaking of being outside, the weather has been something of a revelation to me. It is dry here and the high temperatures since we've arrived have been between 90 and 95 degrees, but at night it is in the 60s. I have always been rather dismissive of those who claim, "But it's a DRY heat!", saying that 95 degrees is hot no matter how you slice it, but really, it is not too bad. We have eaten lunch outside multiple times and been totally comfortable, and our rental house doesn't have air conditioning and we are coping pretty well despite the fact. Don't get me wrong; I would love to have some AC here because it can get uncomfortable at times, but to give you some context, living in this house with no AC at 95 degrees is way, way better than living in our house in Connecticut with no AC at 85 degrees. Remember how much I complained about that? I now readily admit that humidity does in fact make a difference, not least in the state of my hair. Good hair days, hooray!

There is a certain cultural wackiness due to the influence of the Mormons, I will admit. The majority of people I see around town and have met are not LDS (Salt Lake City proper is about 40% Mormon) but the LDS church has a big impact on the politics and the culture and whatnot here. For example, today is Pioneer Day, which it turns out is a bigger deal here than July 4. There are fireworks and a parade and everything shuts down and so forth. Today some new friends here (the ones who had us over for dinner when we were visiting in April and have the awesome garden and streak of orange hair and adorable 3-year-old daughter and chickens and so forth) invited us to their mimosa-and-bloody-mary-fueled ironic Pioneer Day party where we had a lovely time at their fun house and then walked down to see the parade. There were Mormon-themed floats and a lot of people in from the suburbs (the suburbs ARE dominated by LDS folks) and marching bands with modestly-attired baton twirlers.

So anyway, there is all that Mormon stuff, and then we joined the Jewish Community Center because that is where Grace is going to preschool in the fall, and also what we're going to use as a summertime pool and a gym and all that. We have only been there once so far, but on that visit we got a tour and orientation and everything and it is a very Jewish place-- more Jewish than the YMCA is Christian, for context. Rob and I were talking and we realized that in our first days here it has seemed like everyone here is of a different religion than us and there are different holidays and so much is just DIFFERENT... It's kind of like we moved to a different country. :)

That can be Utah's new slogan-- kind of like a different country.

Things We Saw on Our 4-Day Drive from Dallas to Salt Lake City

2010-07-15T14:21:00.005-06:00

1250 miles spin by
5 states
3 hotel rooms, 2 of which had the same number (Freaky!)
innumerable cows
many horses
1 prairie dog
a lot of deer
a herd of buffalo
some truly amazing sky
my friend Sharon, who fed us a delicious non-restaurant lunch with ACTUAL VEGETABLES as we made our way through Colorado (Hooray!)
wind turbines (One of them was really close to the freeway and I realized that although I've seen them pretty frequently, this was the closest I'd ever been to one and these things are HUGE.
snow fences (I did not know such things even existed.)
the Continental Divide (We are now flowing toward the Pacific, I suppose.)
many wee tiny towns, and a few bigger cities
so, so many Cracker Barrels (I never realize how many of these there are until I drive cross-country; our dinner there one night was Rob's first time to ever be in one.)
prairie, mountains, and high plains (So, so beautiful. This was a really beautiful, amazing road trip.)

Entertaining

2010-07-05T13:02:00.003-06:00

So yesterday I pretty much fell apart. I started the day with a migraine that kept us from our last Sunday at our church here in Dallas, then by the afternoon I was shivering with chills even though I was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie and our thermostat was set to 80 degrees. If you have spent much time with me, you know this is REALLY weird because I am very hot-natured and am almost never cold. My head was spinning and I felt nauseous and I couldn't hold Violet without falling dizzily and oh my gosh, I thought I was going CRAZY. I really thought that it was all psychological and I was just crumbling under the stress of Abbey dying and moving and all that. I finally took my temperature in the evening and found I was running a significant fever, which I've got to say came as something of a relief. It is much more bruising to my sense of self to think that I am incapable of coping with the stress of life than to think that I have a virus. I am doing better today, although trying to do our packing and getting ready for the movers tomorrow is pushing the limits of what I can handle today. I am taking a lot of breaks to lay on the bed.

Anyway, the various circumstances of life have conspired lately to put me in great need of some escapist entertainment. I also have felt like I could really go for a) eating an entire container of ice cream or b) getting roaringly drunk, but both of those are not very healthy coping mechanisms for stress and sadness, now are they? Watching more TV and movies than usual seems like a better option. And of course, I've been working on getting my sewing stuff packed up so I haven't been doing my normal amount of stress-relieving sewing. So there you go-- yay for TV and movies and other various forms of entertainment!

I was almost an entire season behind on LOST, but I recently caught up and then finally watched the series finale. I know I am MONTHS late to this party but I enjoyed it so much. I really like how they ended the series, and I think that is up there for one of my very favorite TV shows ever, with The X-Files and Gilmore Girls and Battlestar Galactica. Have you seen this explanation of the plot? I find that pretty satisfying, although I will admit that there are some plot issues and confusion that make it not as perfect a show as it might have been. I think it really succeeded when it comes to character and tone and telling a story, though, so I am a pretty happy fan. What a unique, creative show; they are in obvious need of an eyepatch. (The eyepatch is around 7:20 of that video, but gosh, the whole Tyra Banks interview is HILARIOUS.)

We recently watched Whip It, which conspired to make me miss Austin a lot and also for Rob and I to talk again about how much I dislike sports but how much I enjoy sports movies, especially if they are about some slightly offbeat, not-quite-mainstream sport. We have had this conversation before, and it is a corollary to our conversation about why watching sports doesn't seem very entertaining to me. There is no plot! You don't know that it is going to end the way it is "supposed" to! We most often have this conversation during college football season when it seems to me that Rob uses his precious leisure time to watch games that make him more unhappy than he was before he turned on the TV. (Thanks a lot for that, Texas Aggies.) In contrast, sports movies DO have plot and end EXACTLY how they are supposed to. Examples that I have enjoyed to various degrees include Strictly Ballroom (I looooooooove it), The Cutting Edge (a girlhood classic), Blue Crush (OK, not an actual good movie), Bring It On (guilty pleasure), Wimbledon (what is with all the Kirsten Dunst?), Bend It Like Beckham (so good, and about an actual normal sport to boot), and Drumline (perhaps the most quintessential sports movie on this list, and also awesome).

Speaking of Drumline, we watched that sort of recently and also within the space of a few months The Wood (very enjoyable) and I'm Through With White Girls (FABULOUS) and now, judging by the suggested movies, I'm pretty sure Netflix thinks we're black.

And now for your entertainment, here are a couple more shots of my adorable children from that photo shoot we had back in May.

Goodbye, Dear Friend

2010-07-03T11:56:00.000-06:00

Dear sweet wonderful Abbey

October 2000 - July 2010

Her name was our first baby's first word and we are so, so sad at having to let her go. Goodbye, you wonderful good dog.

AAAAAAAAAAAAH!

2010-06-28T09:08:00.000-06:00

If you could hear my inner monologue these days, that's pretty much what it would sound like-- just a lot of stressed-out, crazy screaming. We are down to about 10 more days here in Texas and I feel happy and weirded out and exhausted and pretty sure I am forgetting something really important, all at the same time.

We have good news when it comes to selling our house here, for which we are very, very thankful. We had our inspections last week; I was so relieved when they called to schedule them because it seemed like a sign that our buyers were not, in fact, changing their mind about the house. Anyway, the inspections went pretty well with no big, terrible surprises and this past weekend we got the repair list from the buyers and negotiated with them about what we would do and how much money we would give them for the cracked skylights and roof repair and so forth. Houses sure can have a lot of things wrong with them, can't they? Even houses in relatively decent shape like ours. Anyway, if all continues to go well, we should close on this house in a couple of weeks. Hooray, hooray, HOORAY.

What happens NEXT WEEK is that we will pack up our whole house and drive away to our new home in Salt Lake City. Next Tuesday the movers will pack up our house, Wednesday they will load the truck, and then Thursday we will get in our car and drive away from Dallas. I'm feeling kind of excited about our drive to Utah. This is a bit of a surprise, given how I've felt about travel with my children in tow in recent months (i.e. mortal dread), but for some reason I am looking forward to driving through so many states and being on the road. We've decided to take this route. The shortest route goes through Albuquerque but supposedly it is only 20 minutes longer to go this way and we feel like we haven't seen much of this part of the country. I'm sure both routes would be scenic and pretty at different points in different ways, but going through more northern climes appeals to us more. We've decided to do the drive in 4 days (those points on the map are where we're going to spend the nights) which is a little slower than I think we'd go if we didn't have tiny children; we'll drive 5-6 hours each day.

And then there is dear sweet Abbey. Oh, it makes my heart ache to see how she goes through life these days... Last week we had the 7th anniversary of her coming to live with us and she is really not doing well these days. The timing of all this just sucks but we are trying to think through how she is going to handle the long drive and a new house and, at a more fundamental level, how much quality of life she has. She is such a good dog and we want so much to make the right decision for her.

18 Months

2010-06-22T16:47:00.001-06:00

Today Violet is 18 months old; as the year turns the corner and the days start to get shorter, she has turned a corner and is closer to being a 2-year-old than to her first birthday.

She has started using spoons and forks all by herself, with truly surprising dexterity. I'm not likely to give her a bowl of soup anytime soon, but really, she is amazingly good at stabbing morsels and conveying them into her mouth. She can even get more yogurt into her mouth than on to her shirt, armed with her spoon and her self-assurance. She likes melon and blueberries and bread and cheese, but can sometime be hoodwinked into eating less desirable food with the offer of a fork. Forks! They are super fun!

Our fun new game in recent weeks is identifying body parts. "Where is your nose? Where are your toes? Where is your tongue?" It sometimes shocks me how much language she understands. It is so fun to realize that she knows more than I think she does (who taught her what her feet were called? me?) and it is so SO fun to see her delighted and proud of herself for knowing the answers. Complacently self-satisfied babies are so adorable.

And as far as speaking, she is at a stage right now where she seems to be adding a new word nearly every day. It boggles the mind to contemplate the rate at which she is learning new things and new concepts and new words. And oh, the adorable baby talk-- her funny mispronunciations of diaper and nurse and spoon and cheese that probably no one but us would understand. Her versions of water and hello and night-night are intelligible to pretty much everyone, I think, and there is no mistaking her beaming, triumphant "TA-DAH!" at accomplishing some feat.

I feel just the same, sweet brown-eyed girl.

Confessional

2010-06-19T10:43:00.002-06:00

I have gained almost 10 pounds since our house went on the market. That's right, GAINED. Almost 10 of the 40 pounds I had lost since Violet was born, 10 pounds that puts me that much further from what I would consider a happy weight for 30-something post-baby me.

Having our house on the market has eaten up quite a bit of my time and energy and all semblance of working out has fallen by the wayside. And then there is the emotional eating-- oh, the emotional stress-eating! I wish I had a more detached, objective relationship with food, but I DO NOT. I get riddled with cravings and binge-y in my behavior when I am stressed and anxious and not having a lot of other ways to say "yes" to myself. I have been thinking about that, actually; I say "no" to myself a lot in my current life stage and food sometimes feels like an easy, quick way to say "yes" to myself and then I find myself trying to self-soothe with food. I absolutely cannot have sweets around the house as a matter of habit or I will gobble them all up so the last 3 months of stress-eating have been eating almond butter out of the jar with a spoon and more leftover pasta for lunch than I really need. Three straight months of that, it turns out, will not only halt weight loss but turn it around the other way. Not good, not good at all. I know it's not the worst response possible to stress, but it's a problem. Do I really think food is somehow going to fix whatever is bothering me? And it makes me feel kind of sick that I am modeling this in front of two girls who are going to grow up in a society that has messed-up enough messages about female bodies and food and all that. I've got to get this turned around. The first step is recognizing you have a problem, right?

We do actually have some good news on the real estate front. We have accepted an offer on our house! Unfortunately, this good news feels a bit muddled because during our negotiations with the buyers, we got the impression they were considering backing out and I think we are still wary of them changing their minds about the house. I expected to feel more untroubled when we accepted an offer but this does not quite feel like a reason to shout in triumph. It is good news, though, albeit with a pinch of uncertainty.

When is life ever really certain, though? If that's what I'm expecting, I am sure to be disappointed. I've had ample evidence of this in the lives of friends and family in recent memory, from my dad losing his supposedly secure job back last year to complications of Rob's dad's surgery sending him back to the hospital for a while (he's home and recovering now, thank goodness) to a friend from Yale finding out he had a brain tumor. Life is full of surprises, and although my list right there is full of what I think we'd agree is bad stuff, the surprises of life are certainly not all bad. And anyway, control is an illusion, right? I'm not sure if I'm quoting The Matrix or a Buddhist monk or what there but it's definitely true, and the more I am able to actually believe that and LET GO for pity's sake, the better I will cope with life. And the more I will be able to trust in something more dependable than myself.

God is our refuge and strength,

a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,

though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,

though its waters roar and foam,

though the mountains tremble at its swelling.

Psalm 46:1-3

2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2

2010-06-10T07:28:00.000-06:00

I am 32 today! Such a nice factorable number. I don't have any super fun plans, unfortunately, not even the laid-back plans I had last year when my parents watched the girls and I went out by myself for a bit. This is largely my own fault because I did not plan ahead of time to get a babysitter or something (and my parents moved out of town, for anybody who hasn't been paying minute attention to the details of my life). And it is also partly the fault of our life circumstances right now, with all the insanity of our imminent move and the travel we've been doing and how behind on stuff at work Rob has gotten because of aforementioned move and travel. This is a definite downside to having a summer birthday that falls right in the middle of moving season (well, moving season for medical families, anyhow, with the medical academic year that starts in July every year); such a birthday often gets lost in the shuffle of other, more pressing concerns. I think I barely noticed turning 30 the year we moved from Connecticut to Texas, or turning 27 when we moved the opposite direction 3 years before. Anyway, I am a grown-up now and if I want to do something special on my birthday, despite the life circumstances around me, I should probably buckle down and make it happen. I shall remember this for next year.

Rob has promised to make it home in time for dinner tonight, though, so we will have a nice evening together. I plan to grill pizzas, unless it rains, which it is looking like it might do, and we have a big watermelon I plant to cut up and there is a bottle of bubbly wine in the refrigerator. This afternoon I'm going to take the girls to get a birthday cake for me from a cheesecake place that is on of our regular routes around town and has tempted me, oh, since we first moved to this side of town. Mmmmmmm, birthday cheesecake...

As to the tumultuous life circumstances that are interfering with a full celebration of my birthday, I feel overwhelmed and a bit like we're staggering blindly around trying to keep on top of things. I think we do have a house to move to now, which is a very nice development. We originally were thinking apartments, because we thought it would be easier to get a short-term lease, but it didn't work out that way because of pet policies and whatnot. I feel very happy about the house we did end up getting, after the owner hemmed and hawed for a while about whether he was willing to do a shorter lease with us. It is a 50s era house that's been taken care of very, very well and is in nice shape. It has its original metal cabinets in the kitchen and original pink and turquoise tile in the bathroom, so I shall feel like a bona fide 50s housewife or something. After living there for a while baking and vacuuming while wearing pearls, I shall read The Feminine Mystique and then throw my bras and girdles in a trashcan. Wait, I don't own a girdle. Anyway, the house is big enough that we won't have to put any of our stuff in storage but can just move everything there, and then from there, hopefully, to a house of our own in not too many months. We are signing a 7-month lease, so we will see where December finds us living!

Oh, and have I yet exclaimed over the wonder that is a paid-for move? I am so, so, deeply, wonderfully happy about this. Rob's new employer is paying for our move, up to an amount that is A LOT, so we are having movers both pack us up and do the loading and moving and EVERYTHING. This will be the first time we've ever done this and I am so excited about it.

We Are Moving To...

2010-06-04T16:50:00.005-06:00

...Salt Lake City!

It is more or less official today as Rob has agreed to his contract with Intermountain Healthcare. (It can't technically be signed until one more committee meets later this month, but I think it's close enough now to go public and call it decided.) Rob feels really enthusiastic about this job; working for a big nonprofit like IHC is going to be a good match for Rob's interests and professional preferences. When we were visiting Salt Lake earlier this spring, he came out of his interviews with some of the IHC people saying that the doctors who work there seem to spend their time doing what everyone says they go to med school for, which is high praise indeed. If you've been reading along this spring, you know that initially we had some reservations about Utah because of the dominant religious culture, but after several visits there and lots of research and talking with people who live there, we think it is going to be a really good fit for us and a fun, interesting place to live. We are excited about the amazing natural beauty and the fun vibe of the close-in neighborhoods and all the possibilities of starting a new life for ourselves there.

Rob is actually there right now, as I type this very sentence, on a house-hunting trip. He met in person with some IHC people today, which is when the last details of the contract got hammered out, and then he spent time going around with the realtor looking at apartments and houses and whatnot. We are renting to start with, mostly because our house here hasn't sold, although taking some time to look for a house at a more leisurely rate also plays into that choice. We have bought two houses so far in our marriage, both of which we chose in whirlwind 4-day trips where we saw 20+ houses all at once and then picked one. I would not mind doing things in a bit less slapdash manner. Anyway, we are hoping to get a 6-month lease somewhere and then think about buying once Rob gets settled into his job and HOPEFULLY HOPEFULLY HOPEFULLY our house here sells. We have been giving lots of thought (and realtor discussions) as to whether I stay behind Rob to keep the house furnished for showings but I think we've decided that we are going to stick together and just all move at once. When, you ask? When are we going to all pick up and move? IN. A. MONTH.

AIYEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

And Nothing Came Up

2010-06-01T09:54:00.006-06:00

Violet is fixated, nay OBSESSED with this book right now. We read it over and over and over, and she will sit on her own paging through it and making funny little vocalizations that mimic the sound of us reading it. Not that I mind too much, as it is one of those sweet old classic children's books that are full of charm and gentleness and adorable illustrations. There are some very vacuous, annoying children's books out there, but this is not one of them. I don't remember Grace perseverating on a single book like this, but I do remember this being the age (~18 months or so) when she finally got interested in books and wanted to sit in somebody's lap and read and read and read. There are few things more adorable than a toddler backing herself up to plop in your lap, book clutched firmly in her chubby hands.

The book itself is about perseverance and confidence in the future, which seems an apt message for us right now. We had an offer on our house this past weekend, which was such good news after the weeks and weeks of our house being on the market with no offers. It was a low-ish offer, but if we had been able to meet somewhere in the middle, it would have been OK. Unfortunately, the buyer wasn't interested in negotiating up any significant amount, so we told them no. There's the issue of how much money we will be losing on the house (which with his offer was a LOT) but also looking around at everything else in our neighborhood we feel feel pretty sure that our house is worth more than that, that our price is not that far off, which is also what our realtor says. So sadly our metaphorical carrot seed did not sprout this weekend and apparently we are still in the gloomy middle part of the book. Here's hoping that we get to the happy ending soon...

It is going to be a quiet day around our house because I am just not up to anything taxing today. We are still dealing with sickness and illness (yes, almost 2 weeks since my last post, we are still not better) and last night was just awful. We are all on the mend and our noses and throats and fevers are mostly fine, but Violet and I have these lingering coughs that are keeping both of us up at night. My albuterol (that I share with Violet via this tiny mask contraption) is just not cutting it anymore and I could seriously go for some codeine or whiskey or some other cough-suppressant big guns. The sleep deprivation has found me rather wan and fuzzy-brained and listless today, I am afraid, and the day looks rather long and daunting ahead of me. I predict that a) I will read Violet's favorite book about a dozen times and b) there will be a fair amount of children's TV involved.

Questions Grace Has Asked Me Lately

2010-05-27T07:20:00.001-06:00

Why is our bathroom so small and the rest of our rooms are so big?
Why do we wear underwear?
When will the mosquitoes go away?
What will our new habitat be like after we leave our habitat in Texas?
For my birthday, can I have chocolate cupcakes in white paper with white frosting and sprinkles? (Her birthday is in February.)
What kind of cake do you want for your birthday? (A more timely question, as my birthday is in just a few weeks.)
When will it not be so hot?
Can I watch more TV?